The Need to Control Everything: Myths That Get in the Way

The need to keep everything under control is surrounded by persistent myths. Understanding them matters, because these very misconceptions prevent a person from seeing what is actually happening to them.

Myth 1: "If I'm controlling, I'm caring"

Frequent calls, check-ins, anxious questions — "where are you?", "why aren't you picking up?", "what happened?" — are easy to mistake for love and concern. But behind such behaviour lies not care, but reactive tension: the person is in a state of anxiety and tries to relieve it by controlling someone else. Parents who watch over their adult children at 30, 40, or 50 sincerely believe they are being caring — but in reality they are projecting their own anxiety, without even realising it.

Myth 2: "Control keeps bad things from happening"

People prone to over-control typically try to avoid certain scenarios — they place "cushions" wherever they possibly can. But reality is fundamentally open and free — it cannot be controlled. Trying to control the ocean is, in the doctor's words, "certain death": you have to interact with the wave, not try to stop it. Control always points either to something that has already happened or to something that might happen — meaning the person is not living in the present moment but in a state of chronic reaction.

Myth 3: "Criticism and instructions are a form of help"

Another common mistake: the controlling person is convinced that their remarks, advice, and complaints are genuinely helpful. In reality, people in a reactive state endlessly voice dissatisfaction and dictate "how things should be." The more those around them live contrary to these predictions and directives, the stronger the controlling person's reaction becomes. There is no concrete proposal behind any of it — only a stream of demands.

What is really going on

The drive to control everything is a sign of a reactive psychological state, not strength of character. Getting out of it does not mean "letting go of control by willpower," but arriving at a different quality of awareness — what the doctor calls the flow state — in which a person engages with reality as it actually is, rather than reacting to imagined threats. In that state, the need to control others simply falls away on its own.