Control

The emotion of control is a frequent offender. It usually comes up when you are feeling out of control with a situation. It can cause you to feel anxious, frustrated, angry or sad. You may try to justify your need to control by telling yourself that for whatever reason it is necessary to control the situation.  It usually never is. Don’t give into control examine it and find out what drives this response in you.

We all succumb to the emotion of control from time to time. It may be a seemingly innocuous feeling of needing to take charge or make a decision. Perhaps we are gently steering someone into making a judgement or decision that feels like it would have a better outcome for us. Be honest with yourself and don’t ignore your need to control the situation. The emotion of control can have a very negative impact on how you feel and how you make others feel so it is worth fully examining it so you can recognise it, even when it sneaks up on you in a seemingly harmless way.

Control can also be triggered as a more obvious emotion with devastating effects on your mental health and relationships. When the emotion of control contains heavyweight feelings and beliefs it can cause you to react and behave in destructive and negative ways, which can leave a lasting impression on yourself and others. If you feel the need to limit other peoples choices or you are vocal in your disapproval of others behaviour, ideas or actions then you are actually trying to assert control over them. Whether you do this verbally, non-verbally or physically it is still a form of control. It may seem harmless because you are simply trying to explain to them how you feel or perhaps you don’t say anything but you purposefully ignore them if they behave in a way that you don’t like.

You may feel justified in acting this way. Perhaps you feel it is for their own good, you are doing it out of love or you are trying to protect them. Whilst all this may be true you are still coming from an emotion, not a place of unconditional love and clarity.

Control can sometimes go hand in hand with other emotions such as defiance, responsibility or impending doom, which not only makes it harder to examine it also enhances your feelings and reactions causing a perfect storm.

The emotion of control can sometimes cut straight to the core of our worst fears and beliefs, abandonment, not good enough, loss, grief, humiliation etc which is why it can drive some of our most negative behaviours. When dealing with control try to remember that fears are never true and examine the negative beliefs that you have around being out of control. Really dive deep to get to the core of your feelings and emotions. Once you have a full understanding of control, although you may still become triggered, you will be able to recognise that you are coming from an emotion and not allow it to negatively affect your words, thoughts and actions.