Hmmm, the least said about that, the better. Anyway, if you’re looking for a Pete-Post, I’ve now melded Website and Blog with the sensational assistance of Leah Maclean. There are some new resources and ecourses. So…

.. you need to check in over at www.greatcircle.com.au – CU there!

Even has a Pinky and the Brain pic – which will keep Mark Spark happy I’m sure!

I want to free what awaits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,

but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back,

the way it is with children.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

I came across that poem in a course on designing better learning environments. It’s not just a piece of sentimentalism. It reminded me to be me - to embrace the way I think and speak and create and dream. It reminded me of that great Olympic runner (celebrated in Chariots of Fire) Eric Liddell saying “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure”. It reminded me that each of us has a distinctive genius that doesn’t always get an “airing”, but which needs focus and release…

Find your Voice.

So dependency theory has underlined some of the ways we become hooked either ON something/someone or BY something/someone. He/she/it has power and control over some portion of our being or resources.

What do you do when you want it to stop?

SOLUTION #1: Cost Reduction

This is where the party on whom the power is being used adjusts to make that use bearable. This is not really a solution at all but it can appear to be for the person being controlled .

Remember Jenny in the post Sources of “Power” to Control Others? One of the ways in which Jenny can escape the conflict she feels is to redefine the situation so that she won’t feel bad. She can change her moral views. She can convince herself that since they will inevitably marry anyway, it’s OK.

In the same post, we met Jeff who has already applied this solution to his own detriment. 

This happens in businesses where the supplier is told “there are other suppliers cheaper than you – if you don’t give us a lower price we’ll walk.” The supplier lowers their price but to maintain their comfort level [that is their profit margin] they literally reduce costs by using inferior parts and making staff work harder for less .

The bottom line is that all of these “solutions” – after a time delay – will cause further harm .

SOLUTION #2: Simplifying life.

I run a 2-hour workshop around this theme. In this context it simply means our Party B (the one being controlled) reduces his/her need for what A provides .  

When the Arab nations put the screws on the West in one oil crisis, the U.S. rationed gasoline and lowered speed limits, reducing the need for oil.

Jenny could lose interest in dating, undertake counseling to lower her anxiety about missing out on the right man, could undertake a yearlong spiritual journey to find peace and purpose before finding a man on a par with her.

Jeff could find a job with the same pay but less responsibility/hours in order to restrategise/revise his career plan. There are plenty of companies that will pay him that lower rate for doing less and this becomes his chance to find a new way to do the work he loves (and get paid what he deserves!) long-term.  Or Jeff could simply accept a longer commute to work in his chosen field  in a company on the other side of town.

Simplify life around your core values and be content with less. The more desperately you need something (and the more you desparately need), the more vulnerable you are to being controlled. Just like a drug high, the more used to a certain lifestyle you get, the more you start doing things just to maintain it.

SOLUTION #3: Find alternative sources for the same “services”.

Jenny joins a tennis club or returns to study where she meets new guys.

Jeff researches a greater spread of opportunities for people with his expertise. Alternatively, since Jeff has been depending on his employer for a certain level of income, he could develop his own skills to increase their need for him.

The supplier we spoke of earlier makes a trip to South Korea to source more clients. 

Where Person A has been the conduit for anything from information and expertise to potential control over Person B’s reputation and even to grace, Person B can begin to find ways to get to the source. For instance, she/he can build relationships directly with the people to whom his/her reputation is important . 

SOLUTION #4: Raising  Person A’s need for what B provides.

This is why unions were so powerful in the 20th Century.

What if Jeff could find a way to solve the problems his company has been repeatedly paying several contractors to solve?

What if the supplier could develop a unique product line not available anywhere else? 

What if the one being gossiped about inserted her/himself into more of the relationships that person A has, thereby reducing Person A’s monopoly on their reputation?

This includes reducing the alternatives that Person A has. Jenny makes friends with the other girls Vince dates. They start refusing to go out with him out of consideration for her.  Jeff takes on another qualification.

WRAP-UP:

Hope there’s been something helpful here. I think this is the basis for a great conversation. I’d love to make this post a hub for questions, ideas and comments …

So from where does Person A gain this power to control and manipulate Person B? Simply from Person B’s dependence on Person A, who might be providing one of the following:

• Physical strength or protection from physical strength (sometimes their own – ie., “be nice to me or I’ll beat you up”)
• Financial resources or a link to them
• Attractiveness
• The ability to touch deep emotions such as religious ecstacy and the feeling of contributing to something greater than themselves
• Central position in a gossip network (exercises potential control over Person B’s reputation)
• The “approval” of “God” or the ability to raise or lower Person B’s feelings of guilt
• Information and expertise

Person A may be a human, a “leadership” team, an organisation or a faceless system. When he/she/it uses any one of these “resources” above to use other humans for personal gain, this is corrupt power, control, manipulation.

As I said in the last post about this, one can have these resources and use them authoritatively without being guilty of corruption. Our legal system needs to exert some control over our populace for the proverbial “greater good” – although this can of course be abused. Mangement should expect staff to live and work to certain standards or face consequences – but again there are limits to this and authority can warped by personal agendas.

Examples of abuse that stems from corrupt power and control:

1. Vince wants Jenny to sleep with him. She wants to save herself for marriage. If she sleeps with him she will feel bad and risk falling pregnant. If she doesn’t, she may end up lonely becuase he threatens to simply go out with someone else. Vince is attractive. He is charismatic. Jenny feels like she’s getting older and time is running out for her to gain the commitment of a man like Vince. No one else seems interested in her, so she begins to wonder “What choice do I really have?”
2. The only company who need Jeff’s specialised training and also exists in the eastern suburbs of Jeff’s city (where he lives) has asked Jeff to take a pay cut while working more hours. He is panicky and angry but he gives in and signs the new agreement. “Where else can I go?”

Let’s go over the concept one last time before I close this post. Person B gives something they don’t want to give to Person A simply because Person A controls a “resource” B needs (or is convinced they need). Therefore A controls B.

B typically experiences cycles of emotions that include: resentment, anxiety, deep sadness or despair, followed by a rewriting of the situation in their own mind (e.g. “Person A’s not so bad; they have actually been good for me” or “My kidnapper is now my hero” or “the rape/abuse was/is my own fault” or even “I only need to see it out for one more year and everything will change”) – and then the cycle continues.

Doesn’t sound like a happy healthy life but it goes on all around us in so many ways so often. We may even be Person B in a situation like this right now and be justifiying it … or worse, a Person A.

If you feel a niggling somewhere in your psyche, take some time to listen to it. The truth is often very uncomfortable to face, painful to embrace but it “will make you free”

Where have you seen these forces at work?

I’ll do one more post on this soonand look at some of the ways to break an abusive or addictive cycle based on Dependency Theory…

“Aren’t authority and power the same thing?”

So glad you asked that question. For our purposes, authority means “A position of leadership that comes from either natural or organisational relationship” (e.g. parent, mentor, manager, Colonel or teacher). “Power” in dependency theory refers to “the ability to make Person B do things they wouldn’t otherwise want to do for the benefit of Person A”.

You can hold authority  without wielding this kind of power, since the demands you make on others may be for their own good, for the good of others or as a part of your own necessary boundary-setting. Unfortunately, many kinds of relationships in our world entail control and manipulation that makes life intensely unhappy or uncomfortable for the Person B’s  on the receiving end. 

I’ll give you some examples of this next time. Right now, too much typing is giving me shoulder cramps! Time to balance my activities and get away from the keyboard.

Ciao!

Fascinating? Mmm. Probably not…

But … I recently read a short precis from a sociology course that applied dependency theory to human relationships – and it’s pushed some buttons for me. It explains some of the dynamics in relationships where Party A has power over Party B … and some ideas about how Party B might escape from this situation of control and disempowerment.

The basic ideas are these (and I’ll blog about them further later):

• Power is the ability to make others do things they wouldn’t otherwise want to do.
• The basis of power is dependency. Person B depends on Person A if B has goals and needs that A can fulfill. Person A  controls Person B’s access to the “commodity” they need, therefore controlling B’s behaviour/resources.
• B’s dependency on A is related to both supply and demand.
• In this case, demand refers to how much B needs what A controls. (This could be validation, oil, affirmation, salary, “love”, a promotion or even a “connection to God!”)
• Supply refers to the availability, quality and cost of alternative means of satisfying those needs that are in demand. In other words, how easy/difficult it is for B to go elsewhere and gain the “commodity” A controls.
• Confused? Read the points again slowly.

I’ll turn these into practical applications soon I promise! (Taking my son to tennis now!)

Enough of reading me raving about it, go watch it and make up your own mind.

And yet this inability to say “NO” or “WAIT” undermines their effectiveness and their health.

For this reason, I am announcing the offer of a special coaching package focussed on setting limits and learning appropriate times and ways to say NO.

The package consists of six 45 minute coaching appointments over two months, via telephone. I offer this service at $360 for the full course.

For a no-obligation chat about how this package might work for you, please phone me on + 61 03 8743 3950 or email me at peter@greatcircle.com.au . This reduced fee service is available to people enquiring before the end of September 2006.