The Car: what you control
Part two: Navigate your life
You keep going over what they did. You keep planning what you will say next time. You are steering everyone else’s car from the passenger seat of your own life. Whose car are you actually driving?
What is actually happening
You sit inside your circle the way you sit in a car. You control speed, direction, and what you do when someone cuts you up. Everyone else is in theirs and you cannot reach their wheel. No reverse gear: the past is behind you. Rear view mirror for lessons only; you drive by the windscreen. When someone says “look what you did“, they are describing the view from their car. It is information about their view. It is not an instruction.
The misread
Trying to drive their car with words. Explaining, persuading, campaigning for the verdict. Understanding is a model built inside their head by their machinery; you can offer it once. You cannot install it. (The enough test and the achievability test from understanding-vs-agreement.md live here.)
Both feet flat, hands on your thighs. Say: I am in my car. Breathe out.
Windscreen, mirror, other cars
One live situation. Three boxes. Windscreen: what can I actually do from here in the next seven days? Mirror: what is the one lesson from what is behind, in a sentence, and then I close the mirror? Other cars: what have I been trying to steer that is not mine? Then run the enough test on the other car: if they described my view accurately and still disagreed, would that be enough? If not, I want a verdict, and a verdict from that person is not coming. Choose: one clean offer of my view, or stop and find a witness elsewhere.
The three boxes, the enough test, the chosen move, and what dropped in the body when you called the campaign off.
If you moved, you chose to move. And if you chose it, you can choose differently.
If you are frightened of someone at home, or someone controls your money, your movements or your children, this programme can help you keep yourself, but it cannot get you out. Speak to the National Domestic Abuse Helpline (0808 2000 247, free, 24 hours) or, in immediate danger, call 999.
This programme is educational and not a substitute for therapy, medical care or specialist domestic abuse support.