The Monsters Under Our Bed

Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are has been enjoying new popularity, in part due to the movie by that name that was released this past Fall, 2009. The reading level of the book is listed as ages 4-8, the enjoyment level ranges from 4 to 80 and beyond.

I have referred many couples to numerous self help books for relationships and marriages. But just recently I have been asking my couples and even individual clients if they have a copy of Where the Wild Things Are, and if they do, to take it out and give it a reading.

The book centers on a youngster named Max, who is sent to his bedroom for playing mischief when he shouldn't have. In his room a forest grows and Max descends from his bed into the land of the monsters; and while they threaten to eat him all they want to be is tamed by him. He obliges, tames the monsters, and they make him king. In the end he returns to his bed because he misses the comforts of a good home cooked meal.

My question to my clients when talking about Max and his monsters is this: “what monsters lie beneath your bed, that threaten to devour you, but really want to be tamed and befriended?” All of us have monsters of some sort that lurk in the hidden recesses of our lives, and they seek to have their voice heard. Some might have the monster of anxiety, others depression and still others a fear of being seen as a fraud. Or perhaps it is the monster of addiction that threatens a person.For every personality you meet you can imagine that there are some monsters lurking under that person's bed, waiting for their proper expression, and most likely causing fear and trembling.

One reason the book works is that Max doesn't destroy the monsters, he tames them, perhaps transforms them. Ask someone who attends a twelve step group and that person will say that he/she is recovering, not cured. This means that the monster of addiction has been confronted and tamed, but it still remains to some extent a force in the person's life. Our tendency is to try to uproot, conquer, stamp out and basically destroy those parts of our personality that cause us grief, shame and embarrassment. When we do that we usually only feed the monster and it grows. Only by naming our shame and embarrassment and those patterns in our lives that cause us the most distress, can we seek to transform them into something that works with us, not against us.

I used to smoke cigarettes and that addiction to nicotine exercised a powerful hold on me. I can't say with certainty that I will never smoke again and that this addiction is conquered. But I can identify the underlying forces that led me to smoke in the first place (acceptance and belonging, stress, to name a few) and know that I am doing better with those forces. In a sense, like Max, I have looked them in the eye and made peace with them.

So we all have some underdeveloped parts of our personality that cry out for greater development and integration, and when we deny these parts they do take on the guise of monsters who seek to destroy us. A person with an eating disorder often is more controlled by the disorder than in control. A person with an anger issue often tries to suppress the anger, only to have it blow at some point like Vesuvius. Maybe we can learn from Max and take a risk to descend into the land of our own personal monsters, not to vanquish them and destroy them, but to befriend them and tame them, and in their taming transform and integrate our own personalities on a deeper level.