Why Trying to Control Everything in Our Lives Can Be Harmful

People love certainties. And by certainty we do not mean only knowing for sure what will happen to our lives in the future, but we also seek certainty even in the smallest thing. To make this human tendency clear, let's think about it the other way around: what do we do when No do we have control of something? In effect, we become impatient or feel anxious, even though solving the situation is completely out of our possibilities or the matter is even too serious.

We have all experienced firsthand how unpleasant it feels to try to control some dimension of our lives and not succeed. However, the reasons why trying to control everything can be very harmful to people are often unknown, such as as well as the reasons why we fall into this way of behaving, two knots that we will try to unravel in this article.

Control: why do we need to be certain of everything?

The first thing we have to know about control is that, in itself, it is completely logical and expected that people tend to seek certainties. It is true that not everything can be reduced to biology, but our phylogenetic evolutionary history—that is, as a human species—has been determined by the development of a series of capacities that our most primitive ancestors have put into practice for survival, such as being able to use language and the concepts it provides to categorize events in the world, communicate with others, make inferences about reality, or carry out highly elaborate reasoning with the least expenditure of resources possible.

To this day, the dynamism with which our mind operates is still a great advantage. Survival (in a literal sense) is not usually at stake in everyday life. However, we still need planning capacity to ensure punctuality in an appointment, to organize our study time before that important exam for us; even to know how to assertively tell a friend that we feel uncomfortable in the face of a situation that occurred between the two of us.

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How can trying to be in control hurt us?

As we have seen, wanting to be in control is normal, and in many situations it is also functional to our lives. Nevertheless, the search for control of the events that occur around us can become a recurring and problematic mechanism. Carrying out actions in order to control an external situation could imply that a person has difficulties to tolerate uncertainty, that is, that they do not allow yourself to feel the physical sensations or thoughts that ignoring the result of something entails, and consequently carry out behaviors to eliminate that discomfort.

The problem is that uncertainty cannot be completely eliminated. In fact, it is part of life: the circumstances that surround us are just that, circumstances, and they can turn into completely different situations overnight. The lie that people intolerant of uncertainty believe is that by being in control of the events around them, they can feel more secure. In other words, that increasing certainty will decrease uncertainty.

This, perhaps, at first may be so. However, another new situation will always appear that generates uncertainty —and, why not, fear, unpleasant thoughts or anxiety, so eradicating our emotions and thoughts does not seem good idea. In fact, the only thing we will achieve is to decrease our tolerance for uncertain situations. In addition, it is possible that, in the attempt to control the external events of our lives, other areas of our life such as our interpersonal relationships, or that unpleasant experiences are intensify. This unhelpful strategy is usually a consequence of trying to avoid running into those uncomfortable experiences that happen inside our mind, whether they are emotions, thoughts or images.

To illustrate this, let's imagine that Mariana is going to a birthday party where she knows that her ex-partner is very likely to be there. It is normal for her to feel anxious about it. She is not very tolerant of uncertainty, so instead of allowing herself to experience the discomfort that the situation produces, she decides to call her friend Sofía de ella to reassure herself that she will also go to the party.

This is the second time he calls her, the first was this morning, and she had already told him that she would go. In other words, she seeks to take control of the situation. If Sofía answered her quickly, Mariana would be calmer, at least for a while. However, this time Sofia does not answer. At this point, Mariana feels more anxious than she did before, which causes her a share of added suffering that was not foreseen before. In addition, different areas of her life would be affected. For example, regarding her ties, Sofía could get a little annoyed by Mariana's insistence on the phone; or by ruminating on the problem, she might not have exercised that morning, which is very important to her.

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Put control aside

The behaviors in which this tendency to want to control everything is manifested are very varied. They can sometimes be seen in academic settings when some people have difficulty working as a team. They believe that by doing everything themselves they will ensure that they don't get a bad grade (since, if we go a little deeper, getting a bad grade would imply experiencing emotions normal but unpleasant, and not everyone is willing to do so), or in people who repeatedly reevaluate their decisions because they believe that in this way they could appease the uncertainty.

As we have developed, trying to control everything in our lives is harmful in that it leads to increased worry and discomfort. Therefore, the first step to deal with this situation is to record under what circumstances we carry out this type of behavior.

Then we should evaluate what different way of acting we can put into practice instead of resorting to the “old habits” that were aimed at controlling. The last step will be to put it into practice starting with the simplest behaviors. However, it is important to note that this process is not always easy or linear, so consulting with a mental health professional could significantly help this process.

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The importance of distinctions

As the idea that we can control everything in the first leg is, deep down, a mirage, We must learn to specify how far our room for maneuver reaches when facing the needs we faceso that we can set ourselves realistic goals. That is why in coaching these beliefs are worked on from what we call distinctions: deep reflections on where the concepts on which we build begin and end our lives. This is how we focus on certain terms with the aim of expanding people's possibilities of action.

The idea is not to feel bad for not achieving poorly defined and too abstract objectives, in which projects coincide that contradict each other and therefore do not allow us to have a sense of progress in our development staff.