Choice Theory (22 page)

All her energy was going into the effort to depress, and she was immobilized. She wanted some help with how she felt and with her difficulty in doing even the routine chores around the farm. In the first session, she said that she would be satisfied if I could help her get back to the mild depressing—her life as a frog—that she’d been choosing for years. The problem is that our quality worlds do not recognize the impossibility of any picture we put into it. If a picture is in our quality worlds, we want to achieve it in the real
world and do so as soon as possible. The only way we can stop wanting that picture is to take it out of our quality worlds.

When she came to see me, she had not even thought about finding a picture to replace Robert, and she didn’t even want to. It was he, no one or nothing else. But because she knew that what she wanted was impossible for her, she was dealing creatively with that impossibility. Her creative system had told her,
Francesca, forget about living without Robert. Without him all you can do is go through the motions. For all practical purposes, you are dead.
That may not have sounded creative, but it’s not something most of us are even willing to think much less to say. If dead is that you can no longer do anything or feel anything, this was what she was trying to achieve when I saw her.

In counseling, I tried to help her toward another picture, not a sexual or love picture, but a picture that might give her some of what she wanted—a social, if not a sexual, life off the farm in which she would have some power and people would listen to her and respect her for what she was saying and doing. I believe that if she could have had such a life and enjoyed it, she might eventually give up the picture of Robert or live better with it. Time would tell if that would ever happen. All I saw her was for a few sessions.

In Waller’s book, Francesca doesn’t seek counseling. She dealt with her life by choosing to depress, which restrained her anger enough so she could be a reasonably good mother and wife. Writing in her journal helped her to accept the life she had. She was able to come up with the creative fantasy: My children will read this journal after I die, understand me better, respect me for what I did by staying home, and appreciate how hard it was to give up Robert. It also helped that Robert did not forget her. He had his belongings shipped to her when he died, including the note she wrote and pinned to the bridge that brought them together. All this, especially all the misery, is very romantic, which was Waller’s intention. I liked the book. I felt deeply for this woman and for the love she had and then gave up.

What also helped Francesca to gain enough control over her
life was to seek out a relationship with a neighbor, Mrs. Delaney, who had gone through a similar situation but had not been able to keep it secret and had been ostracized by the narrow-minded community in which they lived. The two women became close and stayed close until Francesca died.

What actually happened or didn’t happen to the fictional Francesca is not important. I want to discuss what might have happened to her or to anyone who suffers a long-term high level of frustration and how our creative systems can get involved with our behavior in ways that are destructive to our lives. Let’s start briefly with the autoimmune diseases I have discussed.

If Francesca’s immune system had gone crazy several months after she sent Robert away, she might have noticed that her fingers had become very painful, swollen, red, and hard to move. Even Richard might have noticed and said,
You ought to see a doctor.
Her family doctor would have immediately recognized that she was in the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis. He would have taken tests and X-rays, noted that her sedimentation rate was up, and confirmed the diagnosis.

He might have referred her to a specialist in Des Moines. After a few more tests, the specialist would have started her on an anti-inflammatory medication, but that treatment is palliative; it does not cure. The specialist might have even asked her if there was anything in her life she was upset about, but it is unlikely that she would have told him about Robert. Why risk his disapproval? Besides, Robert was gone; what good would it do?

Whenever we are frustrated, it is impossible for our physiology to remain aloof, for us to say to the acting, thinking, and feeling components of our behavior,
You guys, get creative and deal with it; leave me out of it.
So in this example, her physiology got involved. My experience counseling people who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis is that they have very frustrating personal relationships, often blatantly unsatisfying marriages that they are trying to preserve at all costs. They cannot risk angering or even depressing because doing so might impair their ability to keep up their side of the relationship and maybe lose it.

It is not easy to deal with these frustrations, and I am not implying that I could have helped Francesca if she had come to me with rheumatoid arthritis. If she didn’t tell me about Robert, I would have probed for the breakdown in a relationship that I believe is behind most chronic frustrations and tried to help her deal with it. If she could have resolved the frustration favorably, as she began to do in counseling, there is a good chance her arthritis would not have gotten worse and might have improved or even gone away. If you can apply choice theory to your life to improve or eliminate your own unhappy relationship, you have a chance to help yourself.

Francesca was not likely to become psychotic because she was both capable of good relationships and of taking care of herself and her family. The kind of people who become psychotic often lack
ganas.
Their profile is similar to that of the workless. They want good relationships but are not capable of giving the amount of care to others that it takes to get them. That has been my overwhelming experience with people who have dealt with an unsatisfying life by choosing psychosis.

Some people who become psychotic want to be taken care of; they don’t have the confidence that they can take care of themselves. They can often be helped as much by a good live-in situation in which they are slowly introduced to the demands of the real world as by good counseling. Most of them need a place where they feel secure and have people to talk with; it does not have to be a hospital.

It is interesting that psychotropic drugs that control hallucinations and delusions all tend to paralyze the creative system so severely that even the muscles get involved. This is seen in the Parkinson-like gait and other symptoms that usually accompany the use of these drugs. Under the influence of large doses of these drugs, many people lose their ability to move smoothly, their faces lose expressiveness, and their voices may become altered and lack timbre. Although these drugs may reduce the crazy creativity by paralyzing the creative system, they do not really solve the problem. I am not saying don’t use the drugs, but understand that
there is almost always a frustrated relationship involved. If it is dealt with in counseling, my experience is that with some clients, those who have some strengths or who are taken care of can stop choosing psychosis and live much better, though somewhat sheltered, lives.

Bipolar or manic depressive psychosis, discussed earlier in connection with the workless, is another variation of crazy creativity. It is not restricted to the workless, however; some successful people choose this up-and-down behavior when their relationships are extremely unsatisfying. Furthermore, it is usually more up or more down, not the complete swings from way up to way down that is commonly thought. With manic depressive psychosis, what is often in operation is the third reason: The sufferer is trying to avoid facing the reality that a long-term relationship is not working out.

Francesca did not do much about her problem except to depress, but at least she faced it. Bipolar people can’t even seem to do that. When they are in their manic state, they are living right out of their creative systems. Their brains are going as fast as they sometimes do in long, complicated dreams during five-minute naps. I’m always amazed at how much can happen in dreams in such a short time.

When bipolar people are in the normal part of the swing, they can often be helped by good counseling. Sometimes they are so successful in their lives that when they are not in the up or down position, it is impossible for anyone, including counselors, to believe that they are having problems in their relationships. And maybe they are not. But my guess is that most of them are and that anyone who counsels them should check out their relationships first.

There is also a whole group of creative total behaviors that are commonly called neuroses. People who choose these behaviors don’t deny reality, as in psychosis, they just have trouble dealing with it. Phobicking, anxietizing, panicking, obsessing, compulsing, or posttraumatic stressing are common examples of these ereative
choices. For example, Francesca could have told me nothing about Robert, or mentioned him but not shown much concern over the loss of their brief relationship. Her complaint might have been that she was afraid to leave the house by herself. If her husband couldn’t take her somewhere, she couldn’t leave the house. He would be in the waiting room to drive her home. Once in a while she could go out with her son or daughter or with a neighbor, but she would really be comfortable only with him.

My guess is that the real fear from which the phobicking would protect her would be that if she left the house alone, she might go looking for Robert. Her choice to phobic would prevent her from doing that. As long as she wanted Robert but felt loyal to Richard, she would continue to phobic. This creative choice would help her to think, It’s not Robert that I want at all. My problem is that I’m afraid to leave the house. Here you see all three reasons we choose what is usually called mental illness operating creatively. First, as long as she phobicked, she could replace angering with fearing, which is more acceptable. Second, she would have an excuse to go for help. Third, since she would feel safe only at home, going to Robert would be out of the question.

As the years went by and the memory of Robert faded, she would need the phobicking less, and as the frustration disappeared, the symptom would disappear with it. Counseling would be very helpful, and I would counsel her much as I did. But to help her, the same as I would if she were arthritising, I would have to probe for Robert and the unsatisfying relationship with Richard. Richard, however, would be close to the surface and not hard to find. With my help to get out of the house and into a less lonely life, she could accept that Robert was gone and, with that acceptance, no longer have any reason to phobic.

Francesca could also have chosen panicking, a similar but disabling symptom. As long as she was in fear of a panic attack, she wouldn’t stray far from home or from people she trusted. She might even panic at home if she thought of Robert, but home
would be a safe place to have such attacks. For example, if Francesca was a panicker and lived in constant fear of an attack, when she came to see me, I would have known that a painful relationship was involved. As I probed for the relationship, she would protest but not too much. Part of her would be pleased. She would want desperately to talk about Robert, and if she trusted me, my office would be a safe place to do it. When she told me about Robert, she would say, “It’s over.” But I would know that it was not over; the panicking would be proof that it wasn’t.

Still, Francesca would insist, “It’s over”; I don’t want to think about him anymore. In a sense she would be right about that, too. She wouldn’t think about Robert very much. Rather, she would think and worry about when the next attack would occur, and that thought would keep her and a lot of other people busy worrying about her. All these dramatic symptoms are marvelous ways for lonely people to get attention and ask for help without begging.

An attack might have occurred in my office when I started to probe, and I would have welcomed it. I would have told her, “That’s marvelous; now we can really deal with it.” It saves a lot of time when clients discover that, with my help, panicking can be handled. My job would be to get Francesca to think about Robert, not to be more miserable but to learn what she could do to find a life without him. I would have gone into great detail about what was happening when she had the last panic attack. She could have chosen to panic when she saw a couple about her age walking down the street holding hands, which could have revved up the whole affair with Robert. I might have told her to think about Robert and, if she could, choose to panic right then with me. She might not have been able to do so, but this statement would have made it more difficult for her to panic from then on because she would have gotten some understanding that a choice was involved.

This technique of thinking about what you are trying not to
think about is called paradoxical counseling, and it can be very effective. To do it properly takes some experience, and it is not something anyone without experience should try to do on his or her own. Choice theory is about making better choices, but we have to understand the reason for the bad choices before we can make good ones. As much as Francesca was infatuated with Robert, I believe there are few one-person people, certainly not a person one has known for only four days. In my counseling, I offered her a way to find belonging, if not love, by going to work.

Francesca could have chosen obsessing, saying over and over that she was sick and going to die or that her husband was sick and going to die. She could have also started compulsively washing her hands over and over and developed an overwhelming fear of dirt and germs. Either obsessing or compulsing could have kept Robert from surfacing in her mind. People who choose compulsive hand washing frequently feel guilty, and Francesca certainly could have felt enough guilt to have chosen it. The counseling would be the same as with phobicking.

Posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is another frequent diagnosis in the external control world where it is common for people to think:
I am the victim of something external over which I have no control.
After a painful, unexpected injury, accident, or exposure to a frightening situation, the people involved are so traumatized they cannot cope and need counseling to deal with what happened. The symptoms may be physical, such as a pain in the head, neck, or back; a disability, such as being unable to walk; or psychological, such as fear and anxiety that are so severe that the person can’t work. A huge disaster, such as an earthquake, is a classic cause of this condition. I worry that the assumption that the people involved can’t cope without expert help is frequently made too quickly.