Control Freaks: My Way or the Highway

Think about control for a minute. Do you live with someone who has to run the show, or are you the one who has to run it? You might be a control freak in reverse, the person who hands the wheel to everyone else and calls that peace. Ask yourself whether you bend easily. Whether you want less stress in your day. Whether getting anything finished means you have to give something up first. And what about the people who are a blast to be around but who you absolutely cannot rely on, the ones who grab the reins in their own careless way?

Then there's the other kind: the person who buries you under paperwork you're sure is pointless, who insists you follow rule after rule after rule. That type can make you want to scream.

So maybe you keep your own grip by surrendering it. Do you still believe you'll land on something that works for you and for the other side too, a real win for both? It wears on you, doesn't it. Have you ever felt flattened, like a doormat everyone walks across and then scrapes their boots on for good measure? Some days you're ready to walk out and find a place where people don't operate like this. With a control freak, though, the terms never change. It's my way or the highway.

I'll admit I'm a part-time control freak, the kind that kicks in when a job is mine to finish and the responsibility sits squarely on my shoulders. Once I got left alone to watch three wards during lunch in a psychiatric hospital while the other aides ate. A resident who'd lost it slapped me across the face while I stood there by myself, and I stayed at my post anyway. Harry Truman had it right: the buck stops here. Mothering does the same thing to me, and so does babysitting, especially when a child's safety is the thing riding on my attention. Now and then a situation demands that somebody step up and hold things together, and that somebody turns out to be you. Nobody asked for the job. It still has to get done.

At some point every one of us gets pushed into a stance on control that doesn't fit the way we'd prefer to live. Try loosening your grip if you clutch too hard, or try tightening it if you tend to let go of everything. Yes, that drags you straight out of your comfort zone. That's usually where you grow the most. You might even catch yourself off guard.

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