Have any Dopers had success in managing or even eliminating some of their “control-freak” tendencies?
I get stressed out when the people around me don’t do what I think they should do, and I feel that this is the way madness lies (or however that saying goes).
Walking on the wrong side of the sidewalk?!!? What is wrong with you - don’t you know that everyone in Canada walks on the right?
Spelling mistakes in your correspondence / advertising / SD thread ? Clean up your act!!!
Driving too slow? What is your problem!?!? Driving too fast? Are you trying to kill somebody?!?!?
It’s ridiculous and I KNOW how much stress and anxiety I am causing for myself with this behaviour.
So seriously … has anyone had any luck with minimizing their control freakiness?
Mods, don’t touch that thread title. How else is stainz going to learn.
As for actually changing the behavior, I would say, do something big and stupid with no planning. MrsFantsyPants and I got on a plane and flew to Nairobi with essentially no plans, no hotels booked, nothin. We made some mistakes, got ourselves into some dangerous situations, ended up in tears a couple of times, but the month that we spent there was fantastic. It helped us realized that things generally work out as well or better when you just glide with the current. We learned a lot about ourselves and each other.
My other advice. Answer this question… What would you do if you had an infinite amount of courage?
Just figure out roughly how often you could relinquish control over something, so that other people can get their turn, and come up with a system of tracking whether it’s time to crack down on the people around you or just let it slide. Once it’s part of your process to let it slide, then it’s just like you’re controlling the situation, see? You’ll do fine at relinquishing control, so long as you stay exactly with the system.
Thanks for the smiles, but in spite of my stupid thread title, I’m actually serious.
It’s driving my boyfriend nuts, my friends nuts, and my family nuts. I know that I’m the only one that can change this, but I’m having such a tough time with it.
This thread by Indygrrl sounds very much like what you describe.
I’ve been there too, but it went away when I was treated for depression. I’ve been off meds for two months now, and my control freakishness is staying at the “quirky” level so far. Even if you aren’t depressed (and the extreme irritability and resistance to change were the two most noticible signs of my depression), meds or some talk therapy may help. Sometimes you just have to give your mind a rest, ya know?
Why do you feel this need for control?
How people walk down the sidewalk?
What is it that is bugging you?
Either see a shrink, or watch The Odd Couple and realize that a little mess is a good thing.
If it is bothering you, think of what your comments are doing to those you work and live with.
I bowl one night a week with a very nice, lovely person on a team of five. This one person is ------>woundsotight<------ you could stick a telephone pole up her ass and she would belch out toothpicks.
She can’t let go of a subject and rattles on for the entire night saying the exact same thing word for word over and over and over again. She is like a dog with a frisbee. She.won’t.let.go.
The two weeks she missed bowling for vacation were the most pleasantly quiet evenings. We sat there, basking in the silence.
We all knew what she needed.
Because we all had three hours a week to physcoanalize her. It was very frustrating because we knew she needed someone to talk too, but she refused to listen to anyone. It was clear she wasn’t happy unless she was miserable. And our nights out ( for three of us it is our only night out.) are ruined by one persons behavior.
She needed to a) kick her mother out of her head. she hasn’t spoken to her mother in a decade and had guilty feelings over that. Loads of Irish Catholic guilt coming in there. b) stop being an anal retentive control freak and super cleaning freak (OCD) and c) Go to therapy.
Something happened early this fall. Not really sure what. But she is a) on some meds and they are WONDERFUL because they allow us to have a conversation with her instead of listening to her yammer on. b) Have taken away her urge to clean and control everything. c) She is in therapy and we haven’t heard about her mother at all this season. YAY!
We now can see just how nice we knew she was deep down inside. And, this is the best part, her bowling score improved. YAY!
If you think there is a problem, then there is a problem. Go talk to your doctor. I got prozac without a shrinks visit and I’m perfectl…*must climb clock tower…time to shoot the president * …
I don’t know where I got it, but I seem to have decided at some time in my adulthood that if anything was going to go wrong for somebody, I didn’t want to be the cause of it or be blamed for it. Maybe it’s the coward’s way out, but I don’t try to influence anyone else to do things my way. Helps me a lot in not trying to control others while I go happily on my way. I still see all the idiot drivers you mention, and talk to them plenty, but they don’t hear me.
My name is gardentraveler and I’m a control freak.
What’s more, I work with a bunch of control freaks. We’ve all recognized this tendency in ourselves and worked on overcoming it together. This has greatly assisted us in avoiding violations of our workplace violence policy.
You might want to start by working on one area in your life. What happened with me was that I had much more work than I could do. And I had staff that I could (theoretically) delegate tasks to, although they didn’t have the level of experience that I had. When I got to the point where I would have been heading for a nervous breakdown, I started to look for management books and found one that was called Don’t Do, Delegate . Not particularly brilliant, but it was what I needed to hear at the time.
The idea from this book that you might be able to use has to do with focusing on the results of letting others complete a task.
What bad thing is going to happen if that person is walking on the left side of the sidewalk? You might have to walk around them. Oh well, more exercise for you.
Why is it so important that everything be spelled perfectly? I agree that it makes a better impression, but in most cases, the message is still getting across, right?
People driving differently than you’d like. You can’t control them. REALLY. Get out of their way and focus on getting where you need to be.
I still have my moments when I must be the one who completes a certain task, but most of the time I can hand things off and know that whatever needs to be done will get done in a way that no one will object to. Maybe not exactly the way I would do it, but it will be checked of the list!
I’ve been editing this long enough ; I hope I got a point across.
Hope you find a way to manage it - it’s really less stressful for everyone.
I think the thing that made the biggest difference to me was hearing someone say something like “I used to get frustrated because I’d try not to control others and fail. I never noticed the obvious, that I had no control over others anyway.”
Hearing that did a lot for me. It put the focus back on myself, and I realized that the issue wasn’t that I was trying to control others. I was just making a fool of myself.
One is that you want to stop trying to control other people’s behavior.
The other is that you want to have more control over what you are thinking and feeling.
Sometimes trying to control others is a compulsive behavior which is best treated with counseling and/or medication. (You wouldn’t believe the difference meds can make!)
Sometimes we try to control others when we feel out of control of our own lives.
If you are the sort who has to arrange pictures on someone’s wall because they are crooked or straighten their silverware or open packages for them because they are taking too much time, then your behavior may be compulsive.
If you are always sticking your nose into someone else’s business, there may be other causes.
My shrink doesn’t even want me to remind my 63 year old husband to take his umbrella with him on a rainy day. And I’m not the one with control problems! It’s just that my psychiatrist wants me to focus on controlling my own actions and not allowing anyone else to control them..
Do you feel that you already have a pretty good grasp of what is your business and what is not? If you knew that the wife of an acquaintance – a co-worker in another department – was cheating, would you tell him?
Thanks all … I was talking to a friend about this the other night … it’s hard to explain in writing.
My boyfriend would say I’m always expecting the worst.
My best friend would say I’m too quick to judge.
My mother would say I’m too much of a worrier.
My counsellor would agree with me that I worry about what others are doing as a distraction from my own actions.
I KNOW how much better I feel and how much more fun I am to be around when I am able to just enjoy life, take things as they come, be more patient, be more pleasant to people …
It just seems like as soon as you add any negative variable into the mix - a bad hair day, PMS, problems finding a parking spot, feeling fat, etc etc etc - it becomes really hard for me to control (there’s that word again) my temper and my impatience.
It’s a tough way to go through life. Maybe it’s more of an anxiety disorder (featherlou has pointed this out to me in a previous thread) than a control issue. I wouldn’t say I’m compulsive about it, I just find it very stressful when people do things that I think are “wrong” … especially people that I don’t know, strangely enough. It is hard for me to let go - I can’t stop thinking “I would never do that - what is HIS/HER problem!!!” …
Sorry, enough babbling. Guess I should go back to my counsellor and see what she suggests …
I was just interested in Dopers who had managed to overcome their controlling tendencies … thanks again!
Hi, it’s me again.
Yup, control-freak/perfectionist tendencies are part of the package with anxiety disorders. It is insecurity-driven behaviour, I believe (Dr. Joseph Luciani has a great take on this). People with anxiety try to control everything to make themselves feel better/more secure. It doesn’t work, of course, because no one can control everything. Insecurity-driven behaviour like this comes from our basic lack of confidence in ourselves and our ability to handle life as it comes.
What is helping me is telling myself that I can, indeed, handle what life brings. I don’t have to prepare or brace myself for it.
My mother was a control freak. Shortly before she died she told me about something that happened when she was a child. It was something that she had no control over. I am convinced that after that event, she decided that she would never loose control of her life again. She controlled people around her to insure she wouldn’t loose control and I believe that also meant she had no sympathy for people that allowed their lives to get out of control. Think back and see if you can find a time when you suffered from not having control. It may help you understand why you have such a need to have control over everything around you, especially during times of stress.
Ok… now follow my directions (EXACTLY, IF YOU PLEASE snick)
First you must write a letter of resignation to the Universe.
Mine went something like:
“I understand how important my position as General Manager is, but personal commitments dictate my resignation. I’m willing to stay until a replacement can be found or 2 weeks which ever comes first.”
During the two weeks following, watch for likely candidates to fill your shoes. Then when your grace period ends, each time you see something you MUST correct, say to yourself, “Not my job anymore.” If you mentally picked your replacement, add, that he/she will handle it.
It takes time but you’ll find some peace after a while. You won’t be “cured” You’ll still drive your family and friends crazy at times but not as badly or as often.
Good luck and Peace
Thanks all … featherlou, it’s like you’re inside my head, and it’s a little scary!
Shirley, I want to thank you for your perspective on dealing with a C.F. (control freak) - I know how off-putting it is for those around me and I do my best to at least acknowledge to them that I AM aware of it, and that I’m sorry and I’m working on it.
? Clean up your act!!!
