Rules of thumb for taming the monsters within us

Rules of Thumb for Taming the Monsters Within Us isn’t just another self-help manual – it’s a practical and provocative guide to managing the unruly forces inside ourselves. The author likens our inner impulses to monsters – anger, pride, selfishness – which are always tugging at us like unruly dogs on leashes. We can’t eliminate them, but we can learn to tame them, reducing their power to sabotage us.

Drawing from decades of clinical insight, the author distills essential rules of thumb—concise guidelines—for improving communication, parenting practices, and sexual relationships. These skills aren’t meant to feel natural at first, requiring practice until they become second nature.

The book begins with the easy question of whether you should take charge of a child crossing a street when she can’t do it safely. The rules of thumb to answer this question apply not only to parenting practices but to adult relationships where too much control can ruin a relationship between spouses, just as too little control can do as much damage. The rules can help you to sensibly decide either to exert more control by setting limits or to use less control with skills such as I-messages, redirection, and hypnotic suggestion.

Hypnotic suggestion uses several of these rules of thumb, but in a particular combination which you can perform for yourself in a hypnotic arm levitation, in which a hand seems to float into the air. You are taught how to do this for yourself with a partner in order to practice five interactive rules which can be applied in any interaction. You are taught to do this by touch alone, without using words because words tend to distract from seeing the moves with clarity.

You are shown how to use these five moves to teach a child to float in the water in a matter of a few minutes without using words. These experiences are equivalent to the sense of harmony in the Taoist practice of effortless action or doing not–doing. The same moves can be used to produce humor, to enhance sexual interaction, and to improve a therapist’s skills.

When the moves are done correctly, these experiences are pleasurable, respectful, and hypnotic. You can see for yourself from the smile on the lips of a child when she realizes she is floating that these moves have simultaneously produced humor, trance, and effortless action.

If you’re ready to cautiously take charge and to live alongside your inner monsters without letting them run the show, these rules of thumb can change the way you think.