The Need to Control Everything: What It Is and How to Recognize It

The urge to control everything around us can feel perfectly rational — after all, the person simply wants things to go "the right way." But beneath that urge lies not strength, but tension: a state in which the brain is continuously reacting to threats, real and imagined.

What Is Happening Inside

A person in a reactive state cannot stop the flood of anxious thoughts. They are caught in a mental whirlpool — thoughts pull them under, and they try to place cushions everywhere they can, trying to pre-empt any unwanted outcome. Scenarios they desperately want to avoid play on a loop. But reality is open and free — it cannot be fully controlled. And that is precisely the source of constant suffering.

What It Looks Like From the Outside

People in this state are not hard to identify. They:

• constantly express complaints and dissatisfaction — their speech is full of "it should be this way," "you have to do it like this";
• cannot respect others' personal space — they call frequently, check up, demand immediate replies: "Why aren't you answering? Where are you? What happened?";
• react with irritation or aggression when life does not match their expectations or predictions;
• call this care or love — and genuinely believe it, not realising that control is driven by anxiety, not attachment.

This pattern is especially vivid in close relationships: parents who "look after" adult children, partners who track every move. The person is convinced they are expressing love — but what they are actually transmitting is anxiety.

Control and Flow — Two Different Worlds

Control is always aimed at what "has already happened or might happen." It is a gaze from tension, from fear. The opposite state — what is called flow, or the "connoisseur" mode — is one in which a person is present in the moment, engaging with reality as it actually is rather than fighting it. In that state there is no need to control; there is a desire to participate. A dancer does not control the music — they interact with it. A swimmer does not command the ocean — they move with the wave.

Where Normal Ends and Disorder Begins

Control is appropriate where it is genuinely needed — for instance, in caring for a young child or in an emergency. But when a person cannot switch off reactive thinking, when the need for control extends to adult family members, to a partner, to every small detail — that is already a warning signal. As the doctor notes, such behaviour frequently points to an anxiety disorder that the person themselves does not recognise.