Technical Control and Human Control: Learning to be a Guest House
Distress and the Hope for Technical Solutions
I sometimes find clients enter therapy hoping for a ‘quick fix’ or some technical solution to their difficulties. I think many of us, myself included, have hoped that there was some technique, some pill, some mantra, something that could ease our pain. It makes sense that we would hope for some technical solution. It is very difficult to be in distress and unsure of what to do or even what is happening. And besides, some problems can be solved easily technically. I happily call a plumber for a plumbing issue, see an optometrist about my eyes and glasses, or go to a mechanic about a car.
The only problem is that ‘control’ can mean different things. Control, perhaps most obviously, looks like mechanical control: the fixing and building of things, technical facility, mastery. But there is another, subtler form of control that I’ll call human control or the control of presence, and it has something to do with welcoming, containing, or ‘being a guest house’. I’ll explain what this means by contrasting ‘technical control’ with ‘human control’.
The Medical Model and Technical Solutions
There are forms of therapy that are more technical in nature and they have much to offer. They are generally medically or behaviorally oriented. To be medically oriented means to think of distress as a sort of ‘illness’ that needs to be treated. Human distress or mental illness is distinct from infection or illness in a proper sense, however, in that there are not single identifiable pathogens, autoimmune disorders, or biological causes. Thus trying to treat human distress as a medical or technical issue is often inconsistent and involves much trial and error. The psychiatrist Daniel Carlat is quite frank about this aspect of psychiatry in his book Unhinged. Carlat is concerned that psychiatrists have basically become prescribers, meeting only for 15-20 minutes to confirm whether medication and side effects are acceptable.
This does not mean that medication is not valuable. It is essential for some situations. Similarly, behaviorally oriented approaches that seek to correct symptoms or behaviors rather than understand their causes is immensely useful. But real, lasting change, I think, has to come from some sort of self-understanding and some shift in the way we relate to ourselves and others. If we become overly fixated on biological, medical, or technical solutions we can overlook the task of learning to be human, learning to skillfully navigate the difficulties unique to our situation.
Control, Technical and Otherwise
There is another form of control that is less technical, less about manipulation and more about presence. It is a form of ‘control’ that is enabled by compassion, welcoming, and above all having a relationship with the many aspects of our own inner world. Ann Weiser Cornell, a teacher of an embodied form of therapy called Focusing, discusses how relationship = distance + connection. Thus having a relationship with different aspects of ourselves (like our anger, shame, or fear) means getting ‘the right amount of distance’ between us and that particular experience.
When someone enters therapy, their experiences or emotions are generally either too close or too far. If things feel too close, daily life and relationships are either overwhelming, burdensome, or heavy. Or if things are too far, we feel disconnected and disengaged, unable to access our feelings because they have somehow slipped away or been pushed out of awareness. Thus first and foremost I am looking to help people in therapy restore an inner relationship with things that have been out of awareness or are too overwhelming to relate to. Thus I encourage clients to ‘say hello’, to ‘greet’, to ‘acknowledge’, or to ‘welcome’ those parts of themselves.
It isn’t always obvious to clients why it would be helpful to invite in or welcome these difficult experiences. People have often been working very hard to keep these things under control! Welcoming them (fear or shame, for example) sounds like welcoming chaos and destruction. The crucial thing to understand, however, is that in being the one who welcomes a feeling, you are being a bigger self or a bigger I. Because I am the one that invites this experience or feeling in, I tacitly assert that I am bigger than the thing. Thus one of my most important jobs as a therapist is to be a sort of container, to consistently be my big self that can invite in difficult experiences.
In doing this, in being the bigger self that can invite in difficult experiences, a different form of control emerges. As we learn to invite in and relate to what we’ve once pushed away or been overwhelmed with, we will invariably find that these experiences or parts start to change. The rage we felt, once related to, may mutate to reveal unbearable grief that it was protecting. Overwhelming experiences of shame may lead back to important desires for intimacy and belonging that were obscured. It seems to me that basically everything we experience as negative has within it the implicit steps towards change, towards becoming something that moves our lives forward. To discover this, however, we have to make a difficult and counter-intuitive change: we have to begin welcoming and relating to the experiences that seemed simply negative or painful.
This sentiment is well captured in the famous poem ‘The Guest House’ by the 13th century Persian poet, Rumi:
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Much of my work as a therapist feels implied in this poem. I believe it to be highly compatible with what I am calling a different form of control, the form of control that is most appropriate to being a human being. I am happy to defer to engineers and technicians when it makes sense. Please, fix my computer, make sure the bridges are working, and keep me alive during surgery. But I am more confident than ever that those forms of control, those technical models, do not translate into our emotional and psychological lives. To be in ‘control’ as a human being, to live skillfully and gracefully, means being able to have a relationship with the things that arise in us. For in relating to them we allow them to change and become what they really are: guides to deeper understanding and further living.
Riley Paterson is a Self Space Seattle therapist who works with individuals who are healing from past traumas; who are looking to recover a sense of wholeness in the face of depression and demoralization, and those working to get a handle on anxiety. He is also interested in questions around queerness and/or gender.