Control vs. Surrender: Some thoughts on technique and attitude

The success of, and problem with, control

We humans are wired up to want control. In a large way, we got to the top of the food chain by finding ways to control our surroundings and each other. We developed tools, which allowed us to control many things, including food supplies, housing, mobility. We developed social systems, which allowed control over how we relate to each other, opening up possibilities to grow and develop that are squashed if everyone is out for just themselves. We developed science, allowing vast opportunities to control the material world, as well as insights into how to control our selves (psychology, sociology, neurology, etc.).
In all these fields, we have identified the problem, and found a range of solutions. In many troubling areas of human life, we have actually solved the problem; in limited ways, the panacea we’ve sought has often been found.

And yet we, as a species and as individuals, still profoundly suffer.

In the realm of mood, of anxiety and depression, the contrast between control and peace stands out markedly. It’s almost a direct relationship: the more someone tries to control their wild mood, the worse it gets. Where in so many other fields of human endeavor, control actual produces useful if not just amazing outcomes (like this computer I’m typing on), in the inner realm where moods reside, it most often produces more suffering.

Essentially, its because in the realm of mood, control actually is the problem.

One of the big–and I mean BIG, given how much we humans yearn for a “total fix”–lessons that anxiety and depression have to teach us is the value and necessity of surrender.

What is surrender, then?

Well, what it is not is a capitulation, a giving up and allowing oneself to be overcome or overwhelmed. Many folks who have learned to survive through fighting, through doing daily battle with the world or their experience, have a hard time with the idea of surrender. What it means to them is basically opening the castle gates so the hordes can come sack the place. Which makes having a different experience or surrender pretty difficult, because you can’t risk even a tiny crack in the gate.

But actually, surrender is the surrender of the fight against one’s experience. When one does that, one changes one’s whole attitude towards life. The fight, as understandable as its origins are, and even noble its expression in the desire to control, nonetheless continues to create a world which is worthy of being fought. The struggle to change our experience keeps communicating to ourselves that there is something out there to fight, to keep a wall against.

But one experience that I’ve seen over and over is that when folks are able to let down their guard long enough to actually experience the world in its rawness, it’s not felt as dangerous. It has a mereness; it simply is what it is, not inherently anything and therefore does not require any particular reaction.

This is how the attitude of surrender is cultivated, through these usually small openings, when we meet the world without defense.

Surrender as passivity?

This may sound like a very passive attitude, but it’s actually not at all. Surrender opens up one’s vision of the world (inside and out) but does not determine what comes next. It does not determine our next action. Not fighting our experience actually allows us to see more clearly, giving us a much better map of our lives and the world so that we can make much better choices in how to negotiate it.

Thus, skills and techniques in working with anxiety and depression are most effective when based on surrender, on acceptance. If every tool is turned into a club to defend oneself from the world, then its usefulness is severely diminished (and it won’t even work very well as a club!).

Joseph Campbell, the American mythologist, once said, “The head makes a good servant, and a poor master.” Control (active engagement with a situation) is most effective when base on the clarity and acceptance that an attitude of surrender conveys. But when control is out front, working in the service of struggle and domination, in the realm of mood one will always, ironically, find control keeps slipping out of one’s grasp.