Co-authored by Galit Romanelli
I’m supervising Abe, an older couples therapist. In between cases, he shares that a few years back he had a gastric band put in. But he still finds himself eating chicken nuggets at midnight.
“I know it’s not good for me,” he says. “But I can’t stop it. I’m addicted.”
Because he’s a therapist, I ask if he wants to work on this behavior systemically. He says sure.
Through a systems perspective, in every situation, dynamic, or behavior, you have secondary gains and losses for your action. Whether that is a dynamic in your relationship, a pattern in work, or eating chicken nuggets at midnight. The losses are the toll you pay for your actions. The secondary gains are what your actions give you.
Abe goes straight to the losses. “I’m unhealthy. I get heartburn. I’m disappointed in myself. I don’t sleep. I have no willpower. I’m weak and pathetic. I’m an impostor. How can I preach to my clients to make changes when I have no control over myself? I feel like a hypocrite.”
This is what we call violining: a long, loud solo about your losses while you cast yourself as a helpless victim who has no control and no agency.
Our working assumption is that no one is a victim. You always have a choice. So I tell Abe: “I’ll give you the most generous interpretation, the one that hands you the most agency. The tax for that interpretation is that this narrative will also include more of your shadows that you are blind to.”
Then I ask him about his secondary gains. What does he gain from eating nuggets at midnight? He freezes. “I have no gains.”
I’m used to clients declaring that they have no gains and only losses. But look at their feet. They keep doing that action again and again, so obviously they have more gains than they mention.
I share this with Abe. He smiles and says: “OK, I’m ready to open my eyes. Let’s do this.”
The gains start pouring out. No one tells me what to do. Freedom. I earned it. My way to releasing pressure. It’s a correction to my young self. Turns out that Abe was the fat kid for years, and was always told “don’t eat this” and “don’t eat that.” Now he gets to eat as much as he wants and doesn’t gain weight: a gastronomic Peter Pan. And finally, by seeing himself as addicted, he gets to hide. He’s too weak. Nothing can be done.
He weighs the two sides. “The gains are stronger,” he says.
He doesn’t decide at that moment that he’s going to stop eating nuggets. But something in him shifts. He stops seeing himself as a victim.
The Integrity Fork
What Abe is feeling is a lack of integrity. We define integrity as the distance between your mouth (what you say you’ll do) and your feet (what you actually do). The smaller this distance, the more integrity you have. Abe’s mouth is preaching control, while his feet are deep into the nuggets.
You can minimize the gap by changing your feet, or by changing your mouth. Changing your mouth means owning your current behavior without excusing or violining. Changing your feet means behavioral change. Both of those give you integrity.
That is the decision. We call it the integrity fork: Own it or change it.
Owning it means owning your secondary gains, which is the systemic way of owning your shadow. When you own them, the distance between your mouth and your feet shrinks. I’m choosing to continue this behavior. I have agency and choice. Compare that to feeling sorry for yourself, blaming someone else, or feeling helpless.
I invite Abe to take a deep breath. Can you own it out loud to yourself right now?
He owns his nugget-eating a couple of times. He starts laughing, and something in him releases. That is his first step toward minimizing the gap between his mouth and his feet: “I know it’s not healthy for me, but for now I choose to keep eating chicken nuggets. It’s my choice. I’m not blaming my wife, my kids, or my parents.” A sentence like that blocks you from seeing yourself as a victim.
I also eat junk food at night sometimes. I know I shouldn’t, and I do it anyway. The minimum I can do is own it.
The other option is you change it. You soften core beliefs, change your outlook, and start behaving differently. In systemic work, that is called second-order change. And that’s hard because such change means giving up on some of your current gains. Even for Abe, with the heartburn and the sleepless nights, the gains are still stronger.
Now here’s the kicker. Even if you choose to change it, you first have to own it. Both roads start in the same place. You still might feel bloated and guilty at midnight with your nuggets. But at least you’ll have some integrity.
The way to the integrity fork begins with mapping your integrity chart:
- Choose a behavior that you want to change.
- List your secondary losses. Let yourself violin. Get it all out.
- List your secondary gains. Stay until you hit at least 10, past the point where you swear there are none.
- Weigh them. Which side is heavier?
- Go through the gains one by one. For the ones you still need, ask if there’s a healthier way to get them, a way that fits who you are today.
- Then you reach the integrity fork. Make the brave choice: to own it or change it.
When you do what you say and say what you do, you not only gain integrity but you experience deep positive liberty. Abe took the first step. Are you ready to own it or change it?
Galit Romanelli is a relationship coach, Ph.D. candidate, and co-creator of The Remarriage Roadmap.
To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.
