Limits of control

Try to get your child to go to school in the spring with a warm hat. With a schoolboy of seven or eight years, the number, most likely, will still pass. A child of ten or twelve, at best, will hide it in a briefcase, barely stepping over the threshold. How the dialogue with a teenager will end is scary to even imagine.

And what a shame: you sincerely care about the health of the child, knowing from experience that the weather is changeable, and catching a cold costs nothing …

Territory of non-freedom

Of course, in this – as in any other – situation, we want only the best for our child. But in addition, we also exercise control. Sometimes (if it’s -20 degrees outside) it’s absolutely necessary. And sometimes (if there is +10 degrees) – obviously superfluous.

Unfortunately, finding the limits of control is a difficult task. And the more important a person is to us, the more important the situation, the more often we tend to abuse control. Meanwhile, it drains our own strength, jeopardizes relationships, and does not always help find a solution to the problem.

If we are able to think about it, then we understand that control, while partly helping us to cope with the difficulties of modern life (oversaturated with various connections, events and obligations), at the same time robs us of joy, lightness, spontaneity, taste for change.

What happens very rarely: control turns on automatically as soon as there is a threat to our valuable image of ourselves as a responsible person, in every sense taking care of himself and really wasting his own time …

Tatiana, 37, is a firm believer in discipline. “Without her, I would definitely have gained ten extra pounds, I know myself! she thinks. – And how would I find time for my family, for friends – and so that work does not suffer? No, without discipline this is impossible, everything must be foreseen, everything must be planned and kept under control.”

Tatyana admits that the “mania of control” was not always inherent in her. She became her answer to her own childhood: “My parents were nice, but completely careless people. Their promises usually remained only promises, they could not even plan their lives properly. And I needed confidence.”

They can be caused not only by parents (like Tatyana’s), who failed to meet the child’s needs for safety and predictability, says family psychotherapist, narrative consultant Ekaterina Zhornyak.

“For example, if a mother strives for complete merging with a child and does not let him go, he is forced to build an emotional barrier, create his own territory of control. And the fear of losing vigilance even for a minute can indicate psychological trauma.

Ivan, who is now almost 40 years old, in his childhood at the dacha did not fasten the collar of his beloved dog, and he ran away from the site and disappeared. As an adult, Ivan constantly double-checks his every step: are the windows closed, is the door locked, are the lights, stove and iron turned off, has he forgotten documents and watches at home, has he set the alarm since the evening and is there enough battery power in the phone.

“The need to protect ourselves from accidents keeps us in a state of constant stress,” warns psychologist Stephanie Ayusso, “which leads to physical and nervous exhaustion.”

Will to will

Fear of uncertainty is one of the main reasons for constant control. Among others – the desire for a life in which everything happens exclusively as we want.

“Remember the famous song: “We shouldn’t bend under the changing world, let it bend under us,” says existential psychotherapist Svetlana Krivtsova. “It’s completely teenage.” It seems to me that it is better to take a closer look at the changing world. Sometimes, and “bend” – at least in order to better understand its nature and change something in it.

And the world does not tolerate pressure attempts. Not only the surrounding “changing world”, but also our own, inner one. He becomes impoverished, gradually becomes more and more alien – after all, the inner world (the voice of conscience, closeness to oneself, just a good relationship with oneself) is little subject to our will.

It’s probably worth mentioning. Control is not only five pages of a diary filled with urgent matters for the next three hours, not only a mandatory check of the child’s homework, a daily call to parents and refusal to eat after seven in the evening.

Control is first and foremost an effort. And the decision to go to a deliberately boring party just because our friends threw it is exactly the same control. It always implies the inclusion of the will in order to overcome certain obstacles, including our own unwillingness.

This is what classical psychoanalysis thinks. “In psychoanalysis, control is an important function of the “I” of each of us,” explains Stephanie Ayusso. – Its purpose is to distribute the energy of lower drives (instincts and affects) in accordance with the requirements of reality. The maturity of a person is determined by how much she is able to control her needs and spontaneous reactions with the help of her will, to anticipate the development of events and manage her life.

The technical, planning-conquering attitude to reality has devastating consequences for man himself, for society, for nature. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote about this in 1929; a few years later, the concept of will became one of the cornerstones of Nazi ideology.

No less dangerous is the desire for complete control at the level of personal destiny. Many of us consider ourselves serious, solid and sane people whose lives are predictable for years to come.

So thought and 44-year-old Galina. But at the peak of the economic crisis, her company announced that it was laying off a third of its employees, including her. “I just couldn’t believe it,” she recalls. “Work has been a part of my life. It was as if I myself suddenly decided to “cut” my arm or leg!”

Only now, with the help of psychotherapy, Galina is recovering from a depression that has dragged on for three years. “It sounds strange, but before it really didn’t occur to me that I can’t control everything, that not everything depends on my efforts,” she admits. “Now I understand it very well, but the lesson was cruel.”

Trapeze gymnast

Live long and in harmony with yourself and the world around you, be healthy and attractive, achieve success, find time for yourself and loved ones… It’s hard not to fall in love with this perfect picture. But can it be made a reality?

Full control, which is part of the Western idea of ​​efficiency, does not seem to work. But complete relaxation, which Eastern spiritual practices call for, is far from always possible.

It would never occur to us to relax and “let go” while driving on the motorway at a speed of 120 kilometers per hour. Or in any other circumstances requiring immediate and clear action.

Even believing people, striving to live with hope in higher powers, admit that the ideal of such a life is achievable only in a monastery, where it is possible to follow the order of things established without our participation in everything.

How do you find those limits of control that allow you to cope with life without replacing it with stressful and exhausting “effective functioning” on all fronts? Perhaps the existential philosophy (and psychology) will help us in this, stating that it is at least naive to try to completely control being.

“Are the most important events in human life—meeting love, finding meaning, forgiveness, understanding what I want, even the intention of having fun on my own birthday—are they all controllable?

Vital events occur according to their own laws, they rather happen. Their nature, being can be revealed to a person – but only if he “let go of the reins” and let this nature be.

It is necessary not to control, but to trust, peer, study, more and more deeply understand someone else’s being, whether it be employees whom I now need to manage, or a disease discovered in me or someone close, my husband or child, ”reflects Svetlana Krivtsova.

“Do you want an example? I have a helper, a very good one. But she is by nature incapable of keeping secrets. And it would not occur to me to count on her silence, to load her with secrets, knowing that she could not afford such a load.

They usually let down the one who does not agree to accept reality with its limitations, wants to remake it at his own discretion, ”says Svetlana Krivtsova.

The psychotherapist invites us to learn from … aerial gymnasts. “Of course, a trapeze gymnast is not completely relaxed. But he combines control over his body with the ability to follow the force of gravity or centrifugal acceleration (which are beyond his control), to obey physical laws. If he succeeds, the performance under the dome of the circus will be flawless.

What are we striving for?

Diet and morning run; a business meeting that you can’t be late for and dinner on duty with a school friend; an energetic search for a husband who did not answer the phone twice, and an insistent desire to hear a detailed account of the child’s school day …

Our stubborn attempts to subjugate all areas of life only complicate it, bringing disappointment in the inevitable failure. And yet – make us slaves to the desire for control. The famous Zen master John Daido Luri asked everyone to choose: “What do you aspire to? To control or to freedom?

Think of the people who check their e-mail every minute while lying on the beach, or give phone instructions to subordinates during a tour of the Louvre. Are they and their loved ones happy?

After the divorce, 42-year-old Pavel threw himself into work. Trying to control his emotions, he seemed to be protecting himself so as not to reopen the wound. Then the pain gradually subsided. But along with it – and all the other feelings. They atrophied, as muscles atrophy, remaining without load for a long time.

“I was advised to go to yoga. At first I treated it simply as exercise. But then I got acquainted with the technique of meditation.” And during the very first lesson, in which Paul had to focus on the stone in his hands, something strange happened.

“This cool, rough stone began to give me back the feeling of my own body. And I suddenly felt tears in my eyes. I don’t know how to explain it. Probably for the first time in several years I realized that I was alive.

They are no more, but, you know, I have only become stronger, freer. Before, I had to smile, grit my teeth, and literally force myself to move on. I existed like this for three years after the divorce – and almost turned into a robot. Today I am alive.”

Pavel did not go to a distant Indian ashram and plunge into nirvana. He successfully works in a large company, he has new relationships that bring him joy.

It seems that he succeeded in the main thing – to set himself the right limits of control. To find that very golden mean, on the one hand of which there is chaos, and on the other, a fruitless desire to subordinate everything to one’s will. Each of us has to find this fine line.