Padraig O'Morain's guide to managing life
If anybody ever organises a control freaks ball, we should all get an invitation. The need to control what goes on in the environment seems to be so deep rooted that it is present in every single one of us.
Once you start looking at the issue of control in this way, you begin to spot it everywhere and often in unexpected places.
Is that chronically ill relative really sick or is he controlling the family by having everyone dance attendance on him?
Is your mother's devastation at your decision not to go home for Christmas this year ("What will we do, I have the turkey ordered, your poor father, and so and so on.") a bid for control or genuine disappointment or both?
I recall my fascination at hearing of a funeral at which the widow, confined to a wheelchair for years, stood up and walked up the aisle to her husband's coffin.
Had he attained sainthood and performed a miracle cure?
Or had she been controlling the poor devil for years from the wheelchair?
We need to have a measure of control over what goes on in the environment (which includes people, places, resources and events) in order to survive and develop.
But control can, so to speak, go out of control so easily.
This is most often seen in relationships in which one person is trying to control another. Sometimes it's petty stuff which causes annoyance more than anything else: changing the TV channel which everybody else in the room is watching; demanding that your teens keep their mobile phones switched on so that you can check on where they are at all times; insisting that an employee comes into work on her day off, and so on.
But sometimes over-control causes misery: the dinner flung against the wall because it isn't exactly right; the spouse beaten for being polite to a person of the opposite sex; the child who, every time she disobeys a rule, is told her mother wishes she had an abortion.
And it's all a mug's game.
The control freak will never succeed in getting the other person or people completely under his or her control.
Because of some drive which is expressed in acts of independence, however small, they will keep slipping out of control.
The control issue escalates conflict in relationships with partners and children.
After the honeymoon is over in a relationship, a battle for control often ensues as each partner tries to remake the other in his or her own image. Eventually, in most cases, they give up the attempt and learn to tolerate each other. In some cases, though, the relationship becomes toxic and breaks down.
When there is conflict in a relationship, it is worth remembering that attempting to control the other person will make matters worse. Of course, you can try to influence the other person, which is a different matter so long as you can accept that it won't always work.
What you can control in a conflicted relationship is your own behaviour.
You might not be able to influence your teenager to the extent of persuading her to get her dirty clothes off the floor but you can control yourself to the extent of deciding you are only going to wash clothes which come out of a laundry basket.
You might not be able to influence your partner to stop verbally abusing you but you can control yourself to the extent of walking out of the room whenever it starts and, maybe, walking out of that person's life eventually.
Try this variation on the AA serenity prayer which I think hits the nail on the head:
God grant me the serenity
to accept the people I cannot control,
the courage to change the person I can control
and the wisdom to know that I am that person.
pomorain@irish-times.ie
Controlling your own behaviour
When our natural tendency to try to control our environment goes too far, it damages our relationships.
Focus on controlling your own behaviour and not that of others.
Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.