I began studying William Glasser’s Reality Therapy® (RT) and Choice Theory® (CT) in October 1987 so next year will mark my 40-year anniversary. It happened quite by “coincidence” if you believe in those things. I, personally, believe it was a life event that put me on the path I was put here to walk. I was unhappy with my supervisor at work, so I had begun interviewing for other positions. I was offered a job with Job Corp, a D&A treatment center in town, and a foster care agency. I chose the foster care agency because they promised to train me in something I had never heard of RT. I hadn’t yet received my master’s ddegree,and I was craving some intellectual stimulation so that seemed the obvious choice. My third week on the job became my introduction to Glasser’s work in my basic intensive training. 

I couldn’t possibly have known then what decades of living Choice Theory would show me. Mental Freedom didn’t come from deciding CT was missing something. It emerged from living deeply inside that psychology.

Choice Theory Psychology
CT grew from Glasser’s efforts to explain how and why human beings behave as they do. His earlier formulation, which he called Control Theory, drew on ideas about internal control systems. It helps us understand why people do what they do, including ourselves.

Later, Glasser wrote Counseling with Choice Theory: The New Reality Therapy. He increasingly encouraged us to share the mechanics of CT with our students and clients so they, too, could understand why people do what they do. In that sense, CT became a form of psychoeducation rather than knowledge held primarily by the practitioner.

In Glasser’s later years, he increasingly emphasized the importance of relationships. He identified seven Caring and seven Deadly Relationship Habits, later renamed the Connecting and Disconnecting Relationship Habits. With his addition, Glasser challenged us to move beyond understanding CT and begin living it by decreasing our use of Disconnecting Habits and increasing our use of Connecting Habits.

To be completely honest and transparent, in 1987, I saw CT as something to use in my work. RT became a way I processed things with the kids and their biological and foster parents, but both were largely absent in my home and personal life. At work, I traded in my eclectic toolbox for a CT one and only used the strategies and techniques that fit in that CT toolbox.

This worked for me for several years until 1994, when my husband was diagnosed with leukemia, the disease that eventually took him away from us. It was then that I earnestly began to put CT to work for me in my personal and family life. It was tremendously helpful and it also generated some deep-seated questions for me.

What Changes When Psychology Becomes Something You Live Rather Than Merely Understand?

1. Intellectually, I understood that the only person’s behavior I could control was my own but understanding that didn’t stop me from wanting to control everyone else’s.
2. I understood that all behavior is purposeful, but in an emotionally charged moment, that awareness wasn’t always top of mind.
3. Intellectually I understood the huge role perception played in understanding the world, but that intellectual understanding wasn’t always very helpful when I was absolutely certain my perception was correct and everyone else was wrong.
4. I understood the basic needs drive behavior, but when I was out of balance, I didn’t always stop to consider which of my needs I was trying to satisfy.

Knowing the theory wasn’t the same as remembering and applying it when life became difficult, as life tends to do at times.

Living Choice Theory When Life Got Complicated
If you know my story, you’ve already heard many examples of my personal use of Choice Theory: my husband’s illness and subsequent death, single parenting, Kyle’s two deployments to Iraq, and my accident where I broke both my legs.

I’d like to share two lesser-known personal examples here. When my husband was alive, we often disagreed on our parenting styles. I was much more permissive and he was more authoritarian. In the beginning, I believe we were both much closer to the center, but as we parented our children together, I know I became more permissive to balance his authoritarian parenting style and I’m equally certain he became more authoritarian to balance my permissive style. What I really wanted was for him to see the light and become more like me because obviously, I was right. I consistently modeled my more permissive style, certain he would eventually see how wonderfully it brought us closer to our children. Of course, my husband, also operating from his basic needs, was likely thinking he needed to be tougher on our kids because if he parented like me, they would have no structure and become incorrigible. Now, in hindsight, I can see that part of the challenge in our parenting differences was that I was trying to get my husband to parent more like me while judging his way of parenting as wrong.

When I became the executive director of William Glasser International, I was sure I could bring all the members together in a way that we could organize and move the organization forward in a positive and impactful way. I knew how to lead by following Glasser’s ideas of lead management. What I actually learned was an adage my mother always shared with me, probably because she could see my people-pleasing tendencies with my high Connection need. She would often tell me, “Kim, you can please some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you can’t please all the people all the time.” As was typical, I ignored her advice and lived my life trying to prove her wrong. And I often did, until I became the ED of WGI and truly understood she was right. Negotiating differences doesn’t always work when people are firmly committed to their own positions and perspectives with little willingness to be flexible. I also learned that during those times, when looking in the mirror to determine what I could change would have served me better, I was often busy internally blaming the people who made my agenda more difficult. With WGI, I worked to create space for those who wanted to preserve and protect Glasser’s work to have a purpose and be supported in doing so, while also creating space for those who wanted to innovate and expand his ideas. When trying to hold both became a monumental task, I ultimately chose to resign from my position as Executive Director so I could pursue innovation outside the organization. I remain involved with WGI as Senior Faculty, teaching CT and RT.

Neither situation was neatly resolved, but both taught me something about the limits of my influence and what remained mine to choose.

I mention these examples not because my years of studying and teaching CT gave me some superior insight that neatly resolved them. One ended because the circumstances changed; the other ended because I eventually chose to resign from my leadership position. I mention them because they show that even someone well-versed in Choice Theory and committed to living it doesn’t always know what to do when life gets complicated and challenging.

And Then Came Mental Freedom
In 2020, the COVID epidemic abruptly interrupted my busy travel and speaking schedule and gave me something I hadn’t had much of: time to reflect. I began noticing that I seemed to be navigating the pandemic with considerably less stress than many people around me. That made me curious. Why? What was I doing differently?

As I began identifying the practices and ways of thinking that were helping me maintain my balance, the answer eventually became the six Mental Freedom principles:

1. Responsibility vs. Response-ability
2. The Unconditional Trust Challenge
3. Victimizing vs. Empowering Language
4. Rewriting the Stories in Our Heads
5. Signal vs. Solution
6. Appreciating the GLOW

CT and Mental Freedom
Choice Theory provided me with the psychological foundation. Mental Freedom grew from my efforts to apply that foundation to the internal experiences that can keep people emotionally stuck. And believe me, I got stuck a lot!

That’s where Choice Theory becomes more than something you know and becomes something you live, and where Mental Freedom can help you live it.

One example of what that look like in practice is learning that Mental Freedom doesn’t require you to stop wanting what you want

If you’d like to explore how Mental Freedom can help you put these ideas into practice in your own life, learn more about the Mental Freedom Experience.

Reflection
Which principle do you intellectually understand but still find challenging to live?

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