Imagine you are driving on the highway. You wear the seat belt, the seat is snug and the distance to the steering wheel is adequate for maneuvering easily. On the way there is a sign that tells you that a curve will come to the right. Before you get to it you slow it down a bit, you turn the wheel and you keep your foot on the accelerator to keep the speed constant and the course fixed. End the curve and adjust the steering wheel to follow the path to your destination. You decide where, how fast and where you are going. You control what and how.
Now imagine that suddenly, as by magic, you become a passenger. You do not know where you are, everything is dark around you. You do not know who is driving, you just know that you do not feel the wheel in front of you. You know you’re in a car, you feel the speed, but you do not know where you’re headed. You can not control the vehicle, nor its speed, nor its handling, nor the destination to which it is directed. You do not control what or how.
Who or what is it that takes you away (rather, to whom you give) control of the steering wheel?
Michael Blumenstein called him “drivers.” He defined them as the structure learned for survival within each of our families. When we are born, each one of us develops our main driver (some of us may have a mixture of two or three, more would be schizophrenic) as a method of adaptation and survival within our family system.
Therefore, the driver is a kind of autopilot that activates normally, when we enter into helplessness or feel threatened (Look out, this “threat” may not be “real”, as long as we perceive the situation is “real” for us). Its function is to help survival at any cost. For the driver, nothing matter but victory. He steals us the wheel of our actions, decides for us and takes us as passengers. What he does not do is face the consequences of his actions, that is up to us. Once we manage to regain our sufficiency and take control back, we have to deal with whatever our driver has done through us, because usually the rest of the world, can not identify who is driving us, if we are or it is the driver.
Which are the drivers?
The drivers are five. All people have a predominant one. Each develops differently. They are as follows.
Be kind
It is characterized by the intention of keeping the comfort of others above our own. It is feeling responsible for the well-being of others and uncomfortable when fails.
Be strong
It refers to a dissociation of oneself with our feelings. It is not that you are strong, although that is what you try to show, it is a highly dissociated you from your own emotions that you do not allow yourself to feel them. If you felt them, perhaps you would collapse before them because you do not know how to handle them, you do not know to feel.
Hurry up
In this everything happens too slow. People do not move fast enough, things do not happen soon enough. Everything is needed for yesterday and there is always something else to do to feel pressured. You do not enjoy the present, always thinking about the moment that comes after this.
Push yourself
Here we do not enjoy what has already been achieved, because there is always a new peak to conquer. It is not worth it if it was easy to get it and if you could already find a way, you have to complicate the process to keep working. It is to be in the continuous search for the black thread.
Be perfect
If you read the above and you identified with all, maybe it is because this is your driver. Do not end things ever because they are not good enough, have impossible standards (how to have all drivers as principal) and always feel frustrated, because nothing is ever as perfect as it should be.
Within Blumenstein Theory® and its vocabulary, there is no “good” or “bad”, so I do not mean that drivers are “bad”. What I mean is that they are incompatible for a good life. To have a good life, we need to stay within our sufficiency, so we can decide what is “good” for us and what we want and what not. Drivers do not show up as long as we stay within our sufficiency. That is why I say drivers are incompatible with a good life. They do not contribute, they only control. They do not build, they only advance without direction or purpose. Do not co-create, just run. They do not open possibilities, there is only one, them.
How to get out of them?
Going back to our sufficiency. Whatever that means for each of us.
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