What is the difference – healthy control or control issues?
I feel like the word control has a negative connotation to it. Like it’s something to be feared or something that I should shy away from.
There are various stages of control for sure.
Some control may not be healthy, kind, or even safe.
What about the control methods we may use to help us feel safe after having a PTSD trigger, a panic attack, a depression episode; you name it. There may be many things that might cause us to feel unsafe or out of control.
I am not a doctor, a licensed therapist or life coach; so take my musings with a grain of salt. However, after writing this post I did a deep dive into other posts that shared the same thoughts. Psychology Today had a good article the helped me feel like I’m not thinking all crazy like.
This is something I have been thinking about for quite some time now. Is wanting to have control necessarily a bad thing?
In my mind it depends on what it is that I am trying to control and why.
I have this thing I do when my life feels like a shit show. When I cannot control outside factors, when I cannot seem to let go of emotions I am feeling, or when I feel like there is nothing I can do about how a person or situation is affecting me.
I clean.
It’s not just regular ol’ cleaning either.
I’m talking hands and knees – white glove test – the whole nine yards.
Not only do I clean; I purge.
When I cannot get rid of emotions or when I cannot control a person to get them to do what I want (this is probs on the control issue side), I get rid of things.
I … Marie Condo everything in my house. Each time this happens I end up taking at least three boxes of stuff down to my local thrift store. Which is actually quite impressive because I don’t have much stuff in the first place.
When I am feeling like my life is out of control, is trying to control my environment so I can feel safe really such a bad thing?
I know why I am doing it, most of the time I can pinpoint my exact trigger, and it keeps me from going down a much more unhealthy and self-destructive path.
Alcohol is a big one for me. When I’m feeling upset I tend to want to numb out. If I channel all my energy of wanting to drink into cleaning and organizing my already organized mostly minimalist home, I think that might actually be healthy.
Who knows, one could psychoanalyze me and my behavior for days I am sure.
**Coping mechanisms can be helpful, however if you do have trauma, PTSD, etc. I think it also may be helpful to seek out a licensed professional to help you so maybe you get triggered less often. This is big kid shit, sometimes it’s hard to fix it alone.
Healthy Control or Control Issues?
Here are some questions I had to ask myself and it made me very uncomfortable.
Is the form of control I use to help myself to feel safe an ongoing everyday thing?
Does this control only pop up when I am struggling on such a deep level to just feel normal?
When I go into my control state, do I speak to others in a way that is degrading, belittling, or condescending?
Do I get angry at others when they don’t behave in a certain way?
Am I expecting others to act the way I want them to act so that I can feel good?
I used to be very meticulous about my home. Everything had a place and everything had to be in its place at all times, no exceptions. If something wasn’t done my way or if my house wasn’t perfect when I came home from work, I would yell.
If the dishes were not put away the way I put them away I would have the boys come and redo it while I explained to them in detail how I wanted it done. I was always on edge and could not function at all if everything wasn’t just so.
In those days, I believe I had control issues. I tried to control everything around me, even people. (Mostly about the way things were put away, how and when it was done, if the boys cleaned their rooms everyday to my liking etc.)
My children and partner felt like they walked on eggshells, careful not to disrupt my chi. That kind of behavior was on the obsessive control issues side. My poor family.
One time my oldest child left for a week to stay at a friend’s house because I freaked out over there being dishes in the sink.
It took years to even become aware of what I was doing and how it affected my family. Then it took a couple more years to make all the necessary changes and catch myself when I was doing my control issue thing.
It wasn’t to be mean to anyone, it was because I felt unsafe and the way I felt safe was to control my environment. Even if that meant trying to control other people. I was unhappy and trying to control things outside of me to make my inner self feel better. It never worked. It was an ongoing cycle that I feel deeply apologetic for.
Flash forward to today.
I feel like I have established healthy control. Yes, it is still to feel safe and I’m working with a therapist. However, I am no longer (for the most part that I am aware of) hurting the people I love the most.
Most of the time I control what time I go to bed. I control what I will or will not put in my body, and I control who I will and will not invest my time in.
I do all of this so I can be the best version of myself.
There are things I do daily for self-care so that I can be the best human I can be.
There is a difference in healthy control and control issues.
In my opinion, control is not a bad thing at all if used in a way that doesn’t harm other people or myself.
Have you established healthy control or do you have control issues?
It might be a tough question to answer. It was for me, and it was even harder to reprogram my thinking and my behaviors to establish healthy control.
Nothing worth it is ever easy, but the feeling of freedom is worth it.
All my love,
