Let Go of Control

One of life's greatest challenges is reaching the place where you know, with your whole being, that Spirit is supporting and guiding you toward the highest good of your soul. When you know this, you finally let go of control - you let go and let God. This is challenging because the ego wounded self does not want to let go of control, and will take every opportunity to undermine your knowingness. Awareness of this inner battle is essential to healing.

~ InnerBonding

A codependent person is one who has a need to control everything and everyone around them. Codependency is a disease that is fostered by our society. Underlying the maladaption is the belief that you can't trust life; that you can't trust anything... that you must work hard to make people like you, to hide who you really are, to keep from getting hurt. The internal message of codependency is that you are not enough--you must do a bunch of extra stuff to get your needs met. What happens is you end up with a tangled mess. It makes a person indirect, controlling and manipulative.

I used to be a controlling type of person. I didn't think I was. It didn't seem like I was controlling. Back then I thought controlling was when you tell other people what to do, but that's not always the best sign of a controlling person. A controlling person can be passive or outright. It's all about how you view your effectiveness in life. Whether you believe you are enough just being you, or that you are inherently flawed.

Examples of Codependent Control

• Removing a friend from your life because your crush thinks she's pretty.
• Buying a friend expensive gifts, giving them stuff or paying for everything.
• Talking behind someone's back about an offense rather than confronting directly.
• Settling for a guy you don't respect in order to be in a relationship.
• Spending time scheming to prevent some connection from happening between others.
• Denying your own need to be respected by hiding some truth about yourself.
• Being friends with someone you don't like in order to get near another person.
• Spending energy concocting ways to get another person to like you. 
• Having an agenda of any kind in relationship.
• Being friends with someone to learn secrets to advance yourself. 
• Enabling a drug addict or alcoholic in their addiction.
• Playing the martyr.  
• Being upset when someone doesn't like you or isn't into you.
• Hanging onto someone who is not hanging onto you.
• Being in love with an unavailable person. 
• Hiding who you really are out of fear others won't like you.
• Not liking another person because he or she is friends with someone you don't like.
• Trying to get your girlfriends or mate not to like someone because you don't like them. 
• Sacrificing your values to make money or advance yourself socially. 
• Excluding others from your life out of fear that he/she may take what's yours.
• Being suspicious of the motives of others.
• Thinking that the world is out to get you so you better "get yours" however you can. 
• Punishing someone to get them way they're supposed to act.
• Acting fake in order to fit into a group.
• Pretending not to like another person just to fit in.
• Not telling your hair stylist that you dislike your color so as not to make her upset. 
• Feeling worthless because another person doesn't recognize your fabulousness. 
• Spending too much time worrying about how another person feels when you've set a boundary for yourself.
• Doing things to make people like you.

What are some other ways of controlling behavior? Manipulation? How have you used these tactics to control outcomes in your life? How have others used these tactics to control you?

REALITY CHECK: You can't control anybody or anything. Thinking that you can is mere delusion.


Today I am healed from the bulk of my codependency issues. Along with the healing has come a naturalness and beingness that is more spontaneous and less fake. I do things today in real time instead of out of a false self or wounded ego self that's trying to hide who I really am. Today I know that I cannot control outcomes and anything I can control is not something I want anyway. My worth doesn't come from other people and what other people do is none of my business.

Loving yourself involves light, easy action that ebbs and flows spontaneously in the moment; it doesn't cling tightly to anything outside, but simply enjoys all that comes and goes. Loving yourself means that you accept reality for what it is, and you trust yourself to handle all that happens with grace, class and finesse. You know that everything in life is for your highest good. You go with the flow. You no longer need to hang onto people, places or things in order to give yourself value.

Facing the fact that I was actually controlling and manipulative was hard. Nobody wants to admit that about themselves. But like Dr. Margaret says above, letting go of control is essential to healing. You don't have to orchestrate situations. Just live spontaneously. Let go and let God.