I am pretty sure I am not alone in this feeling, but I hate driving in congested traffic. I dislike this experience so much that I have even moved to another neighborhood to avoid it. I cannot think of anyone I know who enjoys being stuck in traffic. I am positive if I did find someone who enjoyed it, I would have him committed. So, if you enjoy being stuck in traffic jams, better not tell me because as a clinical social worker, I have the professional license and ability to have you locked up! Straitjackets anyone? “I love traffic jams and rush hour,” said no one ever!
The only perk of being stuck in traffic, for me, has been observing other people. Many years ago, I had an opportunity to see something unique. I was on a three-lane highway headed home in the evening rush hour. Traffic was crawling along, but we were moving. Ahead of me was a sharp-looking convertible with a driver who was obviously in a hurry. He was jerking in and out of lanes, switching every few minutes. I had chosen to be in the left-hand lane and was slowly crawling forward. He kept switching. The traffic was going so slowly that I could not help but watch him and his reactions. What happened over time on this long commute home surprised me and angered him. The more he switched lanes, the farther back he got. So, I literally caught up and was even with him. Then, as he continued to swerve in and out of lanes, he moved farther back. Soon, he was no longer beside me, but farther behind me
Now I was spying on his antics in my rear-view mirror. He continued to move back and forth, in and out, slowly getting so far behind me that I could no longer watch him. Eventually, I moved forward and never saw him again. The experience, however, left a mark on me and helped me to learn an important lesson about life. Often in life, we confuse movement with progress. Like this anxious driver, we are moving, but we are really going nowhere fast. We don’t always recognize this phenomenon when it is happening because we are stuck on the fact that we are moving. I don’t know, but it seemed this man was completely unaware of his lack of progress. It was obvious to me. Yet perhaps he noticed and thought if he continued his effort, it would eventually help him. Maybe he was chasing his losses and thinking, “This time I will break free and really move forward.” I can only imagine his thinking and feeling. Nevertheless, he was not moving forward despite his frantic efforts to do so.
How often do we find ourselves approaching life in the same way this driver approached the evening rush hour?
We get to moving in a certain direction. Yet, we are not realizing the objectives we had intended with that movement. I have seen many people desperately trying to change their own behaviors or the behavior of a family member, and the actions they are taking are not moving them forward.
The best example I can think of was one time when I was talking to a mother frustrated with her daughter. She lamented having her daughter not respond to her efforts to correct her behavior. She described all kinds of movements. She said she had tried rewards, incentives, bribes, taking away privileges, lectures, and more recently, she had resorted to yelling and threats.
She agonized over the lack of progress and noted feelings of being completely out of control because of her frustration. She disclosed being afraid she might even do something she would regret. She told me it had not always been this way, and she was frantic to discover how to get things back on track. This fear is what prompted her to seek assistance from me. She was at her wit’s end. After spending enough time with her to assess what was going on and validate her emotions and level of distress, I began to inquire more about what was happening. I was looking for some examples of the supposedly intractable problem.
The central issue she wanted to discuss was getting her daughter to clean her room. She told me she used to be able just to ask and her daughter would respond. She was even cheerful. Then, as the daughter got older, asking did not seem to work anymore. So, Mom “turned up the volume.” When her daughter did not respond right away, Mom said she started getting busy with all these approaches to help her daughter get her room clean. Now she felt she had exhausted all her options. No amount of effort could produce the desired result. All this movement was not moving her and her daughter’s relationship forward. Or so she thought. I then asked her the key question, “When does your daughter clean her room?
She surprised me with her reply, “Oh, she always cleans her room for me.” I queried “I don’t understand.” She said, “She will clean it for me if I ask her, but I don’t want to have to ask her!” Then she added that she wanted her daughter not only to clean her room without being asked, but “to be happy about it.” Again, in frustration, she whined, “I just don’t know what to do!”
“So, are you telling me your daughter will clean her room 100 percent of the time if you just ask her?”
“Yes! Every time! It is terrible! I want her to do it on her own and not complain about it!”
I prodded a little now. I asked her whether she would be willing to look at this a little bit differently and consider changing her present course of action. I told her I believed her actions were getting her nowhere fast. She was upset and her daughter was upset. Neither liked the result. We agreed one of the primary objectives was to get the room clean and have her daughter be responsible. She also admitted that her daughter might never become cheerful about this chore.
The next thing I said to her surprised her so much that I almost chuckled at her reaction. “So if your daughter will clean her room every time you ask her, would you be willing to consider this a great success and just learn to be okay with asking?”
I reminded her of how high a success rate every time was and praised her obvious good parenting. I talked to her about how nice it would be if children did things because they liked to and wanted to do them, but perhaps that goal was not realistic for a teenager. She was astounded.
“I never thought of it that way! I guess I have not really been getting anywhere with the other approach.”
She left the appointment boosted in mood and did not come back. This session was one of the few times when I have only had to meet with someone one time. Once she realized her approach was getting her nowhere fast, she quickly changed and moved forward.
So if you find yourself not making progress, the answer may not be to add more movement. Slow down or even stop. Look around and determine where you really want to go and how you are going about getting there. Evaluate your movements, and if they are not producing positive change or growth, try something else. If you are seemingly going nowhere fast, stop moving until you are sure the movement is causing you to go forward.
