Can compulsive behavior be stopped with words?

-- By BriannaCummings - 13 Mar 2015

Lawyering

As future lawyers we are supposed to be learning how to make things happen in society using words. If successful we will be able to affect change and ensure outcomes, for our clients and ourselves, using our words. I do not doubt this things are true but I question their practical application to one’s self. I believe this ties into our discussions about social psychology, personality states and consciousness, or lack thereof.

Predictability/External Observation

Over time it becomes relatively easy to predicts someone behavior and how they will respond in a number of circumstances. People are predictable because we are creatures of habit; some more than others but we all have our tendencies. When observing someone else we pick up on these tendencies fairly quickly and we learn the compulsive behaviors of that person almost as quickly. We all know the person that will wait until the 11th hour to do an assignment no matter how far in advance it was given to them. And we all have the friend who is horrible at choosing a partner and dates the same person [with a different face] over and over again. We can see this because we are observing something external. With friends and family this is especially true, you know almost exactly what they’re going to do before they do it and you can see the change in their state from a mile away. However, most of us are unable to see this change in ourselves.

All of us are supposed to be. Working to overcome the mental processes that dissociate states means undoing very important creative and defensive mental activity.which has created safety from trauma. We actively resist.

Looking at Ourselves

It is easy to give someone else advice and point out that they are behaving compulsively, but it is very difficult to realize when we are doing the same thing. Further, when we do realize we have compulsive behavior it is near impossible to stop ourselves. Maybe this is because so much of our activity is unconscious but it does not explain why we are unable to change once we are consciously aware that we are doing this. Which leads me to believe that consciousness is not necessarily the problem here. The more likely culprits are our numerous personality states that are constantly kept at arm’s length from one another. One personality state is continuously doing things that another does not approve of. I believe while in one state you act and when the states change again you are now questioning what the other state did. This continues to happen throughout our lives and we are unable to stop it, no matter how many times it happens. There are a number of explanations for the ‘phenomenon’. First, to even begin to change we would have to accept that we are not a singular mental person which the overwhelming majority of us are unwilling to do. We have been socially trained to believe that we are one person with one personality and to have more than one personality is to suffer from mental illness; multiple personality disorder. Second, if we were to accept that we have multiple personalities we would have to have a conversation with them to change them. This would mean having a conversation with ‘ourselves’ which would again bring us into a state of mental illness; schizophrenia. Lastly, even if we could get past the first two hurdles we are left with the daunting task of figuring out what to say during this internal dialogue.

The questions that piled up here were for thinking about, and treating with the same precision you've used so far. Instead, it was almost as though they were obstacles thrown in the way, just thrown into the road to make progress difficult. Both the editor and the therapist in you should be activated by that.

What now?/What becomes of us?

Manipulating someone else into the personality state most favorable to you using words is easy, we do it every day with our family and friends.

I'd want to think a little more about the process of living together, which is more complex and multilateral than this quick statement allows for.

But how are to manipulate ourselves using words? Can lawyering save us from ourselves?

Maybe we should ask here a little about what "therapy" actually is. Lawyering isn't the only form of making things happen in society using words.

I’m not sold but maybe that’s just because I haven’t practiced enough. I would like to be able to think it can. I find myself sympathizing with the Carl Wileys of the world; whom we are often encouraged to aspire to be like. We’re supposed to wrangle details, manipulate chaos and make ridiculous amounts of money doing so. But in the midst of all this money and power are millions of people being trampled over that no one talks about, because you would have to think about it to talk about it and nobody wants to do that, or so we claim. Alternatively, it could be that some part of us actually doesn’t care. It’s possible that there’s a personality state that sees millions of oppressed people as a reasonable price to pay for wealth and power because another personality state will try to do the “right” thing and it’ll all balance out. We can justify screwing people over day in and day out if we take a few Pro Bono cases and donate a few thousand dollars to a couple of charitable organizations. Even then, if we really thought about what we were doing, as Wylie has, we’d be pretty disgusted with ourselves. We wouldn’t be proud of our work. It's sadly ironic when you think about it. We're supposed to got out into the world and make tons of money taming other people's chaos when we can't manage our own. So, what are we to do?

I think we should talk about this more than I should write more than I've written already. It's a good start.

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