Control — Good or Bad?
Question:
hey kevin! control issues are a biggie for me., and yep, the serenity prayer really does sum it up. remember, keep it simple ok? you are thinking too deeply on the subject. really, yes, control is good. but i think you have control, as far as paying bills etc, confused with responsibility.
Hi Shell, I really do need to keep it simple. Actually my post was the condensed version of what I may have written 
I think I’m setting a foundation. Things like control, feelings, going *through*. I’ve touched on understanding them, but I didn’t in a way I could benefit from them. the only bad control is when you try to control other people, which you cant and is unhealthy. when you try to control your emotions through food or other substances. when you try to control your emotions, squelch them down, then you dont have much control over addictive substances. do i make any sense/ shell
Yup! Lots of sense! The people part… controlling them. I dislike when people try to control me. I withdrew in the past, but now I’m more assertive. It’s more complicated when it’s my boss at work but fortunately I have a pretty good supervisor now. Controlling emotions by squelching them. This hits a *big* bell for me. I think I’ve done that all my life and right now I’m going towards the feeling level and it is very hard and scary and sometimes depressing, but also I know it’s good and as I do it I can see that I can do it, I can feel, I can go through it, and all of that helps me move away from the addictions. Control over addictive substances… some I can’t control, some like food I eat every day so it’s a substance that can also be addictive so some level of control is needed. Maybe there is a better word than control for things like that though…. ack… healthy control is good enough… best to keep things simple! Kevin K trusting the process, living on purpose…..
Response:
I am confused about control. If anyone has any thoughts or insights on control I’d love to hear them! This is a subject I’ve been wondering about for a long time. Kevin, following is a long ramble that I’m not sure contains anything useful. Suffice to say, your questions touched off a firestorm for me, and I am writing for myself more than for you. Thanks for the opportunity to vent. ….. It all comes down to the way a child protects itself from the unthinkable reality that their parents can’t be trusted.
Wow, Betsy… your post did help in ways that I will try not to analyze too much. When I read your post, I was taken back to how things felt when I was a child. It was healing to see things freshly from a perspective of looking back. I want to reframe some of those feelings inside of me, from helplessness to compassion, from guilt to knowing I was good… naturally growing. From not being nurtured to learning in my own feelings to nurture myself and my spirit. This dip into the past for me was healthy. I used to spend too much time trying to figure out the past. Now, I try to keep a balance and let feelings be my guide, also remembering that the past is past, and it’s helpful to look at it but the present will be our past, and the future will become our past, so by making today and the future counts, that also improves our past-to-be. Oops, I said I wasn’t going to analyze hehe… well, that didn’t feel like analysis, more like free flowing ideas for healing insights! This is truly a ramble. I really needed it. Betsy
I’m glad you rambled, it helped, It also helped me understand more it’s OK to ramble at times! Whew… I do that a lot, now I can feel good about just being myself. Kevin K trusting the process…..
Response:
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – x-no-archive: yes just some quick 2 cents: i guess there are varying degrees of control. there is the neurotic obsessive-compulsive kind of control related to eds – such as overexercising,counting calories,fat,carb grams 24/7,restricting, fasting. then there’s the impulsive kind – which i really wouldn’t call control – b/p, alcoholism, overeating. i really don’t know – but it seems like one is a good kind of control and one is bad ? kay
Hi Kay, Thanks for shedding some more light on control for me. Exercise, paying bills, cleaning can be good control, but even good control, taken to excess can be bad control. I know there are better words for me to use than good and bad, but I’m trying to keep things simple today! Kevin K trusting the process, living on purpose…..
Response:
hey kevin! control issues are a biggie for me., and yep, the serenity prayer really does sum it up. remember, keep it simple ok? you are thinking too deeply on the subject. really, yes, control is good. but i think you have control, as far as paying bills etc, confused with responsibility. the only bad control is when you try to control other people, which you cant and is unhealthy. when you try to control your emotions through food or other substances. when you try to control your emotions, squelch them down, then you dont have much control over addictive substances. do i make any sense/ shell
Response:
I am confused about control. If anyone has any thoughts or insights on control I’d love to hear them! This is a subject I’ve been wondering about for a long time. OK… warning, this might be another long post of mine so feel free to skip the stuff below and just respond to the control question if you have insights 
Here goes….. A long time ago, maybe 15 years ago, after I was in the psych hospital after taking sleeping pills (I’m very glad I didn’t succeed by the way!), the incompetant psychiatrist made a few comments about "control", without bothering to communicate any insights about why it was relevant. I have a feeling it made it’s way into my chart, but I was left with that word… control, and no insights. Then, at various times after that, in recovery books and posts and other places, it seems that "control" has a negative connotation. However, are there good *and* bad aspects of control??? It seems that being in control can be good if that means paying bills on time, going to work, getting the oil changed, and self discipline such as exercising, and things like that. So, isn’t control sometimes good? Here are some insights on the negative parts of control: Controlling feelings and emotions through outside substances like alcohol and food (bingeing or restricting or purging) is negative control. Doing those things is actually an attempt to *control* my emotions. Let’s see…. Controlling things I can’t control leads to frustration. Kind of like the serenity prayer’s "accept the things I cannot change, change the things I can". If I try to control (change) something I can’t control, it ends up controlling me. So, anyway, I am very confused about control. I want control in my life, but I don’t want things that can hurt my recovery into my life, so having some insight on this will help a lot. Thanks, Kevin K trusting the process, living on purpose…..
Response:
I am confused about control. If anyone has any thoughts or insights on control I’d love to hear them! This is a subject I’ve been wondering about for a long time.
Kevin, following is a long ramble that I’m not sure contains anything useful. Suffice to say, your questions touched off a firestorm for me, and I am writing for myself more than for you. Thanks for the opportunity to vent. When we were children, our lives felt out of our control. There were adults around, adults who made some bad decisions, adults who couldn’t control their own emotions…as children, we felt entirely dependent upon those adults. Our sense of betrayal and terror upon realizing that we were powerless over these adults and their bad decisions was so severe, it made an indelible mark on our hearts and has lasted to this day. When we discovered we could affect our weight by our conscious decisions, along with weight loss came a sense of power over our lives. It’s as if we were trying to make up for the horrible powerlessness we felt and remembered by focusing it all in our weight obsession. Maybe we couldn’t control anything else in our lives, but we could control our weight. NO ONE could make us eat if we didn’t want to, or keep down what we ate if we binged. This one area, this one thing, was ours and ours alone, completely and utterly under our control. Well, of course, it was all skewed logic. We lost control when we binged, then regained it with purging or restricting. Each time was a reenactment of the original loss of control and betrayal by our caretakers; each time, an attempt to rewrite the original scene but create a different ending. How much we want to deny that our parents failed us, let us fall off the emotional cliff. If we can counteract powerlessness we can fool ourselves that we were never betrayed. When the need for control becomes so intense that it rules ours lives, it’s no longer about control (as in having the self-discipline to pay bills on time, for example). It’s about survival. It’s about the fear that anything unknown or in the gray areas of life is dangerous. It’s about the fear that we are responsible for far more than we are, that we were responsible for our parents having failed us. It is too terrifying for a child to lose faith in their parents’ ability to care for them. A child will make up any kind of outrageous story to deny this reality. As adults, we will carry on that child’s fantasy by continuing to believe that overcontrol is the only safe answer. It all comes down to the way a child protects itself from the unthinkable reality that their parents can’t be trusted. This is truly a ramble. I really needed it. Betsy
