This week, I have been exploring my strong need to be in control of the situations in my life and how to dismantle this need for control. I received lots of great advice yesterday – please keep it coming!
I don’t want to have to feel responsible for so much in my life, and I certainly don’t want the responsibility that comes with being in control of so many things. So, I put some thought into why I do this since control is not something that I want in and of itself. The answer came to me during yoga and meditation – I try to take control to help me feel protected and safe.
When abusers were in control of my life as a child, I was neither protected nor safe. I thought that, if I was in control, then I would be both protected and safe. Now, taking control has become my go-to reaction whenever I feel unsafe. OK – That’s progress. At least I understand the trigger that leads me to take control.
So, rather than telling myself “don’t judge anything” and “don’t take control,” which isn’t working very well, I am changing tactics (and will probably continue to change tactics as I consider all of the wonderful advice that all of you are providing!).
I started thinking about when and where I feel protected and safe in my life even though I am not in control. My first thought was my friend’s house. We have been friends for almost 10 years now, and she was my go-to friend during the therapy years. My son and I hang out with my friend and her daughter every Saturday at her house, and I am always very relaxed while we are there. I realized that this is because I feel protected and safe, even though I am not in control.
I also feel protected and safe at my church and when I am at the gym even though I am not in control. That tells me that it is possible for me to feel protected and safe without having to seize control of the circumstances. (I also used to feel protected and safe when I traveled, but that all blew up last week. I’ll write about that situation in another blog.) So, it is possible for me to feel relaxed while not in control, but just writing that is triggering me – clearly parts of me are not ready to do that.
I have been working again on mindfulness and staying in the moment. For example, because of what I just wrote, I feel triggered. In reaction, I am taking deep breaths, and I am analyzing the facts of my present situation. At this moment, I am completely safe. I am in my home office in front of my computer with a full stomach (just ate dinner). I don’t have to worry about whether or not I will be unsafe at a future moment. Right now, in this moment, I am completely safe. So far, this has been helping me bring myself back down.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Blooming Lotus 
“I try to take control to help me feel protected and safe.”
I have the exact same thing. I am a fulltime controlfreak. Everything needs to be a certain way or the pressure in my head becomes to much.
It is indeed a survival mechanism we picked up during childhood for your own protection.
It used to drive my wife insane! Checking what she does and how she does things all the time, because if I don’t know I get nervous as hell!
How I started to manage it was, first of all: accept it. Accept that you are this way and I asked my wife to understand it too.
But, because no person can live like that, I realized I had to do something about my behavior.
So, at first, I checked up on her without her knowing and without judgement: My way is not always the only way. I started to realize that she did the things just fine.
Then, slowly the pressure took off.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: we need to control everything to feel safe, but perhaps it’s not such a bad idea to let someone else into this circle to control it together with you. It takes the load off your shoulders and slowly takes the pressure off.
With the time, the whole controlfreakishness disappears.
Hope it helps.
Sincerely,
– Prozacblogger
PS: I recently started my own blog on healing from Childhood Abuse. Would you like to exchange links? I’ve already added yours to my blogroll. The name of my blog is: Journal of a Male Childhood Abuse Survivor, and the link is: http://prozacblogger.com. Thanks.
Hi, Prozacblogger.
Thanks for the link!
I just added your blog to my blogroll under “Journal of a Male Child Abuse Survivor.” Please let me know if you would like for me to change the title of the link. :0)
– Faith
Welcome Back!
The only book I recommend for self help is “I don’t have to make it all better.” by Gary and Joy Lundberg. I personally am done with the self help books as the answer. What answers I am going to get come from within, This book is not about abuse or multiplicity it is about listening. Really really listening. We use it in relationships and internally.
Side note; I once found 5 books on getting organized two of them the same.
If you have an imagination you are not going to do everything that you can imagine, Most people seem to have little imagination and can not imagine having one. So if you have an imagination you are kinda on your own, It helps me to know that I am limited by space, time, fate and others., Kinda what this human experience is about.,
One thing that I found with the pressure of healing is I could not remember what was going on when the decision was made and evaluated it in hindsight which is not 20/20 by the way., As an example I did not clean the snow off my rowing shell and it was damaged. At the time the snow was on it was best to let it get damaged.
On instinct; trusting your instinct is good. Knowing it fails and not perfect helps. When it works very well it feels so right on that it seems to take on the aspect of being perfect. Thing is sometimes it works perfectly it is not perfect.
Things get done when I control., Thing is it takes energy and effort and many people who benefit from things going well are not any happier and do not value it. Often they believe it is their efforts that made things go well or it was just luck. As a consultant I am OK with getting paid to make things happen. I even prefer that they are all messed up before I get there then people have something to compare to and they are more lily to understand.,
Side note: Somethings do not take effort yet take energy.
If I am in control and it does not work out I am happier than if someone else is in control and it does not work out., I might even be happier if I am in control and it does not work out than if someone else is and it does.
Seems to me that sometimes people want to be in control for the simple reason that someone else is not.,
Side note on running crews; Men tend to want to be told to do by men that know what they are doing, Most men prefer to be lead. Just my experience.
I reject all dogma where the focus is how self affects others, I go with when I take care of self the others falls into place and when I do not it falls apart. I so far have rejected all dogma including Buddhism as starting from the false assumption that all memories have been brought into consciousness. I have designed a meditation in motion for this PTS body, mind, brain and soul. That being said I may look into Taoism. Not as a way just look into it.,
I may have changed my mind., Perhaps the only book I recommend is a blank one where you write, draw and paint.
So my recommendation: Listen which means allowing expression which leads to processing then change will happen. Letting change happen is more effective than making it happen, It is harder at first that is why it is resisted.
I was curious as to if I would comment when you started up again. I did miss your posts I was not upset. I do like your blog. Thank you. To be honest it did occur to me it would be cool if you came back and wrote I am done.
Thanks, Michael.
When I went on hiatus, I felt a strong pull to stop looking back and start looking forward. At the time, I wasn’t sure how that would work with continuing to blog since this blog is all about healing from childhood abuse, which I saw as “looking back.” However, I felt a strong need to blog this week (had not planned to start back until August) with a focus on my challenges today. At least for now, this is what I feel led to write about — dealing with who I am **today** as I transform into a healthy version of myself.
– Faith
“Feelings” and how we feel – happy, sad, mad or scared – comes from our inner child. So when we “feel” the need to control something it is an inner mechanism alerting us to fear. Something that inner child ego state sees is some how triggering an old response or coping mechanism. In an attempt to prevent anything bad from happening our inner child jumps into the drivers seat trying to prevent whatever dangerous situation perceived.
That is really nice of the inner child to try and be a big helper, but it is not effective now in the adult world. Kids shouldn’t drive, it is not safe. Creating a bond between your adult self and child self through writing, blogging or a journal and asking yourself what is bad or unsafe in the situations where you feel like you need to control was one way I found helpful. Another way was for me to list the things I thought I was responsible for and then re-read it and decide if it really belonged to me or not. I found it helpful in creating firmer personal boundries, which decreases my control issues. 🙂 No matter how you do it, it takes time and it is different for each of us 🙂 Just know you aren’t alone on this issue!
Sandy,
That was a great post and helped me a lot! Thank you.
I especially appreciated your point about the need to control alerting us to fear, and loved this: “That is really nice of the inner child to try and be a big helper, but it is not effective now in the adult world. Kids shouldn’t drive, it is not safe.”
It’s helped me to realize something new: I’ve always had a problem when people talk about their “inner child” and wanting to go back to being a child, hug teddy bears, etc… it really bothered me because I just couldn’t relate. But your post helped me to realize why. Unlike most (?) abuse survivors who weren’t allowed to be children, one of my mother’s main goals in life was to make sure that I could never grow up – at least not to be a functional, capable adult. Every attempt to learn lifeskills etc… was thwarted in bizarre mind-twisting ways. Part of that, of course, was making sure I was left in charge of things that were way beyond what was considered age appropriate. I usually managed to get them done, but they were always (I now realize that’s how they were intended) somehow incomplete, or wrong, or (love this one) not possible so you must not have done this yourself and you’re lying. So I was kind of left in a situation where I wasn’t allowed to be either a child or an adult, but something else. The option I chose was to be “good”. Luckily for me my father loved to play and laugh and have fun, so I had places in my life to actually be a child. I’ve just started allowing myself to have my own ‘voice’. Thanks to your post I now realize I need exercises for getting in touch with my inner adult!
Also, completely agree with your point about firmer personal boundaries decreasing the need for “control”. The more I find my own voice, or more accurately the right to my own voice, the less I’m finding the need to rant.
Thanks for that.
That last paragraph says that you know more than you think you do! Now it’s just a matter of remembering and focusing really… till it becomes habit.
[…] reason I have so much trouble feeling safe and protected is because I have had abuse lie dormant and then resurface. My mother went 10 years without abusing […]