Seven Kinds of Power
The following is a guest post by Steve Hauptman, LCSW, and therapist practicing in Mount Sinai, New York. Steven is a Gestaltist and leader of Interactive Therapy groups and is currently writing a book titled, The Illusion of Control. Steve also writes Monkeytraps, a blog devoted to the oldest human addiction: control. He can be reached at fritzfreud@aol.com.
If you love an addict, or live with one, or depend on one in some way, you are probably in, as the old saying goes, nine kinds of pain.
And I’m guessing that, whether or not you realize it, the very worst of these pains comes from being confused about the difference between power and control.
No, they’re not the same.
In some ways, they are opposites.
One difference is: power is possible, but control is usually an illusion.
Another is: seeking power can set you free, while seeking control can make you crazy.
Let me explain.
Control (as I define it) means the ability to dictate reality. To get life itself — people, places and things — to meet our expectations.
Power, on the other hand, means being able to get your needs met. To take care of yourself. To not just survive, but to heal, and grow, and be happy.
Here’s an example of the difference:
Imagine your rich uncle dies and leaves you control of his multinational corporation. So you wake up one morning the CEO of Big Bux, Inc. You go to your new job. You sit behind a huge desk. Four secretaries line up to do your bidding. You have tons of control. You can hire and fire people, buy things and sell things, build plants or close them, approve product lines and advertising campaigns, manage investments, bribe congressmen, you name it.
How do you feel?
If you’re anything like me, you feel crippled by anxiety. Bewildered and overwhelmed by your new responsibilities. Disoriented. Panicked.
Anything but in control.
Interesting, no?
There are two other interesting differences between control and power.
~ Control looks outward, mainly at other people, places and things. Power looks inward, to your own feelings and needs. So control-seeking pulls you away from yourself, away from self-awareness and self-care.
~ Control operates paradoxically. The paradox goes like this: The more control you need, the less in control you feel. Which means if you depend on getting control to feel safe and happy, you don’t feel safe or happy most of the time. Chasing control is a lot like chasing a train you can never catch. Power, though — rooted in healthy, intelligent self-care — is a real possibility.
Want to become more powerful? Here are seven ways to do it:
(1) Detach. Let go of what you can’t control anyway. That may be a situation, or a person, or that person’s behavior. If it’s a person you love, you can detach with love, as they say in Al-Anon. Detaching doesn’t mean you stop caring. It just means you acknowledge your limitations. And when you do that, an enormous relief often follows.
(2) Refocus. Start by shifting your focus from outside — people, places and things — to inside — your own needs, thoughts and feelings. Happiness is an inside job, and most of the answers you need are there.
(3) Take care of yourself. Stop overcontrolling yourself, and learn to listen to your body instead. Hungry? Eat. Tired? Sit. Rest. Maybe take a nap. (Naps are great.) Lonely? Seek out safe people. (More on this below.) Angry? Scream (into a pillow, maybe, so you don’t scare the neighbors). Sad? Let yourself cry. It’s how the body naturally relieves tension, and it helps.
(4) Educate yourself. You’re not crazy; your pain means something. Your job is to find out what it’s trying to tell you. Education can take many forms, from Googling alcoholic family or codependency to reading self-help books (start with Janet Woititz’s Adult Children of Alcoholics or Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More), or listening to tapes (try the library), or talking to a friend, or attending a self-help meeting, or finding yourself a good therapist. After his first Al-Anon meeting one of my clients told me, “It was like a light coming on in a dark room, and suddenly I could see all the furniture I’ve been tripping over.” Hey, why live in the dark if you don’t have to?
(5) Get support. No one gets through life alone. (Even if you could, why would you want to?) Seriously consider checking out a self-help program, like Al-Anon or Nar-Anon or CODA. You’re probably scared of that first meeting. That’s okay; everyone is. Go anyway. It won’t kill you, and you can’t know beforehand what you’ll hear. A good meeting can save your life and your sanity.
(6) Listen to feelings. This is a big one. Living with an addict usually requires hiding your feelings, sometimes even from yourself. But feelings are essential. You need to get them back again. Hang out with people who are trying to reclaim their feelings, and who can keep you company while you’re trying to reclaim yours.
(7) Have faith. Develop your spiritual life. No, you don’t need to join a church. You don’t even need to believe in God. You do need to believe in something bigger than you, something you trust even when you don’t understand it. Call it Nature. Call it The Force. Al-Anon calls it Higher Power, but you can call it what you like. I used to reject the idea of God, but I always believed in psychology. Then I heard Scott Peck suggest that it’s not unreasonable to replace the word God with the word unconscious. That permanently reframed the idea of God for me. I realized there was some intelligence inside I could listen for, and which would guide me if I let it. (I might doubt the existence of God, but who can doubt the existence of that voice? That part that Knows Better?) So that gave me something to trust. Hey, we all need some invisible support.
Lisa Frederiksen
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Hi Steve, What a wonderful post, and if I can say, powerful. I had to learn the hard way that I cannot control the addict in my life. I cannot control the addiction or anything that my children do. Since I’ve been learning from Al-Anon such things as detaching with love, I find myself feeling much more powerful. I also detect a slight more respect from my children. Our love has always been there, but the real respect needs to be earned. My two favorite lines are “Chasing control is a lot like chasing a train you can never catch.” and “It was like a light coming on in a dark room, and suddenly I could see all the furniture I’ve been tripping over.” Thank you.
Hi, Cathy. Glad you liked it. Makes perfect sense to me that as you become more powerful your kids would respect you more. One of the things I tell clients is that we teach people how to treat us — mainly by what we accept and don’t accept from them. When we act like our needs and feelings don’t count for much, that’s how they act. When we act like we deserve respect and consideration, that’s what we get. It’s not so much about earning their respect as respecting ourselves. Keep up the good work.
Steve,
My problem with the invisible inner voice is that you assume that it is good. How is it that you or anyone can dismiss the existence of God but embrace wholeheartedly that there is this invisible inner voice that is believed to be good. What about those who appear spiritually driven to do evil? If the inner voice is tied into the inhibitory places in my brain, then the excitatory places in the brain, when fueled, will override my inner voice; that is, unless it’s the combination of the those places in this brain of mine that shape my invisible inner voice – the god within me. If I do not have sufficient knowledge of what drives this force within me, why would I trust it?
Nature as a whole is far more powerful than me. We see evidence of its power throughout the world everyday. Sit on the ocean and watch the tide roll in and out and you recognize instantly that should you walk far enough into it, it will swallow you up and kill you. Do I want to replace God with a higher power that would just as soon kill me as easily as it is my pleasure to sit on a beach and watch it do its thing?
I choose to believe in the tangible evidence of one God who put this whole thing together that loves me enough to care for me and empower me. I agree that control is an illusion, but left on are own without God God, power is an illusion as well. But if I put my trust in God for real, acknowledging that He has sovereign authority, then I can experience power and freedom through Him.
Anyone wanting to research the historical evidence of the life, death, and yes, resurrection of Jesus, there are ancient documents in addition to the Bible written by early century folks (BC and AD) that will leave you thinking deeper about this, rather than reducing it all to the flawed institution of religion. Religion’s intention is to judge, shame, and control; God’s intention through Jesus is to extend mercy and blessing.
Why is it easier to believe in the mystery of an invisible inner voice, or what we imagine the power of nature can do to ease the stress in our lives due to the insufficiency of power and control? What if there is a more tangible higher power through an experiential relationship with God, than trusting in something so much more mysterious that might just be a mere figment of one’s imagination?
Thanks, Steven. I envy you your faith, and the conivction I hear behind your words. In my experience, many recovering persons have been alienated from their own spirituality by bad experiences with religion and religion-pushers, and need their own way to translate the idea of invisible support into something that feels meaningful and safe to them. That’s all I was trying to express here.
Just so you know, the last thing I want to do is push religion. Just as you stated there is a difference between power and control, faith and religion are not one in the same. The cool thing about experiential faith is that it occurs in the miracle of relationship with God, which, when experienced, is transformative; rooted in love, not ritual, tradition and law. It’s liberating, not binding (i.e., if you’re not catholic you don’t have true faith). That’s all I am trying to say. It’s great that we can openly exchange are thoughts.
Yes, I know you’re not a religion-pusher. I also understand how hard it can be to communicate an experience — be it faith, love, passion, or the taste of good sushi — to someone who hasn’t actually shared it. Words can feel awfully inadequate at such times. and I respect you for trying so hard to make yourself clear to me. And I agree, it is great to exchange thoughts in this way. Best, Steve.