This old driving advice is the tagline of my blog. What does it mean?
When the rear of the car slides to one side, your impulse might be to slam on the brakes and grab the steering wheel to brace yourself. This resistance worsens the skid, and soon you’ll be careening down the road sideways or even backward. Instead, the thing to do is to turn towards the skid, after which you can drive normally.
We mess ourselves up by fighting life’s skids or by merely resigning ourselves to them. Embrace your fate, said Nietzsche. If you don’t get the internship of your choice, the mate you are crushed out on, or the physical health you once had, you will only make things worse by imagining otherwise and refusing to move on. Grab your remaining abilities, your next mate who will return your love, the work you can actually get, and enjoy the wild ride. This is what is meant by the Buddhist idea that what really counts is the grace with which we let go of things not meant for us. Of course, I resist the “meant for,” but the idea is the same without the fatalism. It’s what Kipling meant by saying that the saddest words of all are “what might have been.”
Skids happen; if you embrace them, life will be an adventure instead of a tragedy. Turning towards the skid doesn’t mean passively drifting through life, any more than the Taoist ideal of wu-wei (avoid purposive action) is a call to complacency. Instead, the idea is that fighting reality (usually by imposing an idea onto it about how things ought to be) wears you down, interferes with your effectiveness, and irritates other people. Move deftly within the actual landscape, not the landscape you wish you were in. Consider Russia’s celebrated General Kutuzov, who defeated Napoleon by avoiding battles (except Borodino, which Kutuzov lost). How is it possible to defeat the greatest army on earth by avoiding battles? Read War and Peace to find out.
“Turn in the direction of the skid” can also be read to mean, “Head toward slick areas.” If your goal is to get there without incident (fine for driving, but this is a metaphor), then dry roads will suit you. But if your goal is to become an expert driver or to live fully, look for icy patches.
Overpowering a skid is Apollinian in Nietzsche’s sense, admirably orderly and even beautiful, but tragically doomed to fail; turning with it is Dionysian, unplanned and uncontending, but vital and resilient. Why not be both? Celebrate order and chaos. (Our present culture has such vast pathologies of order and caution that I don’t need a reminder to value structure.) When hurt, don’t say, “You can’t hurt me”; say, “Ouch.” The latter expresses hurt but also, by demonstrating that the hurt is expressible, in Nietzsche’s phrasing that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger (metaphor alert: syphilis didn’t make him stronger). If you have to take a punch, take it drunk (metaphor alert). Once you get good at rolling with the punches, you will seek them out, like a martial artist looking for improvement or engrossment by sparring with experts.
Rather than stick with the prior plan for steering, let the terrain guide the driver, the patient’s reactions guide the therapist, the child’s reactions guide the parent, and the beef guide the butcher. If you want to change the world, or even yourself, think judo, not boxing. Of course, if you want to dominate something you can actually control—like a stubborn lid on a pickle jar—go ahead and kick its butt, but if it’s alive, don’t be surprised if some day it kicks yours.
After driving in Michigan and New England most of my life with rear-wheel drive, I became proficient in snow and ice. I also developed an appreciation of the landscape by attending to the grade of the roads I was on. Now I have a heavy, four-wheel-drive Wrangler, and I have forgotten how to navigate slick spots. If you have an anti-skid device (metaphor), throw it away; it’s making you stupid. Anti-skid devices include not talking in class and already knowing how the therapy is going to unfold.
So make messes and clean them up. Don’t avoid making messes by claiming to be on top of things you can’t possibly be on top of (like other humans … or yourself). If you never skid, you’re not driving fast enough (metaphor!).
And that’s a basic aspect of the therapeutic frame, an implicit rule to explore the icy patches and, within the boundaries of the rest of the relational rules, to approach rather than resist the sense of confusion. (In fact, the rest of therapy’s rules help make icy roads into roller coasters and bumper cars.) Many people come for therapy because of the stress they feel from trying to control themselves as a result of living in situations that demand hyper-control. “Turn in the direction of the skid” is my way of remembering that it is impossible to tightly control complex systems. Human beings are complex symptoms.
Michael Karson, Ph.D. 
This post really resonated with me. Love it 🙂
I was patiently waiting for this post, the title always being so inviting, but you have finally delivered the goods! The following is mostly metaphorical of course, even if it sounds very literal. I love the juxtaposition of the two seen through the lens of “drifting.” Where the rubber meets the road sort of thing (e.g., tire contact points and tire budgets are some of my favorite therapy metaphors).
6 winters in a row I drove the lightest RWD production roadster made, second to a lotus Elises and Caterham super 7s, in what is undoubtedly 4WD country. Some people called me stupid. Some just hated. I never really cared. All I was looking forward to was every safe power slide opportunity I would get, especially the ones with no cost to tire tread (i.e., wet, slush, snow packed – never ice as its so unpredictable and the cost benefit analysis is prohibitive as Niki Lauda would say). One snowy December afternoon over Monarch pass, on the way back to Denver from a forensic evaluation in Montrose County Jail. Me and the miata. And images of Ari Vatanen’s famous Pikes Peak ascent with the 405 T16 also come to mind. Bliss.
So, one of the first things I m going to do when my 15 year old (son or daughter doesn’t matter) is autocross eligible, is to teach them how to pop out clutch on high RPM downshifts to 2nd (or even 1st – while toe heeling and trail breaking with the other foot) at the precipice of an offset corner promptly leading into a 90 degree follow through, and smoothly transitioning to some good old fashioned throttle steering. Turning in the direction of the skid without even turning the wheel that is, instead finding that “sweet spot” with the gas pedal. Then setting her to late apex sideways, and powering flat out through the exit. Feels SO good. For those split seconds keeping it in balance heaven. I think it’s these are the intersections where science meets art. That’s the schema I use as my dearest roadmap and want to teach my kids and clients to navigate life by. It’s fleeting but reminds us why it’s worth living. Seek out these experiences and play enough times (skid out and say oops) until you get it just “right.” I think that why lots of folks play golf, but we don’t have that back home. Fiats, Seats, and Alfa Romeos (if you were privileged like me) and good old mountain curves were our links!
Drift on my friends!
@ Teesa: Thanks!
@ Ioannis: Miss you, man. Reading that was like a great downshift.
I thought this was best summed up by something you said in seminar – something to the effect that “The goal of therapy is to turn ‘I just want to get out of here’ into ‘I wonder what’s going on here'” Been so relevant for me, especially in process group therapy where I often feel that urge to bail and then wonder “What’s going on in here? What is this bringing up for me? Is it coming up for others?”
I get both the metaphorical and literal instruction/advice here, for which I am grateful. Just want to add that, for me, unleashing a stream of profanity (particularly the words that start with voiced or plosive consonants) has been enormously successful in heightening both tension and drama (though not in regaining control or traction). Screaming, or better yet, crying out, “Oops!” or “Here we go!” or, best of all, “Wheee!” are accompaniments that can only be faulted insofar as they distract from the real tasks–to focus, remain alert and responsive, and save face, health and life.