If we have experienced trauma in our lives, pain, uncertainty, loss..then a creative way of trying to cope with this would be to believe that we need to control everything… from our feelings to our bodies and striving for perfection in life…
Your fear of losing control will be unique to you, as we have all had different early experiences, and various life events, yet the theme is uncertainty, fear of some sort and a painful belief that there will be a negative outcome towards us if we don’t hold on tightly in one way or another 🙁
Firstly, does this sound familiar? Is there a part of you that feels like it needs to be in control in one way or another? How does this manifest itself? In relation to your feelings…holding on and not losing control…with your body, restricting what you eat or over exercising as an attempt to control how your body looks to others? People pleasing…a painful attempt to secure how others see you? Controlling others in some way…for fear that they will hurt you if not?
Once you have located this part of you, does it make sense to you, given your experiences that this part would show up in this way and try and protect you? Parts of us that feel a need to be in control get a bad reputation and can be sorely misunderstood by others…And really in some ways we can only truly understand from our own perspective why it feels so important to protect ourselves in this way, as we are the ones that experienced those painful events first-hand…otherwise there wouldn’t be the need for a part of us to step in and try and take control 🙁
Secondly, once you have the understanding, does it feel possible to send inside ( inside you) some compassion to that part of you that experienced the pain and therefore sent in the recruits to protect you by taking control? What do you notice when you imagine doing that…is there an inner critic that shows up…a blocking part of you that won’t allow the compassion…or do you find yourself distracting and thinking about something else? All of these can be ways that we have learned to protect ourselves from feeling that original pain and suffering AND may sound like a family member or someone who had a strong influence in your life, who also learned to cope in this way.
Other blogs talk about surrendering, being the opposite of holding on…sounds easy in theory and harder to do in practice, as we have mentioned, parts in us are invested in keeping us safe emotionally, even the “controlling” parts too.
Sometimes for our parts it can be really important to be seen…if you gain clarity as to which part of you is trying to gain control…then let that part of you know that you see it..and if it’s trying to control in some way…there’s a valid reason and no doubt its protecting another part of you that is holding a lot of pain. By placing a hand on your body where you feel that part of you, shows that part you see it, and lets that part know that you are there with it, alongside it.
That can be the start of a different way of being with yourself and therefore a letting go of that need to hold on……
Take good care of you and ALL your parts 🙂
