When the solution to the problem... is the problem

It started simply enough.

'GO!' I cry.

Impatient at his hesitation.

He indulges his hesitation another moment before he dashes out in front of a car.

I grip the side of my seat, he grips the steering wheel as we both fear the point of no return.

Roundabouts.

Since my son started to learn to drive, they have been our nemesis.

Yesterday we named it.

Ah!

The relief!

'I panic,' he shared.

To be fair, at this stage, he's not the only one.

Let's look at this through an optimal therapy lens, shall we?

The affirming, attachment-focused way of approaching a roundabout with your learner son would be:

'I believe in you. I see you're nervous, but you have done this before. You are brave and courageous at trying this new thing, and we all have to step out of our comfort zone when we learn new things. Don't worry about that looooonnnnng queue behind you in rush hour traffic as you stall again. Breathe. Breeeeaaatthe. Make sure your exhale is longer than your inhale to engage your parasympathetic system. This will be optimal for learning and driving. You've got this. It's ok that you stalled again. You've got this. No, it's absolutely fine to wait until AALLLLLLL those cars have gone by before you pull out. You've got this. Did I mention: I believe in you?'

Alternatively, the real-life therapist (me) goes:

'Go! Go GO GOOOOO!! Why are you hesitating? No. NOOO don't go now!!'

To coin a phrase, it's a journey… 🙄

In the end I even asked him to get out of the driving seat so I could show him how to handle a roundabout like a pro, with a collection of 30 years' worth of bad habits to boot.

Lucky fella.

Photo by Elena Kuchko on Unsplash

As we looped around and around the roundabouts of Dorking, I tucked this experience into my back pocket and thought, 'Hmm, this will be a handy little episode to write about later...'

So here we are.

The gap between knowing and doing is where most of us live. We know what we should do, but we are often too exhausted, time-poor, afraid. So instead, we do our best through controlling and rescuing.

From the outside, my behaviour looks ultra-controlling… because it WAS.

It was trying to take control of a situation to bring a sense of stability and safety to it. That's what controlling behaviour is trying to achieve.

When we are in fear, our focus is on protection, not connection.

We will willingly forgo the soothing aspects of co-regulation in order to PUT OUT THE FIRE that we have become aware of.

Such behaviour is perfectly natural. Of course we are going to protect in a moment of threat. When we become stuck in our fear, however, our protection becomes too much. Everything feels like a fire - your work presentation, the to-do list, the way in which someone is stacking the dishwasher,..

When we are talking about trauma, this is what we are really talking about; the way our nervous system is perceiving threat regardless of whether there is actual threat in the here and now.

Over-protection becomes our default defence, and the quality of our relationships suffer the fallout.

Control is a rescuing behaviour. We want the pain of uncertainty, unpredictability, and lack of safety to go away, so we implement a quick fix to make this happen.

These behaviours start off innocuously enough - a simple 'Go!' at a roundabout - but before we know it, we're trying to drive someone else's car because we know best.

But here's the nub of the issue, sooner or later, our rescuing backfires.

After one roundabout and before we pulled over for me to get in the driving seat, we hit another roundabout (not literally you will be pleased to know).

This time, I decided to keep quiet and nonchalantly look out the window whilst I waited for my son to pull out.

And waited and waited.

Until eventually he took it upon himself to manoeuvre his way around the roundabout. As we exited, I asked him, 'What went on there then?' referring to the rather sizeable pause in action.

'I was waiting for you to say 'GO!''

Ah, busted!

Rescuing backfires because it eventually disempowers the very person we wish would DO THE THING.

Sure, some of this rescuing behaviour may make sense in a life-threatening situation, but we are creatures of habit and we soon find ourselves rescuing in many non-life-threatening situations.

We have to find ways of letting go.

Rather than rescuing, we need to find ways to coach. But coaching requires us to step back from our own anxiety and ask ourselves some crucial questions: