The Chess Metaphor 

In healthy relationships there are no elements of either winning or losing. Relationships are not a game and are free of tactics and agenda.

They are open and transparent.

Healthy relationships enjoy respect, mutuality, and equality at every level. 

Unfortunately not all relationships are healthy. 

Do your closest relationships have you feeling as if you are a player in a game of chess with humans?

This metaphor may be helpful when considering the three “cancers” or toxic conditions of relationships: 

MANIPULATION 

This is playing chess with another person or with people. It’s maneuvering as if life were an attempt to checkmate others into loving us or into doing what we want the way we want it done. It can be very subtle and it can be very obvious. Hidden agendas abound. 

DOMINATION 

This is playing chess with another person or with people as in manipulation with an added twist. The difference is the one who seeks to dominate has removed the opponent’s pieces without declaring so and therefore seems always to have the upper hand or the advantage. 

INTIMIDATION

This is playing chess with another person or with people where winning and losing comes with the threat of punishment or actual punishment. The punishment may include the silence game, withholding affection or money, or “forgetting” something the victim holds dear. 

You’ve got the love families……

Some select a victim, a scapegoat, to shoulder all the woes that have little or nothing to do with the chosen one. Some families choose a hero to make themselves feel better, recognized, even famous. 

Some families walk in lockstep without questioning direction or pace or destination.  In some families people run in so many directions it’s hard to identify who may or may not belong. 

Some parents have a plan for just about everything. They regard childhood as a walk through stages of training and preparation for adulthood. Some children just get older.

Some families have fun and enjoy laughter and honor each other’s humor. They listen to each other’s jokes and stories be they often repeated. Some families settle for scoffing and sarcasm as if putting each other down is the only expression of “humor” they know.

Some families talk about everything where no topic is taboo and there are usually willing listeners.  Some families have long understood and avoided the landmine material beneath the surface and know how to always avoid it.

Some families (unknowingly) appoint a spokesperson to manage the family story. Some decide no one will ever hear it — not even those in the family.

I challenge my adult clients to focus only on their own behavior and their own thinking. 

Many conversations reveal people to be experts in what their significant others will, won’t do, or will or won’t say under a myriad of circumstances then offer a blank stare when asked about their own behaviors. This unhealthy focus on others leads to thinking for others, too. 

And, it can all look and sound so loving.

I encourage a shift in discipline – to become an expert in one’s own behavior and to think for oneself or to get out of other people’s heads. 

This is not selfish. 

Consider how selfish it really is to focus on the behavior of others and to think it is necessary to think for others. Consider how self-aware and considerate it is to monitor our own behavior and to trust others to be capable of thinking for themselves.

Being an expert in another can be annoying. 

Thinking for another can be quite amusing.

“You are hungry. You need the loo. You are always so difficult. You must be cold, wear this,” I heard one spouse say to another. 

Then she’ll complain he has no life in him.

Involuntary emotional primal reactions for self protection of fight, flight, freeze, fawn serve people well under limited circumstances like wars or violence or physical invasions. These reactions, designed to self-protect, are usually unhelpful if they leak into or invade our day-to-day relationships. 

When faced with an enemy, a threat, a danger (real or perceived) humans will react to protect. The reaction evoked will require no thinking, it will be immediate and one of or a combination of:

Fight – eliminate the threat. 

Flight – flee the threat, get away. 

Freeze – be immobilized by the threat. 

Fawn – give excessive attention to the threat to seek approval, therefore escape.

Humans are somewhat complicated and what was intended for survival can get in the way of “thrival” (to thrive – this is my word, I just made it up) if “on the inside” we are fighting, fleeing, freezing, fawning, when there is no threat and self-protection is is unnecessary. The child whose environment demands all four to survive – they usually and necessarily travel in packs – may have a tough time escaping these primal reactions when they are no longer necessary. When involuntary emotional reactions are “habitual” or the default for children, it’s easy to see how it is that the adults who emerge may be difficult to reach and to know.   

Adam, Bob, and Charlie are friends who work together. 

When Adam gets anxious, he focuses on colleague Bob, who according to Adam, is hard to work with. 

Adam asks Charlie for a private conversation. This gives Charlie a good feeling. He feels important, included. He really is one of the guys! 

When they meet Adam commiserates, even seeks prayer for what to do about Bob. Charlie feels helpful because he gives Adam the chance to get things off his chest – and we all need that. 

Adam feels very good about it too. He  says “God sent you, Charlie” and Charlie feels pleased that God is finally “using him.” 

One problem (of several) is Adam wants Charlie on Adam’s side. If Charlie plays along and allows Adam to use him to avoid talking to Bob, Charlie will see that Adam has shown little or no respect to his colleagues.    

It may take a while for Adam and Charlie to learn that nothing will change between Adam and Bob until Adam and Bob talk to each other about each other. Charlie, in the meantime may start noticing just how difficult Bob really is, even though it had not crossed his mind before. While he may have not had quite the welcome from Adam, Adam, Bob, and Charlie would have been a tad better off had Charlie suggested Adam talk to Bob rather than talk about him.

Mental and emotional health is seldom all or nothing. 

Functioning can be high or low and many places in between. Like physical health, it can vary, even day-to-day. Few people are on top of their game every day, month in and month out. 

There is a rhythm to fitness, mental and physical. 

There are days I feel up and days I feel down.

This does not make me unstable. 

It makes me human. 

But, if, when I am up and my ups are disturbing to others and costly to myself and my family, even dangerous, then my ups may indeed indicate something deeper and I am probably in need of professional help. 

When I am down it may be time to rest or time for a change of diet or change of pace. 

The fix may be known and easy.

But, if I am so down that I cannot get myself out of bed and get myself to work for days or even weeks at a time and my employment is threatened, it certainly suggests it is time for me to seek help.

It’s all about levels of functioning. Mental health issues are only an issue when they disturb functioning, cost us our relationships, or lead to destructive behaviors.

Welcome to the continuum.

Every interpersonal overreaction, poor attitude, expression of anger will have an equal and opposite reaction. This will be most intensely known with people closest to you. If you have a desire to control, manipulate, or maneuver another person, no matter how much love there is purported to be, people will fight back. People are designed for freedom and attempts to restrict it will ultimately stir rebellion (it may take years) within the victim.

The person who most wants whatever from another person (insert a desire: time, extended conversations, sex, a beach walk, loan, a long chat over coffee) places the potential giver in a position of power. This is part of the reason pleading and begging is so unattractive.

The stronger, more mature person of any relationship will be the one who seeks forgiveness and reconciliation when a relationship is derailed. While the focus is who is right or wrong and who needs to apologize first and who started whatever, the people are not ready for reconciliation.

Mutual attraction is about matched levels of maturity and immaturity. People of dissimilar levels of maturity will hardly notice each other. Equally needy people will attract each other like powerful magnets and the attraction will feel like a match made in heaven – at least at first.  

Some forms of anxiety are helpful and life-saving. 

It’s why we use seatbelts, stop at redlights, read warning labels on medicines and avoid poisons. It is why we obey signs that say “Don’t Feed The Monkeys” and “Watch Out For Snakes.” “Soft” anxiety can be the emotional glue that keeps things going if we are aware of it or not. 

It keeps you and me safe and aware and alive. 

Anxiety can be acute or situational or “time-limited.” 

This is when we deal with the threat – real or perceived – and our anxiety is immediately reduced. 

If a truck is speeding toward you or me, anxiety will spike and we jump out of the way (we have an involuntary reaction). The truck misses us and our levels of anxiety return to “normal” and we go on our way. 

Acute anxiety keeps us safe and aware and alive. 

Anxiety can also be chronic. 

This is when we worry about having nothing to worry about. It’s the slow-cooking back-drop of worry about finance or health or the future. It is when we worry about our adult or young children or about another World War. 

It’s chronic anxiety that can give rise to symptomatic behavior and lead to physical ill health. Chronic anxiety drowns thinking, distorts perception, messes with our hearing and can be completely debilitating.

People with chronic anxiety would do well to seek professional help.