Dissertation/Ripskis/2 Chapter 2
But to become a winner, either at sports or at life, you must be proactive. You need to force the play in the other team's end of the ice so you get more scoring opportunities. You must take chances. You must take charge.
Ultimately it boils down to five existential positions: We choose to be Proactors, Reactors, Victims, Predators or withdraw into personal worlds of mental illness. Being a Proactor is choosing to be an open, autonomous system; all the others are closed systems. But the process to convince us otherwise and undermine our budding autonomy starts almost at the cradle, with our parents, teachers, siblings and playmates telling us that we "make them worried, anxious and angry," when we don't do what they want. The father says: "You make me so worried when you're not back by ten," or "You make me so angry when you don't clean up your room," says mother. Well known songs tell us: "You made me love you; I didn't want to do it," "You're nobody until someone loves you." And finally there is a common question that is often asked after some potentially traumatic event: "How did that make you feel?" Some argue that depending on the situation, we all can find ourselves acting from any of the three positions -- Proactor, Reactor or Victim. They cite this example: you come home and you find your place burglarized. Aren’t you a Victim?
The answer is, yes, if that’s what you choose to be. And then you can feel sorry for yourself and angry with the burglar for unfairly singling you out.
Or you can choose to be a Reactor, shrug it off, consider yourself having participated in a minor redistribution of wealth experiment, and call the police and insurance company. And consider it all a learning experience, making sure not to depart your house again leaving the back window open and the burglar alarm off. And when the cops show up, ask them how you can make your house more burglar-proof.
Now if you choose to be a Proactor, after reading this, you will take some of the above preventative measures, if you haven’t done so already, to minimize your chances of being burglarized. Likewise if we are unhappy, dissatisfied or bored, and our life lacks meaning, joy, purpose or a sense of fulfillment, we are responsible for it. We can choose to do something constructive about it. Or we can choose to stay unhappy and continue playing being Reactor or Victim. The same applies if we are playing the depression game, which really comes out of a Victim script. Or we may be playing out other games or scripts that have gotten us fat, smoking, in debt, flirting with alcoholism, staying in an unhealthy relationship, doing hard drugs, being doped up by Prozac, or indulging in some other, self-defeating, destructive activities.
At this point some may object: " Why in the world would I choose to become a victim if I could possibly do something about it?" Therapist Claude Steiner responds to this statement so well that I can't resist quoting him at length. "Some typically negative worldviews are 'Nice guys always get the shaft,' or 'Never trust a woman (man),' or 'Mess with me and you'll regret it.' Such a view, though negative, gives the player a sense that he understands the world, rotten though it is. "Early in life, people decide on their life expectations. These decisions become blueprints for living, or scripts, similar to the scripts of movies or plays. Many people read their lines from these scripts for the rest of their lives. "Every time a person plays a game to its conclusion, he or she gets a feeling of bittersweet satisfaction called the 'script (or existential) payoff.' This feeling tells her that even though she is all messed up, at least she knows who she is and what the meaning of her life really is. "Some very bad existential statements that nevertheless give meaning to life are 'Born to lose,' 'Everybody hates me,' 'Nothing ever works out.' At the end of a terrible day, we can at least say to ourselves, 'I knew it. Life is hell and then you die.' At the end of a terrible life we can say, 'Yep. Just as I thought. Life was hell and now I'm dying.' "Games are part of these total life patterns or scripts. The 'Why don't you?' 'Yes, but...' player has a depressive script; the 'Kick Me' player has a victim script; the angry player has a persecutor script; the Alcoholic has a tragic, self-destructive script, and so on." Eric Berne elaborates further: "In script analysis, winners are called 'princes' or 'princesses' and losers are called 'frogs.' The object of script analysis is to turn frogs into princes and princesses. ... The patient fights being a winner because he is not in treatment for that purpose, but only to be made into a braver loser. This is natural enough, since if he becomes a braver loser, he can follow his script more comfotably, whereas if he becomes a winner he has to throw away all or most of his script and start over, which most people are reluctant to do."
Eighteen years of lifestyle research and counseling reveal this common, defining characteristic among those who live active, engaging, fulfilling lives: they are autonomous proactors; they are not victims, reactors or rationalizers. They have gotten themselves relatively free of games and life scripts. They are proactors with a strong sense of personal meaning and purpose. They chose to take charge of their lives and didn't let the fear of failure discourage them from going after even the long-shot goals. If they didn't succeed the first couple of times, they treated the failures as learning experiences and doggedly pursued their goals until they reached them. I’m including one case study, that of Paul Jauncey, an outstanding example of a Proactor, for illustative purposes as Appendix I. Proactors are autonomous and take full responsibility for their lives and what they do and feel. They are at cause rather than at effect of other people, things and events. They are responsible for what they experience. That's why they never ask, "How does that make you feel?" Each one of us is responsible for our own feelings and experiences; and if we don't like it, we can change it. One final point. Remembering that our brains are modular, one can be a Proactor and yet at the same time have "islands" of behavior where on acts as a Victim or Proactor. And of course the way to fix that is through the Cortical Integration Process demonstrated in chapter 6.
Some neuroscientists will argue that since up to 98 percent of our brain processes aren't under our conscious control, and given what a powerful force the amygdala (the two almond-sized nodules at the base of our brain) is in generating emotions, how can we talk about being at cause as far as our emotional reactions are concerned? The explanation is deceptively simple, yet pivotal and decisive: Being at cause in our lives is choosing the cortex to be in control and the focus of our consciousness rather than letting amygdala-generated feelings and emotions take over. An example: the sudden awareness of a snake in close proximity induces the amygdala to send out strong distress messages. But instead of running off in panic with our heart pounding wildly, by being at cause, we let our cortex (Adult) recognize that what is before us is nothing but a harmless, garter snake posing no threat whatsoever. Then we calm down and turn off the amygdala-generated alarm. Here is how neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux explains it: "The amygdala's emotional memories ... are indelibly burned into its circuits. The best we can hope to do is to regulate their expression. And the way we do this is by getting the cortex to control the amygdala." Psychiatrist Redford Williams has done extensive research on the anger aspects of Type-A behavior and the harm it does to our bodies, particularly our cardiovascular systems. In his book, Anger Kills, he points out that you can choose "to recognize when you first become angry and then early on to cut off experience of this anger." He even points out strategies for disengaging from one's anger rather than letting the anger take over or suppressing it. This is what "being at cause" is all about: choosing to have the cortex rather than the amygdala or any other module of our brain dominate our lives. A personal example: After I accidentally spilled something in the kitchen this morning, I instantly got an angry message from my amygdala: "You clumsy oaf, why..." At this stage I chose to stop the angry reaction in mid-stream by having my cortex (Adult) take charge and say "I'm not going to play the Kick-Myself game; I will reward myself for recognizing and stopping this negative game." Then I calmly proceeded to clean up the mess and was left with a warm, positive feeling about the incident. Taking responsibility for controlling the amygdala plays a crucial role in sustaining a sense of well-being and happiness. Here is how medical writer Rita Carter explains it in her book, Mapping the Mind under a sidebar titled "Anatomy of Joy:" "Happiness in not a single, or a simple state of mind. Its main components are: physical pleasure, absence of negative emotion, [and having a sense of] meaning. Pleasure is the result of a rush of dopamine in the reward system. It can be brought on by a simple sensory or sexual thrill, or by a more complex route-the sight of someone you love, perhaps. It lasts, however, only as long as the neurotransmitters continue to flow. "Absence of negative emotion is essential for happiness because as soon as strong fear, anger or sadness enters, pleasure is reduced. The amygdala is responsible for generating negative emotions, so to prevent them flooding the brain this part of the limbic system must be quiet. Working hard on non-emotional mental tasks inhibits the amygdala, which is why keeping busy is often said to be the source of happiness. Absence of sorrow and pleasure are still insufficient to create an all-pervading sense of well-being. For this, activity is required in the ventromedial area of the prefrontal cortex-one of the areas that is deadened in depression. The ventromedial cortex creates a feeling of cohesiveness-without it the world seems pointless and fragmentary." |