Taking Charge When You're Not in Control

by Patricia Wiklund

Overview

Control is a myth. Sooner or later, all of us run into people and situations we have absolutely no control over. That's precisely when we need to step in and take charge. As nationally renowned psychotherapist and author Patricia Wiklund, Ph.D., shows in this persuasive new book, taking charge means valuing yourself for who you are and using your strengths to achieve what's important. Warm, practical, and appealing down-to-earth, Taking Charge When You're Not in Control offers real solutions to difficult everyday issues.

Dr. Wiklund argues that being a victim is fundamentally a state of mind. Once we clarify how we feel about what life has dealt us, we gain the power to emerge from the victim mentality and embrace our best options truthfully and capably. Even if we can't change outside events, we can change the way we react. That's charge now, we become freer, stronger, and more fully ourselves. This complete program of self-understanding includes how to

• Confront—and defuse—the "out of control" people in our lives
• Stop the labeling, blaming, shaming, and feeling guilty game
• Achieve real change without relying on conventional self-help programs
• Release yourself from the victim mentality once and for all
• Let go, forgive, and feel your absolute strongest emotionally
• Free yourself of anxiety, self-doubt, anger, and frustration
And much more

Taking Charge When You're Not in Control is not a recovery book but rather a book about being—and feeling—recovered. Here you'll find exercises, anecdotes, and great advice to help you start taking charge—right now. You can live a rewarding,successful, deeply satisfying life. Let this uplifting book be your guide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345443304
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/02/2000
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	521 KB

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION
 
 
 
How often our lives change with one phone call.
 
I had given myself a long overdue sabbatical. A few months off from the bustle of writing a book, national television and radio appearances, all-day seminars, and coaching business clients. I carefully planned my time, my money, and my itinerary. I borrowed my sister’s motor home and started the adventure of a lifetime: living by myself on the road.
 
By the end of the fourth month, I’d traveled from northern Virginia, up through New England, and then to Florida to spend the Thanksgiving holidays with friends.
 
It was all working out so gloriously. I was outlining this new book, taking time to think, research, visit new parts of the country and old friends I hadn’t seen for a long time. Waiting for me in Florida were holiday packages from friends and family, including a small tree, so I could have a very merry Christmas on the road.
 
Then, with a Thanksgiving day call from my sister, all my plans, indeed my life, changed.
 
At eighty-four, my father was being operated on for gangrene in his foot. There was no one else to take care of him. Come home to California. Daddy needed me.
 
For six days, I drove, ate, and slept. I arrived in Sacramento the morning he was ready to be released from the hospital.
 
It seemed some cosmic joke. Here I was, writing a book about how to take charge when you aren’t in control, and I got a chance to practice all those lessons again.
 
There was no question what was in control. I wasn’t, nor was my father. His physical condition was controlling both of us.
 
As I planned a course of action with my brother and sisters, it seemed clear this would be a time-limited project. He was so frail we were all sure it wouldn’t be more than a few weeks. But as one sister suggested, with consistent care, good food, and someone to nudge him to eat and take care of himself, he could have a flight into health. He did. We had over a year of ups and downs before he peacefully slipped away one night.
 
That year was the best gift my father ever gave me.
 
He gave me one more chance to deal with what I have come to call Imposed Change: life-changing events we can’t predict, didn’t cause, don’t want, and can’t avoid. These are the life changes that get visited upon us: events, people, situations we can’t control, but that dramatically impact our lives, maybe even bring pain and/or disgrace.
 
Everyone gets Imposed Change. You do and so do I. We can’t control it. We can’t make it what we want it to be, instead of what it is. If we aren’t careful, fussing and fuming, worrying and struggling with our Imposed Change can take over our lives. We can spend all of our energy, time, and money and still not make it different, make it go away, or convince ourselves it doesn’t exist. No matter what we do, the situation, or person, doesn’t change.
 
Your situation may be different from mine. You might see mine as silly, trivial, or easy to resolve. I might see yours the same way. However, our own control issues with Imposed Changes are significant and vitally important to us. We believe that if we just work harder, longer, differently, or more diligently, we can make things change. We can be in control. No matter what anyone says.
 
We have bought into the myth that it’s possible to control anyone or anything in our lives.
 
It isn’t possible. Control is a myth.
 
You can’t change other people, and there are lots of situations, events, and experiences you can’t control, either. Whether they are mildly inconvenient or make your life a living hell, you can’t control Imposed Changes.
 
Not that most of us don’t try. Then we get into convoluted, compromised, uncomfortable positions that are successful only in producing the predictable consequences of frustration, anger, and despair. We work so hard and end up feeling like failures.
 
So what can you do?
 
Take charge when you’re not in control.
 
Taking charge means doing what you can do rather than waiting for the situation to change, the other person to act, or a white knight to come and rescue you. Doing what you can do means finding the options that are available and then making choices about those options.
 
I’m willing to bet the very first thought you had when you read those words was, “This woman doesn’t know what I’m up against. It’s easy for her to say. She may have had options, but I don’t.”
 
Every situation has options. The Austrian psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, was imprisoned in a concentration camp during the Second World War. He said after his release that while his guards had more liberty than he—they could go home to their families every evening—he had more freedom. The Nazis could imprison his body, but they couldn’t control his spirit. Even in this horrific situation Frankl found a way to exercise choice. He lived his options, instead of letting them control him.
 
Every situation presents options, although not all options will be pleasant, easy, or without price. But every situation has options. Even paying taxes. In my seminars we often talk about choices and the price of choice. Paying taxes is always high on the list of things we can’t control. However, the participants soon realize they don’t have to pay their taxes. There is an alternative—one that usually provides them with three square meals a day and a cot to sleep on. So most of them choose to pay. Going to jail isn’t worth the option of not paying taxes. The price of the option is too high.
 
Our options involve one of two choices. Like Frankl, we can change how we think and feel about a situation. We can change our minds. Or like my students who paid their taxes, we can change our behavior.
 
We change our minds when we break out of the victim mentality and make choices about and changes in our lives.
 
When we define ourselves as victims, we stay stuck in the morass of what happened to us, what other people did to us, and how awful it all was. When we define ourselves as victims, we put ourselves at the mercy of other people, situations, and especially our own pasts. And then, as we keep reliving the event, we keep the hurt alive, preferring to pick off the scab rather than allow the healing to take place. When we make our sense of self-worth dependent on someone else changing, apologizing, or even acknowledging their part in our hurt, we allow them to continue to control our lives. Asking for their permission to change, or waiting until they’re also ready to heal, just keeps us stuck in recovery.
 
We change our minds when we start seeing ourselves as entitled to living full and satisfying lives; as capable and competent enough to be in charge of our lives; as smart enough to understand what has happened, what choices and options we have; and as able to make good decisions about what we should and could do.
 
We change our minds as we embrace our lives as they now are, rather than what they were, could be, or should have been. We look clearly and honestly at what is and make the best of what it can be.
 
However, changing our minds isn’t enough. To take charge, you have to take action. When we are in challenging circumstances, we are called upon to take action we didn’t know we could take. We need to learn new information, new skills, and new habits. Then we have to do what needs to be done, even when we don’t want to, don’t feel like it, or even don’t think we can.
 
Almost six weeks after my father died, I woke with a start one morning. I knew something was different, but wasn’t sure what it was. Then I realized it was the first time I had slept through the night in over six months.
 
If someone had told me up front I would nurse my father for over a year, not sleep through the night for six months, stop my business, and totally devote my life to his care, I would have told them I couldn’t do it. I was too old, too unskilled. I couldn’t take more time away from work. I didn’t have the money. I didn’t think I could do it.
 
I could do it. I did do it. There was more of me than I knew.
 
That is the gift of Imposed Change. As we successfully pass through the despair and grief, the anger and shock to rebuild our lives, we become more of who we are. We grow and become stronger with the challenges we face. We learn more about ourselves, our lives, our relationships, and our potentialities. Our lives may never be the same, but they don’t have to be ruined. It is up to us.