Every so often I write about a client story to help illustrate a point. This week it’s Part 2 of how harmful our own coercive control of ourselves and our lives is for women. This is such a huge issue for women, and I write here about why women often feel everything is on us (hence the need to control) and if we can just struggle and juggle and spin and grin we can bear it and manage the mayhem of our busy lives. Women in midlife are the busiest, and least supported, cohort of society, and we face unprecedented pressures and expectations. This is Part 2 - Part 1 is here.
When I first went into recovery, the hardest part was dealing with the urges.
Recovery for perfectionism that is, not the gin
As a recovering perfectionist I still someones get a super-urge to control something to the point of breaking it (or me), and so it is an ongoing practice….in my life, in my home, in my business. But I will say that that the more evidence I bank for how I feel when I try to lead instead of charge, versus how I feel when I am spun so tightly trying to keep all the plates spinning I can barely breathe, the easier the practise becomes.
And I’m also a human. I love what Kara Loewentheil writes in Take Back your Brain…. Just practise saying the words “ah there’s me being a human again” and go back to practising. As a single mum and a solopreneur, feeling the need to control everything almost comes with the territory, so the first step in relinquishing the coercive control that leads to our own crisis, is giving yourself a break (because part of being less controlling is being less self-critical).
When I started practising letting go, it felt dangerous as the window ledge I had been clinging onto so dearly until my knuckles where white, seemed a long way up. But slowly I realised that actually so little is in my control - and I mean so little - that really the only thing I had much control over was myself (and even then, peri/menopause can throw a right spanner in that emotional works!) I don’t need to cling on to the window ledge because my feet are actually on the ground.
Last week I wrote about the power of letting go of control and learning to gently lead instead. It was something that’s made a massive difference to my own life.
The first cut is the deepest, so I want to tell you the story of the biggest letting go of control I had, and how when we let go of the control, we often find a much more exciting net to catch us.
I’m writing this from a beautiful Creative Retreat set amid the lakes of Monaghan in Ireland. I’ve been here many times over the years but I was still very much in Control Mode when I first came here maybe seven years ago. My life had fallen apart, and I’d lost my mum and marriage in short succession and had reached the shocking age of 45 so drained from running my life from Central Control despite Life having other notions, I was a bit of a wreck. I had always been very controlled about the kind of person I was, and one of those controls was never getting into cold water. Not for me, thank you very much. A tropical beach was fine but not an Irish coastal ocean (despite annual holidays to Donegal), and most certainly not a freezing Irish lake.
The first time I’d realised I couldn’t control everything in my life was when I started losing babies. Four in fact. Four formulations of hope that bled away from my colour-coded plan of life. To commemorate them in some way, to hang onto to some form of control that they had been mine, I wore a tiny silver butterfly for each one on a charm bracelet. Despite never holding them, they jingled on my wrist alongside a silver charm for each of the babies I did hold, my three glorious girls. Then, when Life had laughed most at my Micro-Managed Midlife, the saddest charm of all was added: a silver heart with my mum’s handprint. I took her handprint when she was dying and had it made into a charm. That bracelet graced the cover of my first book The Sandwich Years, which told the story of my struggle to care for three small children and my mum, following her stoke three days after my last baby was born, leaving her needing 24 hour care for the next five years. There was also a charm to represent my freedom from a painful marriage which had finally just ended when I found out my husband was gay.
Oh yes, the universe had really laughed in my I-Can-Control-Everything-Know-It-All Face.
On my first trip to this creative sanctuary I would watch in horror as writers would gather at the lake side, laughing and luminous, wading into the freezing waters to swim, as if wading into life was an option instead of clearly controlled, concise steps. It was literally the worst thing I could think of doing. But my life had fallen apart and I was understanding that control had given me nothing, and so, one day I was cajoled into the cold, dark water because basically I had no fight left in me.
I entered that water and I was let go. I let go of my control for comfort, let go of my belief I wasn’t the kind of woman who plunged voluntarily into cold waters, and let go of the idea that happiness was a tightness of life, and opened up to the prospect that happiness might actually come from acceptance and adaptability.
Surviving, and then thriving in those waters, I began to change. Over the next few months and years I grew and learned, and changed and adapted.
Then a couple of years later, I drove down the tree-trumpeted lane of the retreat again and so eager to plunge into my baptismal water, I parked the car and jumped into the lake before I even unpacked (see that lack of control there…. I was a vigilant unpacker!). When I emerged, dripping with glory, I felt something missing.
My bracelet.
It was gone, sunk deep into the depths of the dark lake.
I had a moment of panic and then I stopped. I had been here before. Trying to control a situation that was uncontrollable.
I had lost so much and survived. I had so much go right in my wonderful life that had not come from my controlling. And I had had my share of disappointment despite my controlling,
All I could really control was my response.
And I chose to lead myself gently. I walked away desperately sad it was gone, but also open to the fact that maybe it was time to stop walking around with death on my wrist.
In Control = Happiness mode, I would have seen the only possible outcome being to find the bracelet in a deep dark lake and spend months and years upset.
Leading myself gently meant I took responsibility for dealing with the loss and making something from it. I’ve swam in that lake many times since, I swam in that lake this morning and every time, I take a moment to acknowledge the bracelet is there, what it represents and how far I have come.
If I’d been in my controlling mode I would have hardened to the loss of the one outcome that would make me happy, and not be open to other ways to respond.
And this plays out in small everyday thoughts and behaviours. When I feel my body tighten with the urgency of needing to control my To-Do list, or my kids, or my work, I pause and try and think about a different response. One where I loosen on the outcome but keep focused on the bigger picture.
Holiday Controls
I’ve been going on summer holiday to Donegal for 13 years. For the first two years I was married, and it took two of us two days to get the roofbox on the car and everything packed to take 3 young girls to a place where it could be sunny, raining, warm, freezing all in the space of an hour. Just the wetsuits and beach gear took up the whole roof box.
On the third year I was on my own. I cried putting up the roofbox and packing the car, and in order to get 3 small kids on and of the beach, in and out of wetsuits, clothes dried, food packed required Everest-expedition-type control and planning. It was just me and control was my only stop-the out-of-control spiral I could cling on to. I would scream at my girls if they weren’t adhering to my carefully controlled plan, railed against the rain when a “happy beach” day demanded sun, and often ruined a lovely holiday by trying to make everyone happy.
As the years went on, control just became the sunscreen I wore. Get everyone up, get everyone fed, get everyone entertained, it was exhausting.
And slowly I started to let go. The Donegal landscape does that to you…. tells you straight up, how little you think you need to control matters.
Happiness doesn’t come from a ticked To-Do list. It doesn’t. Happiness comes from getting shit done while also being present with the day and the people in your day.
Now my Donegal holidays are our holiday, not mine to militerise and manage. I led myself to invest time relaxing and lead my girls to participate willingly rather than on demand.
One of the core elements of leadership is having the awareness to see how your behaviour affects other people. In control mode, it’s usually all about the end result, - I would plan a day on Donegal based on a set of ticked boxes - beach, lunch, walk, dinner - regardless of anything like moods, feelings, connections. Gentle leadership is about making sure everyone feels comfortable while achieving some broad goals.
I had a client who had a very successful and was running every aspect of her life in the same epically controlled manner. Including the family holidays. She was so stressed beforehand, so overwhelmed that everything was on her shoulders (because she controlled it all) there was no enjoyment at all. She resented the fact that every day of the holiday she had to organise where they went and what they did.
“Do you?” I asked.
“Yes! Or nothing will get done! And then all they do is complain when they don’t like it.”
She was so tight her voice was at near screech level. She did all the work and got all the complaints. I’ve had so many versions of this conversion with so many clients.
So I made a suggestion, slightly concerned the top of her head might blow off.
“What if, you shared the control so that you didn’t get all the complaints?”
She looked at me dubiously as someone who controls everything does when faced with the possibility of nothing being done well, or at all.
“What if, given your husband has no practice organising anything, and your children (ranging in age from 8 to15) have never had to face the consequences (complaints) on their decisions, what if on this upcoming staycation where the stakes are fairly low, you give each member of the family a day? They decide where to go, what to do, and where to eat - within reason, you can set ground rules- and several things will happen. You will empower them so that in the future you stop role modelling you are the answer to everything. They will learn what it feels like when you plan something and everyone complains and so may have more respect for you. And thirdly, on four days of your holiday, you don’t have to be the director of operations.”
She looked at me dubiously but also a little interested. There was a big overseas trip coming up and she was already crushed at the thought of what it meant for her. So she agreed to try it. She spoke to her family and we also did some work on how she would deal with her feelings of letting go and actually allowing herself to not control things. She came back smiling. Each child had planned an activity and dinner and faced the deluge of moans from siblings about their choice. They’d also loved having the choice. Her husband hadn’t organised anything on his day so everyone complained and got bored but my client took herself off for four hours and left him to it because it wasn’t her responsibility to make everyone happy that day.
She couldn’t believe how different the energy of the holiday was. How much being a leader was so much more enjoyable than being a dictator and Angry Controller. On the big overseas holiday, she started to empower everyone with age appropriate responsibilities.
This is a hard issue for women because we are often caught in the terrible trap of having so much responsibility and being conditioned to be people pleasers and perfectionists. (I wrote about the Triad of Turmoil here).
But control kills our spirits. It is the midlife crisis we face if we don’t learn to gently lead rather than coercively control our lives.
To maintain an upright alertness (the direction) but develop a relaxed openness to the outcome (the results).
Leading gently instead of constant controlling means I no longer have to be right about everything. Oh the fucking relief!! It means sometimes I have strong opinions but then it’s not my job to convince everyone of them. Instead of tightening up around my belief, I can try to be open to listening and learning and decide to keep it, share it or shift on it.
Control kept me closed, while gently leading allows me to be open.
I love how Virginia Woolf describes it: I am rooted and I flow.
It means you can have direction but you are flexible. Peaceful striving rather than frantic chasing or box ticking.
In Buddhism the idea of non-attachment means not being manically controlled but a very specific outcome. That day by the lake when I lost something so precious I finally got what that means.
Over to you
What areas can you let go of a little…. Not to let go completely so they fall into chaos or you stop investing your energy, but where if you unscrewed the tightness just a little, tried to lead rather than charge?
Where are you taking responsibility for someone else instead of empowering them - a partner, a child, a parent, a colleague, a friend?
Where are you holding on to loss of control when you might need to start accepting / grieving / healing?
I’d love to know your thoughts!
I absolutely love hearing from you, and I’d love to know how you feel about how control is ruining your life, so please join me in the comments below (if you’re reading this in an email, please click on the link below to go through to the website to join the conversation.).
And please take a moment to like and share if you enjoyed it!
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