Accept your past and seek help to overcome it

In other words, it's entirely an internal dilemma for a person to work out: Do they actually want to willingly give others control? Or not want to give others control? By offering the puppet metaphor, you internally motivate people to consciously take control of their lives. The instant any of us realizes that we do not want to be other people's puppet is the moment we become more open to learning about the ways in which we can actually cut the strings. Keep Your Power We all have an innate power that drives our lives. Our power source moves us forward in life, allowing us to reach our full potential. Unfortunately, our power is intangible. One of the great injustices of society is that most of us are expected to show up someplace five days a week and perform a task in exchange for money. It sucks, but until we all leave to form a utopian society on Mars, that's the way it's going to be. If you guys are at work, you're supposed to be working. It's important to keep your at-work relationship as professional as possible: Unless you're at lunch or in a group setting, try to limit the non-work-related small talk to after-hours. You're crazy about each other but aren't allowed to openly express it when you're at work together. Clearly, this is a recipe for some insane sexual tension. But communicating via the company email system is dicey, and any email you open on your computer screen can be too easily read by a co-worker. Send each other text messages instead--not too often, but enough to keep things interesting. Ah, lunch! The recess of the adult world. Pain, it seemed, was a kind of opinion the body rendered on what it was experiencing, on its own health. This opinion could be tricked or manipulated, as the mirror experiment had shown.

In further experiments, Ramachandran arranged it so that patients would see a student's arm instead of their own, superimposed over the phantom limb. They would not be aware that this had been done, and when the student moved the arm, they experienced the same relief from paralysis. It was merely the sight of the movement that created the effect. This made the sensation of pain seem increasingly more subjective and subject to alteration. Over the ensuing years, Ramachandran would perfect this creative style of investigation into an art, transforming himself into one of the leading neuroscientists in the world. He developed certain guidelines for his strategy. He would look for any evidence of anomalies in neuroscience or in related fields, ones that brought up questions that had the potential to challenge conventional wisdom. His criteria were that he had to be able to show it was a real phenomenon (something like telepathy would not fall into this category), that it could be explained in terms of current science, and that it had important implications stretching beyond the confines of his own field. I say unfortunately, because I believe if our power was tangible--that is, if we could see it and feel it--then we could better protect it, and we would be significantly less likely to give that power away. In Marvel Comics, the hero Iron Man provides a great visual of this concept. Iron Man wears a suit of armor that's powered by a visible power source on his chest. Just as you would not expect to see this superhero take off his power source and hand it to whomever he's battling, it's equally important for you to hold on to your power in times of conflict. Just as it's a fact that the sun shines during the day, not the night, it's a fact that when you are reactive to others, you are giving them your power. So if someone cuts you off in traffic and you get angry, you have given that person your power. If someone says something and you ruminate on it, allowing him to rent space in your mind and causing yourself angst, you have given that person your power. If a person does something that you didn't want her to do or don't agree with and you allow that person's actions to determine your inner experience of life, you have given that person your power. Try this: Pick up an object near you that you can hold easily in one hand (a water bottle, a phone, a articlemark--anything that's immediately accessible and that you can hold). Now imagine that the object you picked up represents your power source. Though it's tempting to treat every lunch hour like a midday date with the co-worker you're sleeping with, it's a good idea to either set a schedule or limit your lunches together to one day a week. You really don't want to become that couple, to the exclusion of your other co-workers, and you also don't want to spend too much time together (and risk burnout!

Don't date or sleep with your boss or subordinate. It puts both of you in an awkward (and fireable! If you really think this might be the love of your life, consider leaving your job before you start a relationship. If it's just a fling you're after, don't do it. You might think you're keeping your relationship completely secret, but there's no real way to ensure this. Keep this in mind if having an affair in your office is a fireable offense. If you and a co-worker actually start dating and plan on being a couple for a while, stop keeping it a secret. Tell your bosses/HR representatives/whoever needs to know, and assure them that you'll continue to keep your work life as professional as possible. If others were ignoring it because it seemed too weird, so much the better--he would have the research field all to himself. Furthermore, he looked for ideas that he could verify through simple experiments--no heavy or expensive equipment. He had noticed that those who got large grants for their research, which would include all of the technological gadgetry that went with it, would become embroiled in political games in order to justify the money being spent on them. They would rely on technology instead of on their own thinking. And they would become conservative, not wanting to rock the boat with their conclusions. He preferred to do his work with cotton swabs and mirrors, and by engaging in detailed conversations with his patients. For instance, he became intrigued by the neurological disorder known as apotemnophilia--the desire of perfectly healthy people to have a limb amputated, with many of them actually going through with the surgery. Some had speculated that this well-known disorder is a cry for attention, or stems from a form of sexual perversion, or that patients had seen in childhood an amputee and the image had somehow become imprinted as an ideal to them. In all of these speculations, people seemed to doubt the reality of the actual sensation--it was all in their heads, they implied. Through simple interviews with several such patients, Ramachandran made some discoveries that dispelled these notions. Maybe even hold the object close to your chest to mimic Iron Man. Now I want you to imagine that someone comes by and says or does something unkind to you.

The moment you hear the unkind words, do you think it's wise to hand your power source over to the person who's being mean to you? Are you really willing to take off your power source and hand it to others? It seems a bit ridiculous, in this context, to think about giving away your power to anyone, let alone to someone who is mean to you. I often use this technique as a direct way to confront others about being readily willing to give away their power, and I don't only bring it up in a clinical setting. I use it as a creative way to bring about awareness in anyone I talk to in life who is genuinely giving away their power. When you share a visual like this with others, it shows you are striking together with them to handle the conflict they're experiencing. Helping people see how easily they're giving away their power, as well as giving them insight into how they can stop doing so, sparks awareness without eliciting defensiveness. Although it's rarely comfortable to realize just how easily we give away our power, there's little arguing that the visual itself is awakening. From then on, keep things as open, yet unsalacious, as possible. The biggest objection people seem to have to dating a co-worker is the inevitable awkwardness of going to work post-breakup. As weird as it may seem, it's super-helpful to discuss what you'll do if and when things don't work out. One couple I know agreed up front to avoid the Fadeout method of breaking up, since they had to see each other every day at work. They agreed that the second either one wasn't feeling it anymore, they'd be up front about it and the relationship would end, full stop: no unnecessary drama. Secretly making out in the elevator at work and then stopping the second you get to your floor is a fantasy everyone has, and you have the opportunity to make it happen. Take advantage, on behalf of the rest of us. He remembers things about you and asks you questions about your job/life/hobbies. He finds random excuses to email or text you. That movie starring that actor that we briefly talked about on our last date is on! In all cases they involved the left leg, which was curious enough. In talking to them, it seemed clear to Ramachandran that they were not after attention, nor were they sexually perverse, but rather they were experiencing a very real desire, because of some very real sensation.

With a pen, they all marked the exact spot where they wanted the amputation. When he did simple galvanic skin response tests on their bodies (tests that record the registering of slight amounts of pain), he discovered that everything was normal, except when he pricked the part of the leg the patient wanted amputated. The response was through the roof. The patient was experiencing that part of the limb as if it were too present, too intense, and this overactive sensation could only be done away with through amputation. In subsequent work he was able to locate neurological damage to the part of their brains that create and control our sense of body image. This damage had occurred at birth, or very early on. This meant that the brain could create a body image in a perfectly healthy person that was highly irrational. It seemed as well that our sense of self is far more subjective and fluid than we had thought. As with any conscious information, it's important first to work on mastering not giving away your own power; as you do, others will be more receptive to you teaching them to do the same. The creative exercise of holding on to your power might seem simple to understand, but in practice, it can be absolutely profound. A man in one of my anger management groups once told me that he saw a rival gang member who had stabbed him in the past walking down his street. The man in my group said, I went inside to get my gun. But when I got my gun out and cocked it, I saw your face, Doc. So I said, Oh, I have to hear more now. He explained, When I cocked my gun, I remembered what you taught us about giving away our power. I realized right then and there that if I would have gone out and shot that guy, I would have given him my power, and I didn't want to do that. So I put the gun down, closed my front door, stayed inside, and I kept my power. Just thought you should know! He compliments you.