Why letting go of control will be the best thing you can ever do for your Mental Health

I've always been a controller. My grip on control was like a clenched, shaking fist; scared that even the slightest let-go would deem that my world fall apart into little pieces. I had too much trauma as a younger child to want that in my life again. I was witness to a controlling, abusive and neglectful father, and in further years I had a strong father figure die on me suddenly.

Yeah, it was safe to say I had so much trauma in my earlier years that the grip I held onto my worldview was like a man hanging onto his dear life whilst one-handing a cliff edge. Not sure what I mean? Well, because I was regularly used and abused by those that I loved and held dear, my brain began trying to control every outcome of my entire life. Unless I had super-natural telekinesis powers to control other people in my micro-environment then there was no way that was going to happen. The result? My life would fall apart time and time again as the outcomes I tried to control weren't met.

My Dad tried to control outcomes overtly. He was fully in the open about manipulating people with his lies and secrets. If you knew him for long enough and you had more than half a brain on you then it wasn't long before people realised that my Dad was full of rubbish. Whilst I have no idea what he was like in his younger years but at the later stages of his life he became angrier and angrier as the lies he told to people didn't hold water like they used to, and he had to revert to socialising with stupider and stupider people as his brain grew further out of the realms of reality.

As a man that grew up thinking that everything to do with his father was bad; right down to the clothes that he wore and the people he socialised with I tried everything in my power to not be like him. There's a theory I enjoy and that's the Yin and Yang. For every positive action there is a negative one. My Dad and I were like two similar people, both revolving around the same atom as positively and negatively charged neutrons. You see, since I was my Dads son; there are parts of me that are going to be like him, and as I try to rid myself of them but have no role models to show me how, then I just become the opposite of what he was.

Some people call these guys nice guys. I don't like to call them that; it's a bad name for men that obviously have a lot of issues in their lives that need to be healed before they can progress. But this was me. As my Dad tried to control his outcomes in his reality overtly by telling lies, creating friendships for more usage than anything else, and putting two people against each other for his own gains; there was me, like the little secret spy, the hiding in the shadows man that would stab you in the back if you ever crossed me; I would do everything that Dad did but pretend to be nice about it. When Dad told lies and didn't care what people thought, I would tell lies and gaslight people when taken up on my bullshit, because, "how dare they suggest that I tell lies, I'm such a nice man. I don't do that." Guilt was my weapon and the sometimes bright, Teflon view in which my friends held me to.

"Raymond's, such a nice guy. I wish more men can be like him"

Truth is was that I was just another Narcissist but a sneaky one. One that uses gas-lighting and mental games as his weapon rather than fists and physical coercion.

Part of my life story has been my everlasting battle with control, being scared to take risks because whenever I've approached the realm of the unknown it's never bode well for me. It's that whole not being able to prophesize an outcome scenario. When I don't know what I'm up against then it's hard to measure what will happen. This has been one of the missing links to my life, sadly. The ability to jump feet first into something and then the ability to trust myself to handle whatever is thrown at me.

Trusting myself has been a big part of my life over the last five years. It's not something that came naturally to me but it's something that's made me far more comfortable in any situation that I'm in recently, and I've realised it has been a lot to do with how my parents acted with me as a child. Both my Mum and Dad were supremely controlling over me as a young man. Dad would tell me that I'm an idiot; that I couldn't be trusted with my own actions, and Mum, being the worry-pot that she was would try and control every outcome that I had. She forgot the most important thing in a young man's life and that's giving him the ability to make his own mistakes.

My last manager did this with me and it was a HUGE intervention-like step into bridging the gap between feeling that I needed someone to help me with everything, to feeling that I was in control every step of the way. She would thrust me into situations I would never dream of doing; I can recall once she had me on a National Radio show promoting my projects and she'd let me get on with it. After the event, she'd feedback to me, and it was always positive feedback. I can remember a time when I crumbled in front of an audience of two or so hundred people, I can remember phoning her after the event and almost crying, telling her the fool I made of myself. I remember her telling me that, "okay, I need you to dust yourself off, go back in there and act professionally." She told me that most people would understand anyway, because we all remember standing up in school talking to the class and we all hated it. She was right; that day I was the most popular guy there and EVERYONE got to hear about my project.

I established that trusting myself was a major player in becoming the person I wanted to be, and to achieve that I had to be left to put my hand on the iron to see how hot it actually was myself. Protecting me from it will only never let me have that experience, or trust myself to be able to handle situations when they become too hot.

As I began to learn to trust myself I learned a lot about control. That how by trying to control every outcome in my life was hindering my progress. I was getting too hell bent on outcomes and that some people weren't choosing to act in how I wanted them to act. This was deeply frustrating. My Mum, my dad, my family, my friends; everyone around me -- why can't they just be kind and understanding instead of sometimes brash and conflicting.

It was then that I learned to let people be, and finally drop my eternal attachment to controlling outcomes. The world didn't move for me, so I had to learn to move for the world. I learned that people are who they are, and the only person that will be able to change their mind is that person themselves. If they are open to suggestion or not. Sometimes people aren't open to suggestion and shouting and screaming at them will only make them double down further into their position. They might even begin to resent me if I try too many times.

The only person that I can control is me; my actions, and the responsibility I have to others, like my son and wife and family. It was like an entire weight had been lifted from my back. No longer was I trying to control the world, I was only focusing on trying to control myself and my behaviour. This had a knock on effect on those around me too; for instance the guy in my last article that deleted me from Facebook. My entire friend circle shifted. Some stayed the same, others migrated elsewhere.

Yet never underestimate the power of giving control to others and knowing when to take it back. Sometimes in group dynamics, especially when you have to work with some strong, hard headed individuals then for the sake of the team it can be best to allow a certain amount of control to them. It's always good to know when to take that control back though, especially when others are trying to use it against you to take advantage of you for their own personal gain.

That being said, shifting my efforts from trying to control the entire world to only trying to control myself has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me. And from there I learned that I wasn't the centre of the universe..

Which might be my next post!

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