When Control Starts Controlling You

A big step with control is acknowledging what is good in your day and what is hard about your day without a clenched jaw, a tight chest or a racing heart. It’s allowing yourself to name the truth of the moment without bracing for impact. There may be things you can change, but there is a lot we simply can’t. And when we try to control the uncontrollable, it breeds chaos inside us. It creates anxiousness, annoyance, irritability, discontentment, and can so easily spill over into anger.

Control often becomes our attempt to keep life, people and circumstances exactly the way we want them to be. We cling tightly, not realising how that tension slowly wears us down — physically, emotionally and mentally. The more we grip, the more we exhaust ourselves.

What we don’t always see is the message control sends to the people around us. It can quietly communicate that we don’t trust them, that we don’t believe they can handle things, or that their way isn’t good enough. Instead of drawing people closer, control can push them away. It can create distance where we long for connection, and division where we hoped for unity and peace.

Sometimes control feels like safety. Sometimes it feels like the only way to hold everything together. But often, it’s the very thing pulling us apart.

So pause for a moment and gently ask yourself:

• What are you trying to control?
• What is it costing you; in your body, your peace, your relationships?
• And what might shift if you loosened your grip, even just a little?