I’m a control freak, but I’m working on it!

Are you often described as being a “Control Freak”? If you want to change, discover 3 pieces of advice that can help you.

Imagine….

You cannot stand cupboard doors standing open, socks lying on the floor, tags sticking out of new clothes, magazines left askew on the coffee table, threads that hang from clothes, traces of toothpaste in the sink (and the drops of water that you systematically wipe away when you wash your hands), breadcrumbs on the tablecloth, dirty spoons in the sink… Perhaps you have been heard to say: no cleaner has ever been able to do the housework as well as I can, so it’s best that I do it.

Now that your children are older you would like to get back to work, but you tell those around you that your children still need you. Except that at 14 and 16, no teenager needs his or her mother around full-time.

Your friends hate you because you can’t help telling them that their haircut is not perfect, that they should try botox and that they should jump on a plane right away for that hotel in Morocco that you love so much (because they look a bit peaky). Book room 21, the one with the sea view, pick up a bag in the concept-store overlooking the beach and don’t forget to book the flights now before the prices go up. In fact, if you like I can do it for you…

Do you recognise yourself in one of these situations? Don’t you think that you might just be a teeny bit of a control freak?

The psychoanalyst Roland Gori explains that “control freaks” are people who are inextricably caught up in a compulsive obsession with control.

Untidiness, the unexpected, letting go… impossible! It may be difficult to get involved in co-organisation under these conditions…

The good news is that there is a cure!

The inability to delegate, to trust, to let others do things and this need to permanently micro-manage… don’t worry – help is at hand.

The psycho-practitioner Lysiane Panighini suggests the following stages to her patients:

•  Begin by understanding where this need to compulsively control everything comes from; it reveals nothing less than major emotional insecurity, a desire to be loved at any cost. This behaviour must be deconstructed in a way that helps the patient to realise that the problem does not come from within, but from an emotional, familial or community context.

•    Go on to recognise the negative consequences of the excessive need to control: on your couple, children, friends, professional relationships, and in the long term on yourself (chronic anxiety, depression, burn-out, etc.). Would it not be possible to attain more serenity and to enjoy life more quite simply by letting go?

•    Finally, remember a time when you didn’t always want to control everything, “make the person conscious that he or she was able to act differently at other times in life, and that things worked out just fine. When this state of awareness is reached, things move quite quickly in the right direction,” explains Lysiane Panighini.

In conjunction with the psychological process, meditation, sophrology, relaxation, yoga or kinesiology can be precious resources. There are common objectives at the heart of these aids:

To make peace with your own emotions,

To reconnect with your body (leaving the mind to one side),

To work on a state of “full consciousness” that allows you to rediscover the richness of the present moment.

In short, everything you need to put an end to being a control freak and to make room for others, for imperfections and for the unexpected… basically everything that you can delegate a little.