IT FEELS GOOD

Control feels so good…until it doesn’t. When you can’t eat, sleep, work, play, or function without control, control no longer feels good. It’s toxic. Control has become an addiction.

When you can’t talk to someone without attacking their mind, body, soul, and spirit, it’s become toxic.

When a person can’t interact with you without them having to tense up and clinch to avoid the arrows you’re throwing into their body and soul, it’s become toxic.

And then, to top it off, an individual can have such a lack of self-awareness in their behavior, that they don’t even realize how toxic their traits (envy, jealousy, insecurity, anger, etc.) have become.

COMMON FORMS OF CONTROL

The form of control that most of us are used to is the one involving the necessity to having certain outcomes. Thus, we adopt coping mechanisms, addictions, and other dysfunctional patterns of behavior in order to gain those desired outcomes. WE BECOME INTENT ON GETTING THE OUTCOME AT ALL COSTS.

SOLUTION

All of these adoptions take the place of sitting in stillness, which leads to self-awareness about yourself, other awareness when it comes to others’ patterns of behavior, and eventually surrendering to God, his plan, and his will for your life.

Instead, we go into what I call in Freedomology, my coaching methodology, the 6S Control Cycle. The fourth stage of the 6S Control Cycle is called Solution Mode. Solution mode sounds good. It makes it seem like you’re planning and making progress. Not in the 6S Control Cycle sense.

In the 6S Control Cycle, solution mode means ” I know better than God.” Thus instead of surrendering to his plans and will for your life, you surrender to your own. You set the stage for your partner, thinking that this will surely save the relationship.

This is so far from the truth. Not only does this fix/change him, he ends up sailing. Sailing means he takes off running. When you chase and chase and chase, and try to force/control the outcome, you will be met with resistance. Controlling/forcing someone to do the right thing, say the right thing, live the right way, parent their child, love you like you need to be loved, etc., goes against the principles of love.

Love invoices choice. God created us to love and be loved. We were created with freewill to choose.

THE MARRIAGE

One thing about control freak addiction is that it is often married to perfectionism, a fear-based trauma response. And perfectionism has a shadow side of judgmentalism, criticism, and condemnation attached to it.  Underneath all that perfectionism is anxiety that is attached to the limiting belief that says: “I’m not enough”.

The spirit of control often has anger and or anxiety attached to it.

So now you have a person with two issues that are reinforcing each other in toxicity, false safety, security, and comfort.

Control tells the individual who has been through so much trauma, pain, and hurt that there is no way that they are going to allow this big T or little T trauma event to happen to them again. They make it their job to control every person, place, thing, and or idea around them for fear that these traumatic events that overtook their life with chaos and confusion once before is going to throw them into the same boxing ring again.

The anxiety part of control and or perfection can display itself in the home, at the workplace, the church, the business scene, your social media profile, community groups, and other people’s DM’s.

In your home, this marriage can look like, “I’m the only person who can clean this stove and or refrigerator, because if anyone else takes care of it, it won’t be right.”

And on the flipside of that, you allow someone else to do the jobs. But not without demanding they do the job in the exact same order that you do it, using the exact same cleaners that you use, within the exact amount of time that you do it. 

In the workplace, it may be cleaning a work area, your office, and or printing a report. The individual with control freak addiction fails to understand that we have all been wired to learn and complete tasks a certain way. They so need to feed the addiction that they hurt the people they love.

Controlling people attack the unique design, wiring, and makeup of who God created us to be. 

After a while, the individuals affected by this behavior become suffocated. Over time, they become less and less vulnerable because they are not free to be themselves. They have become a prisoner in another person’s world of false safety, comfort, security, and self-control. 

JUDGING, CRITICIZING, AND CONDEMNING KILLS THE SOUL

When the marriage union of control and perfectionism work together, it causes the individuals infected with these spirits to then go and judge, criticize, and condemn other people who are free, being uniquely themselves, and unwilling to go back to Egypt when it comes to the high expectations of others.

The infected individuals often think that judging and criticizing non-compliant people to their agenda will make them do what they want them to do, the way they want them to do it. Not only does it not happen, but it places a wedge between them and the non-compliant people.

The judging, criticizing, and condemnation works on the recipient’s mind, body, soul, and spirit and enters their spiritual realm as daggers.

Because of their (the perpetrator’s) addiction, they failed to realize that every judgmental, critical, and condemning statement that they made to the other individuals is: “You are not enough. There is something inherently wrong with you.”

The perpetrator believes that he or she is exhibiting self-control when in addiction mode. In reality, they are out of control because of constantly reinforcing rigid behaviors, not only on themselves, but everyone else around them. 

Self control is a fruit of the spirit.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.

Galatians 5:22-23, CSB

My question today is, “Will you surrender your need to control and perfect through toxicity to the Lord, and allow the Holy Spirit to change you from the inside out, or will you choose to remain living with a false sense of freedom, causing your judgmental, critical, and condemning statements to run everyone else away?