How controlling makes us sick.

 Here’s the second law of control:

 

 

This is the Law of Dysfunction.

Stated more fully, it means that compulsive controlling causes most (maybe all) of our emotional problems.  

It builds on the first Law, that we are all addicted to control.

Because only when you see how controlling you are can you start noticing how dangerous controlling can be. 

You may notice that overcontrolling your feelings — by hiding them from other people, say — leaves you more anxious, not less.

Or how hiding feelings from yourself — like when you bury them so deeply you forget where you put them — can leave you exhausted and clinically depressed.  

Or how attempts to control others by pleasing or impressing them leave you feeling, not more loved and accepted, but more frustrated and alone.

But compulsive controlling is baked into our nature.

It’s every human being’s unconscious default position.

So it can take a long time to see all this.

And most people never do.

Which explains why so many of us go around in emotional pain much of the time.

And how do we respond to this pain?

We try, of course, to control it.

So controlling leads to pain, and pain leads to controlling, which leads to more pain…

Just like in any addiction.

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