Holistic healing

How To: Let go of your inner control freak

Do you have a desperate need to always be in control? Cathryn Scott looks at how to learn to let go a little

Do you have a desperate need to always be in control? Cathryn Scott looks at how to learn to let go a little
Whether it’s organising family holidays, emptying the bins or topping up the oil and water in the car, Victoria Parto is the first to admit she likes to be in charge.

“I am a total control freak,” says the 34-year-old from Cardiff. “I do everything around the house despite my boyfriend Matthew telling me repeatedly that he wants to do stuff.” The mother-of-one says her need to be in control is partly because she is a proactive person, whereas her partner is more reactive, so she naturally wants to do things whereas he is happy to take a back seat.

However, she also puts it down to a difficult time in her life when her father was terminally ill and she and her mother cared for him, and ran the house, with no outside help. She adds that she was also in a very abusive relationship a number of years back where it was instilled into her that a woman’s place is in the home.

“While I know that to be complete rubbish, there is always my ex’s voice in the back of my head telling me I should be doing everything, working harder, and I can never quite escape him,” she says.

Victoria and Matthew are trying to reach a compromise where he is more proactive and she is more reactive. “Being reactive is really hard,” she concedes. “I consciously have to tell myself not to empty the bins and so on and that Matthew will do it. Often I have to get out of the house to stop myself doing stuff. Then as time goes on and things haven’t been done or not done as I’d like, I start getting worked up and I do find I start to nag.”

She says playing with her daughter or reading a book while her daughter is asleep are good distractions and she also uses deep breathing techniques that she learnt from a pregnancy hypnobirthing CD when especially stressed.

Benefits vs limits

Life coach Eve Menezes Cunningham (applecoaching.com) says that Victoria’s feelings are common – and that recognising your tendency to grab control and not want to let go is a great first step in addressing it.

She advises taking a few moments to list all the benefits your ‘inner control freak’ has brought you, from enjoying an amazing holiday that you wanted to go on, to getting a piece of work just right because you stayed on top of things.

Then, Eve says, think of the ways it limits you. She advises asking yourself when your tendencies are most likely to get out of control. Then ask what you can do to be extra kind to yourself as a way of supporting yourself so that your inner control freak doesn’t feel the need to go into overdrive making sure that everything is okay.

“Are there areas where you actually can delegate?” Eve asks. “What’s different about these situations to the ones in which you need to hold onto the reins so tightly? What baby steps might you take in learning to go with the flow a little more?” She advises finding an area in your life where you could delegate some aspects without this causing you too much anxiety.

“Where steps you think of feel too big, make a note of them and revisit them in the future but start with the tiniest of steps,” Eve advises. “For example, delegating a nonessential task to someone you already trust. By making changes in a gentle way you’ll make much more progress than trying to bully yourself into a different way of being.”

Thirty-two-year-old Rachel Edwards says that her inner control freak comes into play because she is too proud to ask for help.

She was recently made redundant and says the status of being unemployed and people constantly asking her if there have been any developments but not knowing what to say when she says no has been difficult.

As well as proactively retraining, Rachel has been throwing herself into other ventures, such as planning a charity ball and helping a friend to move house, so that she can feel in control of some aspects of her life and make up for the fact that she feels so helpless when it comes to her career.

“Some people who are in control all the time are this way because they feel that they can’t ask for or accept help,” Rachel observes. “They feel like they need to do everything themselves in order to make them feel worthy, to have their place in society or the family orperhaps they just don’t want people to see the weaker side of them – their vulnerability. I’m one of those people.”

Rachel knows the solution is to ask people for help, and says she is slowly working on it, but it’s hard to change such ingrained habits.

The art of delegation

Amy Wallis, a 29-year-old freelance production manager from London, is also learning to find positive ways to manage her inner control freak.

Her big fear is that other people’s mistakes will reflect badly on her. “Whenever I trust other people to do tasks and then check their work I find there are mistakes in there and I have to clear up after them,” she says. “I feel like I spend my whole life picking up after other people.“While she recognises that this trait can be positive – “I am paid to go into people’s offices and organise them,” she says – she is learning to tone it down in areas where it’s not so appropriate.

“Feeling like I’m in control of my life makes me feel better and more positive and stronger but it also means I am afraid of losing control. I take it very badly when things happen outside my control that I am not happy about and feel I should have been able to control,” she says.

Getting engaged and planning a wedding has been a turning point for Amy. “I thought, okay, I could be a mad control freak, organise it all myself and explode with stress,” she says. “Or I could let my partner be involved. He is not the type to think all he has to do is turn up on the day and to my amazement I am suddenly sharing control. We’re discussing venues together. Our first choice is one he suggested. He is organising the photography, band and DJ.”

She tells herself to try letting someone do a task once and if they are no good, then she can always stop letting them. “I also remind myself that, yes, having the washing hung the way I like is brilliant, but so is not having to do it,” she says.

“And I think it’s not fair to always criticise other people. On the one hand it’s good to trust them to do stuff. On the other, if you know you will nitpick what they do, it is best to do it yourself. You have to remember that it’s not going to be the end of the world if they don’t do something the way that you would,” she says.

*Names have been changed

Learn how to let go

Yulia Heaton is a psychology graduate, acupuncturist and yoga teacher who uses allthree disciplines to help her cope with and understand her need to be in control.

She believes many people need control because they are unable to deal with feelings of helplessness. Some channel these feelings into areas of their lives they can control – for Yulia it is cleaning. “When my daughter was born (and even now) every time we have a badnight or day where all routine’s gone out of the window, I’d be desperate to start cleaning. I’d be exhausted, but feel so much better emotionally – because it’s the only thing I can control.”

Often this urge to be in control can become an addiction. “We understand the term exclusively as substance abuse, but by definition, addiction is the inability to be in the present moment by using repetitive familiar behaviour,” she says.

Yulia cites her own addiction to her physical yoga practice as an example. “How immensely irritable I used to get when anything out of my control would stop me from getting on the mat,” she recalls.

The depth of our need for control is directly related to our fear of helplessness, says Yulia. She advises trying the following as an exercise in learning to let go of control and to put your trust in other people.

“Sit down to a meal with a friend or partner. Once seated you are no longer allowed to use any of your limbs or do anything for yourself other than chew and swallow. Your partner in the exercise will serve you food, cut it, place it into your mouth and wipe your chin. Observe your feelings as the experiment goes on. You will find that it is not as easy as you might suspect it to be.”

As you would expect, yoga has helped Yulia to manage situations where she needs to relinquish control. “Whenever I find myself fighting, I pause and take a deep breath. Each time I inhale I say to myself ‘let’ and each time I exhale I say ‘go’.

“It still takes a lot of patience for me to get there, but I will keep doing this.”