B0038M1ADS EBOK (30 page)

In the war zone, it's necessary to be wary and suspicious of everyone. Your
life, and the lives of your team members, depend on remaining constantly
alert to threats, which includes monitoring who's approaching, what they're carrying, whether or not they are authorized to be there, and whether they
can be trusted. Back home, it's obvious why warriors display similar behaviors.

The complete dependence on team members and on the chain of
command is a critical survival skill. If you, or any of your unit members or
superiors, fail to do your assigned jobs, or make a mistake, serious consequences can result. Warriors are trained through their experience to have
a very low tolerance for any mistakes, either their own or anyone else's.

Think about how many of your warrior friends have a difficult time tolerating mistakes, and pay attention to how this causes there to act. Do they
tend to be micromanagers? Do they insist on their way or the highway Do
they fly off the handle if anyone makes even the tiniest mistake? Are they
unable to complete tasks because they're perfectionists? Do they have a
hard time making decisions? Are they highly critical of others? This isn't to
point out flaws in others, but to recognize that these kinds of behaviors are
very common as a result of working in a war-zone environment.

Now rate yourself using the control scale questionnaire on the next page.

If you checked "quite a bit" or "extremely" on some of these questions,
consider whether these tendencies are negatively affecting your life. If the
answer is "yes," then control is an important topic for you. Recognize that
many of the qualities related to control stem directly from skills that are
highly useful and adaptive in combat. Warriors are control freaks, by definition. Their training instills this in them. They will check and recheck to
make sure that their equipment is in the right place and in good working
order. They do this continuously to ensure that they can collectively execute combat tasks without hesitation and without mistakes. Warriors often
have as low a tolerance for their own mistakes as they have toward the
mistakes of others, and can be just as critical of themselves as others. They
depend on everyone in their unit doing their job correctly, and maintain
a high level of distrust of others outside of their unit.

The Nature of Control and Catch-22s

With this in mind, the skill is developing awareness of the way control plays
an important role in your experience as a warrior, and then learning to dial this up or down as needed. First, answer the questions on the control
scale and determine how much control is an issue in your life. If it is an
issue, then being aware of it may be enough to help you. Second, learn
the nature of control by asking yourself several more questions specific to
each situation you find yourself in. Last, consider how many situations you
find yourself in that are double-binds or absurd catch-22s, and find ways
to laugh about them. The best way to illustrate this is through an example.
Hang on-we're in for a ride.

Control Scale:

Check the answer that best fits how you describe yourself:

I'm waiting in line at a grocery store and the person in front is holding
up the line-first, by not having enough money, and then by trying to use a
credit card that isn't getting authorized. The cashier is not making any moves
to resolve the situation. Two men behind me are pushing into me out of their
own frustration to see what's going on. This is a situation that might piss off
some warriors. And of course, I have an important appointment to go to after
picking up the groceries, and any delay will definitely cause problems.

1st Question

So the first question is, "Do I have any control over this situation?" The
answer is, "No, of course not"; however, I do have several options as to how
to respond that could give me a sense of control:

A) Leave my groceries and walk away (the downside being that I've
wasted my time trying to get them and end up with no groceries).

B) Try to move to another line (but there may not be another line
that's moving any faster, and I'll lose my place near the front of this one).

C) Stay where I am but turn around and ask the men behind to stop
pushing against me. (I can do this in a nice or a hostile way, but even doing
this nicely could spark a confrontation.)

D) Stay where I am but yell at the person in front or at the cashier to
hurry it up. (This may feel satisfying at the moment, but probably won't
actually speed anything up, and may make the situation worse.)

E) Pull out my Glock-no, never mind ...

F) Grab an apple, pull out the stem, lob it into customer service, hit
the deck, and yell, "Apple!" In the confusion, move to the front of the line.
(Downside: one less apple.)

G) Pull out my clown pistol, wave it menacingly in the air, and pull the
trigger, popping out the red flag that says BANG! In the confusion, move
to the front of the line. (Downside: armed security guard is color-blind.)

H) Stay where I am, do nothing, and deal with my own frustration. I
could get on my case for choosing this grocery store in the first place-as if
somehow I could have known what would happen; or control my frustration
and let the situation resolve itself, however long this takes, and delaying
me further. This definitely isn't satisfying.

2nd Question

For all these options (and countless others), there's always a downside. So
here's the second question to consider whenever you get into frustrating
life situations where there's more than one option: "Is there any option
that doesn't have a downside?" The answer is generally, "No." Get used to
it. This type of situation is captured with expressions like "a no-win situation," "between a rock and a hard place," "a double-bind," "damned if you
do, damned if you don't," or a "catch-22," where you feel trapped between
two or more options, none of which are really any good.

There are different types of no-win situations. A "catch-22," for example, has more of a feeling of an insane and irreconcilable loop that never
has any benefit to you-only to the authority who created it, whereas
"between a rock and a hard place" and the other expressions reflect being
stuck between two or more options, each of which has a downside, but may
also have some benefit. If it's only one option that has both a downside
and a benefit, then it's a "double-edged sword." For a service member facing multiple deployments, PTSD is a double-edged sword, since reactions
that are beneficial in combat are unpleasant symptoms back home.

To take a brief diversion, Joseph Heller coined the widely used idiomatic
expression "catch-22" in his 1961 novel by the same name. The main character, Captain Yossarian, a B-25 bombardier stationed on an island off the Italian coast near the end of World War II, requests to be grounded on the basis
of insanity, per Army Regulation "Catch-22," in order to avoid flying pointless
and extremely dangerous missions ordered solely for the purpose of making the squadron commander look good to his higher-ups. However, according to this regulation, an officer can only be grounded for being crazy if he
requests to be grounded, which proves that he isn't crazy, since crazy people
would be the only ones willing to keep flying. Yossarian's request is denied.

3rd Question

Now back to the grocery store line and the third question: "How much
does this really matter?" The answer in this case could be, "It matters a
lot," but more likely is, "Not much." Yes, my "choice" matters if I end up
sparking a confrontation with the people behind or in front of me, ending up with a bigger problem. Yes, my "choice" matters if the appointment I'm
late for happens to be to receive my father's dying words, which in this case
might have been, "Why the hell did you stop off at the grocery store after
I called you to come over immediately because I thought I was dying?"
Yes, the "choice" might matter if standing in line is now triggering a fullblown panic attack and breathing from the abdomen isn't working. No,
the "choice" doesn't matter, assuming that being punctual for the appointment isn't that important, and because in the broad scheme of life, does
it really matter if I spend a few extra minutes standing in a grocery store
line? Is the delay at the grocery store because of "stupid stuff" really worth
getting bent out of shape (or having a panic attack) over?

The Illusion of Control and "Choice"

This may be a silly example in some ways (made more so by bringing a
clown pistol and an apple into it), but it highlights the nature of control.
The need to feel in control is both a very real pressing action on our part
to prevent possible bad things from happening, as well as an illusion that
is uniquely human. We maintain the feeling of control by constantly preparing and planning for the future, trying to anticipate what will happen,
worrying about what will happen, checking things, setting goals and expectations (including the expectation of getting through a grocery store in just
a few minutes), and believing there's a right choice for every situation. Our
ability to ward off possible bad outcomes through our own preparation and
vigilance is admirable. The problem is that most of this depends on accurately predicting the future, which is impossible. Many (if not most) things
that happen in life are not under our control. Often, what we do to resolve
situations, which includes pondering various apparent options, gives us the
feeling of control through the illusion of choice, not true control.

The illusion of choice involves imagining other options that would
have turned out better, i.e., the way we planned for them to, wanted them
to, expected them to, or needed them to. "If I had only taken the other
road I wouldn't have gotten stuck in this traffic and wouldn't havebeen late."
The illusion is believing that the other road would have been okay, since we
can imagine this in hindsight.

Another curious thing about the grocery store example is that it illustrates how easy it is for us to get caught up in the whole "control" and
"choice" issue instead of just patiently getting the job done-in this case,
picking up groceries, however long it takes. After all, we need groceries.

One thing that comes up repeatedly for warriors is dealing with situations
where people don't do their job right or don't follow through on what they
said they'd do. Because of how important it is in the combat environment for
everyone on the team to do things exactly as they're supposed to, warriors
can become highly distressed to any situation back home where someone
doesn't do what they're supposed to do. This is a main source of conflict.
Examples include treating the grocery store clerk, bank teller, taxi driver,
waiter, etc. like the enemy; chewing someone out who makes a minor mistake; or getting extremely angry at a loved one who doesn't follow through
on something they said they'd do (or you told them needed to be done).

This is also about control, and is based again on the illusion of choice.
Since we can judge what we should be doing or should have done for ourselves,
there's no reason it seems not to judge what someone else should be doing or
should have done. In reality, we have very little or no control over most situations, particularly how others, including all our loved ones, behave.

Combat is the ultimate example of being in control/out of control.
Every action in combat carries risk, and therefore a downside, particularly
for the warrior on the ground. Everything a warrior does to be in control
(through rigorous training, checking and re-checking equipment, following orders, remaining vigilant to threats, and performing all tasks in proper
sequence) ultimately can break down in a few seconds of pure chaos that
no one saw coming or had any control over. You round up enemy combatants after a pitched firefight, turn them over to the "authorities," and two
weeks later they're out on the streets trying to kill you again, and you're
powerless to change this repetitive cycle because of the rules of engagement imposed by the "authorities." (That's a catch-22.) The ones who lose
aren't usually the senior leaders or politicians who wrote the orders.

Bad things happen, no matter how good a job the warrior does. The
enemy wins some battles, even when it loses the war. Sometimes you lose no
matter what you do. These are situations you have very little control over.

The Avoidance Option

There's another option that a warrior can take in relation to the grocery
store line: Never go grocery shopping because it causes too much aggravation (except maybe in the middle of the night when there aren't any lines).
Avoiding the situation completely also has downsides, like not being able
to go when it's convenient, or upsetting a loved one who doesn't want to
get stuck with all the shopping or doesn't want their warrior trekking off
on a solitary mission late at night. Yet, all too often, the avoidance "choice"
is what the warrior makes. This is a big part of the problem, and leads back
to the first skill of this chapter: learning to "inoculate" yourself against
irritating or anxiety-provoking situations (such as waiting in lines). The
bottom line: Avoidance is a trap. If you want a more "normal" life, you'll
have to find a way to face these situations.