How to stop all control?
Do you like to create lists and tables? All your meetings are carefully planned and an accidental encounter with a girlfriend on the street is a headache for you? In all the trips, you must take a set of clothes for each temperature, despite the fact that you have already carefully checked the weather forecast, and all the sights planned for visiting are marked with a circle in the guidebook and are scheduled by day? In the end, you are painfully difficult to entrust the assembly of the closet to a loved one and you will definitely stand over his soul? Maybe everything is not quite so, but if you are seriously worried about the problem that everything goes according to your invented plan, then admit that you are the same who controls the freak and something has to be done about it.
How to stop trying to control everything?
Why are we so eager for control? First of all, because we are scared. Fear that something unexpected and threatening will happen. The second reason for control is the need for confidence. When the result is known, we are well and calmly. Even if it comes to choosing a food in a restaurant, not everyone is ready to order some uncharted cuttlefish instead of the usual pasta, for example. And the point here is not that the cuttlefish can be tasteless, but the fact that macaroni is such since childhood, whatever their name. There is a third reason, and it can both complement the first two and be absolutely unrelated to them. An external attempt to control can be a struggle with an internal alarm. A person who is trying to organize chaos outside, is actually fighting chaos inside.
Olga Miloradova psychotherapist
If your anxiety reaches its apotheosis, then you are not just controlling the freak, you are also a perfectionist. Are you sure that no one except you will do the assigned task better, or even everything will fill up. You trust few people. If you (God forbid) have children, they grow in confidence that they are not good enough for anything. Stop it. Try asking yourself a few questions. What exactly scares you into thinking that you lose control? What is really such a terrible thing happens if the guests at the party are not seated at the planned places? If a trip to Italy breaks down and you suddenly go to rest in Spain? What happens if instead of the planned dress you have to wear shorts? Will the world collapse after this? Will the party or vacation break? Your whole appearance will be disturbed by a spontaneous change of clothes and no one will ever love you again?
Ask yourself: what gives you control? And immediately after that, try to remember in how many percent of cases everything went exactly as planned according to the scenario. And the most important thing that I will tell you now is that control does not exist. Only the illusion of control is possible. Nothing can be completely sure, except for the sad truth that we will all die, of course.
Perfectionism is an imperfection: trying to keep everything in perfect order inhibits you
So my advice to you: let go. I do not ask you to completely abandon the plans and create a hippie commune. I suggest trying to trust the world around us and at least a little go with the flow. If it’s anxiety, try coping with it. Practice yoga, qigong or in more serious cases, consult a specialist. If you are a perfectionist, understand that perfectionism in itself is an imperfection: trying to keep everything in perfect order is slowing you down, you are reworking something again, depriving yourself of new opportunities. If you really need to do something important, try sometimes to delegate your responsibility to other people, understand that no one is able to cope with all the problems on their own.
Stop proving to everyone that you are right in everything and that your point of view is the only correct one. Perhaps this is not about you, but many people prone to control suffer from it. Learn to accept things as they are. And people, by the way, too. And in this regard, stop giving advice that you do not ask. Yes, perhaps, in your opinion, this girl is too fat / thin. Surely she knows about it. If she is worried about your point of view, she will tell you about it. Stop monitoring every second and just let things happen. Accept the events that happen at the last second, in the end you can change and move something. And yes, it may be impossible to obtain total freedom, but at least you should try to get as close as possible to it.