I can stop wanting control

While control can help us feel prepared or safe, ultimately, it doesn’t feel good to try to control everything. Chances are, you’re probably feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and still scared because you feel like you can never have enough control.

You may also feel shame or frustration with yourself when you think about your actions or how your desire for control has impacted others.

Something about your relationship with control has helped you realize you want to stop this cycle but don’t know how. To start making changes, it’s important to understand why you want control, what benefit it is giving you, how it is hurting you or others, and how you can start to do the work to let go.

Why do I want control?

The need to feel in control can come from having difficulty dealing with uncertainty. Life can be unpredictable. You may believe that by controlling yourself, others, or your surroundings, you can protect yourself or ensure a certain outcome.

If you’ve noticed the need to control things, know you’re not alone. Life experiences can often be behind the desire to be in control.

Examples include:

• Intense emotions: Excessive anxiety or fear that an undesirable outcome might come true can motivate us to take control and avoid the unwanted situation or outcome. A lot of energy can be spent trying to control unrealistic fears, but we sometimes don’t stop to ask  is my fear reasonable or has the fear gotten out of control?
• Trauma: Experiences like abuse, neglect, loss, or serious accident or injury can change the way we think. Afterward, we might have unhelpful thoughts that constantly cause us to think the worst or feel mentally stuck.
• Your environment: Whether in childhood or currently, experiencing abuse, or growing up in a family or being in relationships with unhealthy dynamics can lead to wanting to control your surroundings so you don’t get hurt again.
• Perfectionism: Essentially, perfectionism is the need for control. By controlling people and situations, you might believe you can influence how things turn out. But perfectionism often creates unrealistic expectations, which can cause problems within yourself or in your relationships.
• Trouble dealing with painful emotions: Some people experience emotions more intensely than others. They may struggle to cope with painful feelings or situations. For these folks, controlling their interactions and environment may seem like a way to avoid these situations, but it can often cause them.
• Fear of abandonment: The idea of being abandoned by someone you care about can be distressing. By trying to control others and your relationships, you may think you can keep them around.

How Control Can Hurt Us

Looking at how you cope with your need for control can help assess if your desire and actions to get control are helping you or hurting you. Sometimes the earliest signs that our desire for control has gotten out of hand is listening to those in our lives.

Ask yourself: Do my loved ones tell me it’s okay to let go, or tell you to take risks. Do I find myself hearing and responding to their comments with defensiveness or resistance?  Reflecting on these questions can help you determine how your desire for control may affect those around you.

Other times, our behaviors that are a result of wanting to control can make us feel safe but rob us of time and experiences.

These actions can include:

• Avoidance
• Not taking reasonable risks
• Using substances
• Engaging in self-harming behaviors
• Being dishonest
• Cleaning compulsively
• Planning excessively
• Being overprotective of others
• Micromanaging others
• Isolating yourself or your loved ones

We all want to feel empowered when we take charge. It feels good when you see things working out. In fact it may not be that you want control— it may just be that you don’t want to feel anxious, afraid, helpless, vulnerable, disappointed, sad, or something else. You probably just want to feel safe and at peace.

But trying to control everything gives you a false sense of security.

The urge to consider every possible outcome and take action so everything goes to plan can become consuming. It requires a lot of mental and physical energy, and it can be  a difficult cycle to break.

How do I learn to let go?

Gaining freedom from control requires letting go. And knowing that even though you let go you are going to be okay. You can begin to heal the need for control and the behaviors that follow. Your relationship with yourself and others might be stronger for it. It’s scary and hard at first, but you may come to realize how incredibly adaptable and resilient you can be.

After you decide that you can work on letting go of control, the best way forward is called systematic desensitization. [1] The basic premise of this strategy is to:

1. Start small – pick an action you can take that shows you’re letting go of control. This step should be something you are scared of, but also not so scary that you get so overwhelmed you turn back.
2. Make a commitment and take the action of moving forward/letting go.
3. Take breaths or address your fears as you need to, do not go backwards (every time you do – you let control win). Grounding or counting to 10 is helpful for controlling fear.
4. Celebrate your win. It’s really important to give yourself credit for when we do well.
5. Pick the next action that seems a little more scary but doable.
6. Repeat step 2.

Along with practice, here are additional tips that can help:

• Explore your need to feel in control. Is it rooted in fear or some other emotion? Journaling can be a helpful exercise here.
• Know what you’re working toward. Explore and keep focused on all the benefits you’ll gain from letting go of control.
• Evaluate the expectations you’re holding yourself to. Are they yours or others?
• Practice radical acceptance.
• Use self-supporting statements like, “I focus on what I can control. I cope with what’s outside of my control.”
• Practice self-care like movement, eating nutritious meals, and getting consistent rest.
• Seek support from your loved ones, a support group, or therapy. Books or articles can also be a great way to get helpful insights.

Perhaps you’re ready to start releasing some of that need for control. Know that changing anything in your life is a journey. It’s not going to happen overnight. Be patient and compassionate toward yourself.

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