From birth and throughout life, we seek to establish control. We are programmed by instinct to take charge of our life to the extent possible, not only to survive, but also to control experience. We become educated. We develop skills and capabilities that provide us with a competitive edge. We prepare ourselves to meet challenges. We try to control events and people around us to the extent that we can. We attempt to manipulate situational outcomes and the behaviors of others as much as possible in order to ensure our security and future. If we are wise, we also work at developing self-control so that we can maximize the impact of our efforts and our physical and emotion energy as we endeavor to attain our short- and long-term goals.
In order to gain and maintain control, we study the natural world and the behavior of others, piecing together our observations about social dynamics, economic realities, and cause and effect. Through biological maturation and through practice, we form habits, gradually increasing control over ourselves both physically and behaviorally.
We cultivate and refine many interpretations about what we can control around us. Through combinations of trial and error, careful perception, hypothesis, observation, and calculations, we expand working concepts and expectations about what leads to what results and what we can do about it.
Obviously, the decades-long process of growing up involves the learning and practice of self-control over our functional bodies and the interactions between ourselves and the world. Self-care, hygiene, and autonomous behaviors reflect the acquisition of self-control. So, too, do skills such as academic, artistic, and athletic talents—these are repetitively and strategically honed through years of dedicated practice.
Attaining mastery pays big dividends in self-confidence, social approval and inclusion, and establishing an identity, material rewards, and security. The surgeon must be in control of the operating room. The elementary school or high school teacher must be in control his or her classroom. The football coach must be in control of his team. The style with which they do so will vary, but the basic elements of the admixture will not. Control is at the fulcrum.
As with other human survival instincts and imperatives, the drive to control can be pushed to excess, warped, or twisted into maladaptive behaviors and evil directions. Prime nefarious examples of control running amok are Hitler and Stalin. Humanity has built-in tendencies to inflate self-importance and to validate and justify these inclinations through excessive control, even domination of others.
Control may be linked with power, although they are not synonymous. Power is generative, whereas control may be generative, restorative, or homeostatic. The generative nature of power lies in its strength, authority, and influence. Power manifests itself in its capacity to propel and/or sustain through action or potential action. Control may involve the influence of power; but control involves balance and regulation. It necessitates checks and balances through feedback loops.
We may express power through a manifest ability to do something—for example, hit a home run, grant clemency, or command obedience. But the expression of control invariably includes some aspect of restraint (not overdoing something). To exert control is to use checks and balances to ensure a smooth flow of operation and to ensure functioning within a predetermined set of limits. As examples: a team may control the pace of the game, a parent may control a child’s behavior, or biological rhythms may be controlled through medications.
As we establish control mechanisms to help us through life, we take them for granted until something upsets the apple cart. Control disruptions or losses make us pay attention and seek to restore what we had. In cases of excessive fears or worries, the need for control may prompt responses to keep from losing what we may fear.
Life is full of losses and traumas. They may be severe or minor; they may come in waves or seem unfairly foisted upon some individuals in a cascade of misfortune. Nonetheless, we all will experience losses and traumas and their consequent disruptions to control.
It’s important to note that loss of control may be actual, perceived, or both.
Undoubtedly, you have suffered losses—people you cared for, possessions, opportunities, perhaps even the loss of an ability or body function (I have devoted chapters to these losses in my book, When God Takes Away). Experiencing a loss throws our mental, emotional, and neurological equilibrium out of whack. We may become disturbed anywhere along a continuum from “just not feeling quite right” to the onset of severe symptoms. Sometimes, the occurrence of symptoms seems like a new phenomenon, unlike our recollection of previous distress. Most often, however, people experience some version (or reversion) of symptoms they have experienced at some former time of duress. Those prone to anxiety or depression tend to become anxious or depressed; aches, pains, and somatic complaints that had healed or were less prominent may flair up again strongly.
In addition to suffering actual events of loss, some people are vulnerable to excessive fears and worries about the potential and possibilities of loss. This syndrome can occur in those who are “worry warts” by nature, individuals who tend to be obsessive compulsive, or who have simply developed phobias about an uncertain future. Those who obsessively worry about health, illness, or death suffer from a very debilitating and private agony. Recurring fears and negative thoughts imprison the emotional lives of these sufferers.
Thus, tangible losses, which are to be expected (though not necessarily specifically predictable), incur a secondary loss of control, as well as inducing trauma. Not all traumas are losses, but all significant losses induce trauma.
The nature of trauma is that its perceptual and emotional aftermath lingers far beyond the actual event.
A trauma may result from the following:
The traditional concept of trauma is predicated on an assumption of a catastrophic event outside the range of usual experience. However, trauma encompasses a much broader range of causal situations and is a very common occurrence. Traumas are universal, and they occur intermittently in everyone’s life. Recovering from traumas is necessary for basic physical functioning and mental and emotional health, and can be accomplished routinely by most people (given the right tools, training, and support).
In order to understand these points, you must start with the assumption that we all have vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities make us physically and psychologically prone to attacks and breakdowns that are the result of life’s events and forces.
As we accumulate experiences and get to know ourselves, we can ideally identify (and often protect ourselves) against many of our own vulnerabilities. Certain vulnerabilities are genetically coded and specific. Vulnerabilities are the weak links that allow us to become ill or dysfunctional in a myriad of ways. For example, it is well known that particular diseases tend to run in families. A family history of heart disease, diabetes, depression, etc. doesn’t determine that you will be afflicted with these conditions, but it does weigh the odds that put you at greater statistical risk.
Trauma occurs when we are caught in an “attack” on one of our “weak links,” whether the attack was intentional, random, or even imagined. The essence of trauma is that it penetrates defenses, seizes upon vulnerability, and leaves us feeling hurt, defenseless, and usually causes us to “relive” in some way the embedded traumatic experience. Common sense observation and your own experiences will confirm this cause and effect link.
After a vehicle accident or near-accident, many people habitually tend to tense up when reminders or even vaguely similar conditions present themselves, as if girding up for another accident. For example, suppose you were in an auto accident that really rattled you, perhaps even injured you. For a long time afterward, you might become anxious when approaching the scene of that accident. Or, say the police were pursuing a speeding car that blew through a red light and almost hit your car. Subsequently, you might panic whenever you hear in the distance the sound of a police siren while you are driving. This reaction evokes both physiological (fight-or-flight) and psychological / mental / emotional responses. The set of defensive responses to an anticipated offending event (in the absence of its presence or direct evidence that it will necessarily occur) is called perseveration: responding to an event that is no longer present.
There are indeed many forms of trauma that occur when people are subjected to harsh conditions, abuse, overwhelming negativity, rejection, racism, isolation, poverty, and so forth. For many people, however, it is overwhelming enough even to have to deal with the more mundane traumas that result from the daily interactions, demands, and conflicts typically associated with ordinary relationships.
Thus, traumas are an inherent and important influence that robs and depletes the sense of control and command over one’s life and direction.
Control mechanisms are prevalent within us and in our world. They are endemic to the functioning of nature, including humans. There are scientific principles that explain control. I analyze and give practical applications of a number of these key principles in my forthcoming book, Life Control: Seven Principles You Need to Take Charge and Get Ahead in Your Business and Personal Life.
For starters, become cognizant of how core control is in influencing your emotions, motivations, confidence, expectations, and the ways that you engage with your everyday activities. You may need to assess how you are using control and whether your “brand” of control is actually working at cross-purposes with your attaining your goals. As you recognize how your control orientation underlies your experiences and behaviors, you may need to come to grips with how your need for control may be out of kilter and negatively affecting your decisions and leading you into actions and perceptions that are counterproductive.
Taking charge and wanting to be in control does not make a person into a “control freak.” We are human—as such, we are subject to temptation, sin, rebellion, ego responses, and overreactions. We all want to make sense of our world and do what it takes to survive and thrive. Sometimes, we don’t know how to gain and maintain control. Alternatively, we may want to “over” control or indulge in fantasies that the world is obligated to respond to our wishes.
A realistic perspective on control leads to a healthy balance of acquiring the leverage we need while respecting the rights and needs of others.
Basically, we have an innate sensitivity and need to exert control in three areas:
Controlling oneself requires developmental maturity; this includes restraint over impulses, delay of gratification, acceptance of social norms, the exercise of empathy, and adequate self-care, including appropriate intervention to maintain good brain functioning and emotional regulation.
Reasonable control over others involves the ability to assess realistic limits, predict cause and effect outcomes, relational abilities to accommodate the needs of others, and an identification and connection with one’s own values, ethics, integrity, and character.
Control over the future is a common aspiration, often unrecognized as the source desire underlying our worries, obsessions, and excesses. Wanting to control valued future outcomes is natural, but care and balance are required in order to not live in fantasy or act out of fear. To do so in moderation and propriety requires well-developed abilities to perceive reality adequately, evaluate actions and responses, and make compromises and adjustments.
The take-home message regarding the role of control in our lives is this:
Whenever you are gripped by anxiety or other negative emotions, remember that these are instinctive responses to perceived loss of control. Knowing that the sense of control is pivotal to well-being and motivations, it’s prudent to be aware that your adaptive functioning and coping mechanisms are highly affected by how much in control you feel and believe you are, especially within the context of your personal expectations and standards about what you can and do control.
Control is so fundamental that individuals may overreact to perceived or actual loss of control either by surrendering to a state of helplessness or by becoming obsessively preoccupied with controlling or micromanaging things to the point of maladaptation. Therefore, it’s important to develop a dynamic understanding of what is and is not controllable in one’s own life. Recognizing and valuing our need for control prompts us to monitor how much in charge we feel, and this is vital during periods of healing and recovery from loss and trauma. Keeping control in check also serves as a basis for social interaction and collaboration.
The importance and limits of control are poetically captured in the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
— Mark Steinberg, PhD
