Mind Control
This month, my co-parent owed me $800. According to our court order, we are to reimburse each other for agreed-upon shared expenses, like health care and activities, at the end of each month. Usually by the 5th or 6th of the following month we remember to pay each other, which is usually fine because I have a little grace around time in my life these days. But this time for some reason I had tightened around that $800 and was worried I wasn’t going to get it. By the 15th of the month he still hadn’t paid. And, I say “for some reason” but really, I had a couple reasons why I was tightening. True to form, when a high-conflict co-parent owes you money they decide it’s time to maybe change the rules. Let’s wait till all the other expenses associated with this cost come in, he says, and then we’ll split it. Hmph. This comes only after I’d already paid a hunk of cash towards this even bigger expense we were, yes, about to share. Also true to form, when I responded with a couple “Let’s stick to the agreement” emails, I heard crickets. Between those two things my mind had plenty to work with. I was heading into a tailspin of what I like to call “Trying to Control my Co-Parent with my Mind.”
In meditation practice, we learn to recognize when we’re thinking instead of meditating, then bring ourselves back to the present moment and to whatever “anchor” we’ve chosen to use as our object of focus, such as our breathing. Suffice it to say, the longer we sit—both in years and in minutes each time—the more readily we begin to recognize the unruliness of our thoughts. Often, it doesn’t take long before our mind is off to the races, thinking about the days ahead (or the days before) and we have to corral it back to now, to our bodies, to this one breath. If you’ve heard me talk about my own 25 years of meditation practice, you know I have a what I once heard Pema Chodron call her own “completely unworkable mind.” I meditate every day in order to find some modicum of peace, but oftentimes it is a 20-minute version of the “Toby Show.” I’m looking ahead or looking back and thinking and thinking and thinking about myself. I know a lot of meditation can be like that—we’re “Selfing;” identifying with whatever situation is top of mind. But that is also the practice—to wake up to the moment when we’ve left the present and to come back to it in all its openness and possibility. To be fair, there are periods of time that are indeed quiet, with spaces of deep concentration. But I must stay diligent. Otherwise, the thoughts will take the wheel and carry me into the abyss.
When it comes to our high-conflict co-parents, we have to be especially on top of the thoughts we think. The word in Pali is “Papancha” which is translated as “Proliferation,” and it refers to the ways our minds will go on and on about something until it has turned nothing into something. In high-conflict divorce, we’ve often developed a pretty strong habit of over-thinking because so much of it feels so out of control, especially when there’s a lot of disagreement or abuse. We spend vast amounts of time planning, strategizing, and arguing in our heads, trying to control a situation and a person on the other side of that situation who has zero interest in harmony, let alone gives a shit about the collective well-being. So, in our powerlessness we use our thoughts, as if they have any power at all, to gain some sort of control over the situation. This becomes habit, deeply ingrained in our psyches, to help us feel safe in a situation that unfortunately feels unsafe on an ongoing basis.
Lest you think that Buddhists are all a bunch of peaceful yogis who have transcended the trappings of society’s toxic ills, we have teachers who offer great wisdom when it comes to our very real, modern problems. The Buddha himself gave specific teachings, steps really, on how to work with the mind when it is particularly thinky. I lay out those steps here if you want to practice with them. And while 4 of those steps are pretty gentle, the 5th is my fave, my tried and true. It’s pure, unadulterated restraint, and I’ve had to employ it many more times than I’d ever like to admit in order to stop the trainwreck of thoughts I have about my co-parent.
The great teacher Joseph Goldstein lovingly calls this step “Cowboy Dharma,” which is not only apropos but totally useful. Sometimes, the only way to get ourselves out of free-range proliferative thought is to spin the lasso and rope ourselves back to the present—a moment where, if we look around, is actually safe, where no real “thing” is happening. My coparent somewhere else, the problem not actually having happened yet, I can relax my thoughts around the tragedy I imagine is about to come because I don’t really know that it will. In the case of my $800, I can craft a hundred emails about it in my mind before my Venmo account simply registers I’ve been paid, albeit late, but paid, nonetheless. And, if I’m not going to get paid there are strategies I can employ, but only once I get to that point and not before. The effort then becomes about me not letting my thoughts get the best of me—wasting my precious energy and stealing my precious peace—rather than trying to get him to pay simply by imagining how I will do that. I have to stop myself every time. So, I imagine myself atop my trusty steed, rushing ahead with my arm outstretched, catching my mind as it barrels toward the edge of the cliff, and rustling it to the ground.
When you’re in a bind with your co-parent, when their narcissistic patterns of behavior have got you in a real twist, remember that you are first responsible for yourself and the thoughts you think. Of course we want to try to control; it comes out of a longing for things to be good, for this other person to see that the easiest way to feel better is to lean in towards peace and not enmity. But your coparent will do whatever they want whether you do anything about it or not—they always have, and they will continue to do so with no help from you. So, stop. Stop yourself from thinking about how you will control the mind of this other person. Use whatever imagery you want—your Cowboy Dharma can be Puppy Trainer Dharma (“Drop it!”) or Second Grade School Librarian Dharma (“Ssshhh!”). It is the nature of the mind to think, to solve every problem whether past or future by reflecting on it. But you’ll find that there is no end. The thoughts are just ruminations and rarely, if ever, do they yield a result that makes us feel better. Plus, the choreography of The Universe is much richer and has more meaning than any of our machinations could ever create. Sometimes, the best way to solve our problems with our co-parent is to put the thoughts down and live just as we are, seeing that life generally has a way of working out. Not always in the way we think is best, and not always on our timeline, but some kind of resolution will always find its way to us. Rather than attempting to control the uncontrollable—the situation or the other person—it is far more meaningful to control ourselves and those habitual thoughts, and to let go wherever we can of the need for people to be different than they are.
