Those who are stuck on the Strength compass point of the Self Compass in the Controlling
trend are usually too self-sufficient to ask for help when they need it, too
proud to say they are sorry, too competitive to be intimate, and too
self-centered to listen to other’s needs.
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| Controlling Behavior |
Exaggerated strength without the balance of the Weakness and Love
compass points turns people into control freaks who use power to judge others. They believe
that the only way to do things is their way. They judge and reject anyone or
anything that doesn't comply with their standards. Their need for perfection
interferes with the ability to grasp the bigger picture. They are closed-minded
but convinced they know it all. They feel entitled to play “junior gods” in the
lives of others.
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| Controller Self Compass |
Controllers' consuming need is to give a good impression and to be in control at all
times. Their Rock of Gibraltar self-image is paramount. This keeps them from
laughing, playing, feeling, risking, and sharing.
Lacking in imagination and creativity, controllers rely on
tradition or the rulebook to prescribe what “should” be done in the present.
They live mechanically by rite, ritual, and propriety. They pooh-pooh feelings
and consider introspection to be self-indulgent. They are often oblivious to
their own and others' emotions.
Controllers secretly strive for recognition and admiration.
Their fundamental attitude is: “Strive at all times to demonstrate your
strength and superiority.” They view most other people as irresponsible, lazy,
and incompetent.
Ordinarily, Western culture and
Christian culture are in agreement that personal confidence is an admirable
asset. Strength of character, it is supposed, leads to perseverance,
discipline, and purpose. What is seldom understood, though, is how often the
strength-stuck person is preoccupied with controlling the self, others, and
God.
A First Session
In a first interview, it is fairly easy
to spot when the Controlling trend is dominating someone’s personality. The counselee
has poise, and usually good verbal and cognitive skills. But there is a lack of
emotional spontaneity, since a controller lives out of the mind, not out of the
heart.
This makes sense when you grasp that
the Controlling trend perceives feelings as disruptive to the logic and predictability
that thoughts and beliefs provide. Feelings flow from the limbic center of the
brain and have much more of a visceral component than do thoughts or acts of
will. Controllers numb feelings in an effort to control them. They often
override their actual feelings with mental mandates about what they “should” be
thinking or doing: a kind of “hardening of the oughteries.”
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| Tyranny of the Shoulds |
Whereas thoughts reflect a person’s
assumptions and expectations, feelings reflect their more private and emotionally
colored perceptions at any given moment. If you want to exercise self-control
the way controllers do, you repress your feelings, even denying them when they
run counter to how you think you should behave. This leaves you out of touch
with your own depths—with your heart and body—because feelings and sensations
are more akin to the spontaneity of the unconscious than to the structure of
consciousness.
Hence, controllers are in the dark
about parts of their own experience. They have blind spots when it comes to emotion,
sensation, interpersonal intuition, and inner guidance from the Holy Spirit.
Compass Therapy—based as it is on an
actualizing psychology of the whole person—places as much value on feelings and
sensations, or inner subjectivity, as it does on cognition and volition, the
objective aspects of behavior.
The challenge in counseling a
strength-stuck person is to avoid becoming enmeshed in a maze of logical but
unfruitful speculations about the presenting problem. A certain amount of
rational analysis is helpful for determining what is triggering the symptom and
what is holding it in place. Beyond that, it is essential to shift to a more experiential
mode of therapeutic encounter, a methodology that integrates cognition with
emotion and sensation.
So the counseling aim is
double-pronged: to assist in resolving the presenting problem or symptom, while
at the same time teaching counselees to value their feelings and sense
perceptions as highly as their thoughts. This often involves liberating
counselees from the curse of perfection, which I define as the realization that
you aren’t perfect, accompanied by an expectation that with more effort you
COULD (and therefore SHOULD) be perfect.
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