The need for control.

There are people who try to gain control of their environment (and other people) just to gain a sense of power, and then there are people who try to control everything because they feel powerless.

I woke up this morning feeling the need to control my relationship, so I decided to make today’s post about it in hopes of dissecting this destructive urge. This is not an uncommon worry to wake up to on a daily basis. I constantly go over the facts and details in my head to make sure everything is “on track”. This is the reality. I treat relationships like a road trip. I constantly feel the need to have a mental road map and alternate routes in case something goes wrong. I have to have a strategic plan otherwise failure is guaranteed. After every failed relationship I’ve accumulated a list of “supplies” (things that would have made the relationship work out or run more smoothly). This list is the equivalent to learning what to do/not to do in future relationships that everyone mentally prepares, but for someone like me, if I don’t follow it exactly then there’s no point in continuing the relationship because it will fail. This is the extent of my relationship anxiety; this is a learned behavior I picked up in my childhood to fulfill my need to control the situation and its outcome.

I won’t go into detail about my childhood or relationship with my parents but I will touch base on is the fact that my dad and I used to argue constantly. If I spend the time reminiscing into my past, a lot of my memories include being yelled at and consequently being told not to fight or argue back. For years I dealt with being told to just agree with him so the argument would end faster. I was forcefully taught to give up my power of opinion in order to “keep the peace”.  Only now in my twenties I’m able to see how badly this has affected me and my stance in relationships. When I was “stuck” in an unhealthy relationship my sophomore year of high school I had no impulse to leave because the one thought that constantly repeated was, “it’s supposed to be like this. Love is like this.” I saw nothing wrong with the situation I was in until it started approaching its final days, but even then I didn’t feel like I had the power to leave so I had to wait until he hit his breaking point. To this day I still feel like I am a powerless human being when it comes to being in an intimate relationship. I constantly wake up going through an imaginary checklist and convincing myself that things aren’t going to work out because we haven’t gone through protocol. I constantly tell myself that this isn’t going to work out because we weren’t friends for long enough before we kissed. I constantly tell myself that I should stop seeing him for days in order to restrict communication to texting only. These impulses are not something I can just shake off; they are an ingrained part of me because past experiences have made them feel like a permanent piece of who I am.

In an online article titled Anxiety and The Need To Be In Control by Jodi Lobozzo Aman, she writes that not being in control is an illusion since we are never truly in control of our environment. That feeling of hopelessness is just a nasty lie that the anxiety is trying to convince you of so it can be in control. She made a great (and eye opening) point in her article about how we may not be able to control the situation, but we CAN control our response. Aman writes, “Your response creates your identity, your feelings, your mood. It influences how you see yourself and how you experience the world." Aman concludes her article with the advice that it will take a while to learn this new behavior but it will be rewarding because you will learn to trust yourself and that will be a giant step towards eliminating your anxiety.

This is only the beginning, but it will pay off in the end.