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The Truth About Control: How Chasing It Feeds Your Distress


The Truth About Control: How Chasing It Feeds Your Distress
Trying to micromanage your partner’s mood, your child’s every meltdown, your coworker’s reactions, or the entire swirl of social media? Burnout city.

The Truth About Control: How Chasing It Feeds Your Distress


Ever noticed how the more you try to control life, the more chaotic it feels? That’s not just your imagination- it’s neuroscience, psychology, and your nervous system all trying to tap you on the shoulder saying, “Hey, we’re not built for this.”


In last week’s SHIFT Live, we cracked open the tension between our craving for control and the emotional wreckage that chasing it leaves behind. Let’s break it down, gently but honestly.




The Paradox: Why More Control Creates More Distress



Research shows that when you feel you have no control, anxiety and depression go up. Makes sense. But here’s the kicker: when you try to over-control everything outside your lane, it usually backfires, intensifying your distress when life inevitably does what it wants.


Trying to micromanage your partner’s mood, your child’s every meltdown, your coworker’s reactions, or the entire swirl of social media? Burnout city. The WHO actually links burnout to the sense of futility we feel when we keep pouring effort into things that stay stubbornly out of our grasp.




4 Common Control Traps We Fall Into



  1. Mistaking Influence for Control:

    Believing you can “fix” people’s feelings if you just say the perfect thing. Enter: people-pleasing, eggshell-walking, and manipulation, even if you don’t mean to.

  2. Catastrophizing:

    Mentally rehearsing every possible disaster, convinced that worrying enough will keep bad things away. Except it doesn’t, it just traps you in rumination and decision paralysis.

  3. Emotional Fusion:

    When your boundaries blur, you start absorbing other people’s feelings as yours. Their upset becomes your fault. Cue guilt, resentment, and the exhausting sense that you must hold it all together.

  4. Control as Safety:

    For many of us, control is a stand-in for safety. So when unpredictable chaos hits, an illness, an argument, a tough parenting day, your sense of safety can crumble with it.





What Actually Works: Flexibility Over Force



Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) research has proven that psychological flexibility- your ability to pivot and let go is one of the strongest predictors of real, sustainable well-being.


The Stoics figured this out long before we had brain scans: “Some things are up to us, and some things are not.” Try fighting reality all day, and watch your energy drain faster than your phone on 2%.




So, Where’s the Line?



Here’s a quick refresher:


  • CONTROL: What’s mine? My words, tone, actions, boundaries, how I show up.

  • INFLUENCE: What might I gently shape? My energy, patterns, presence, consistency.

  • NEITHER: Other people’s choices, moods, timing, past events, pure chaos.



Trying to control what’s never been yours? That’s the energy leak keeping you stuck and exhausted.




Real-Life Scenarios | SHIFT Style



  • You can bring calm, but you can’t make them calm.

  • You can set the table, but you can’t make them come eat.

  • You’re not building a robot - you’re raising a human.

  • Love is shared. Growth isn’t guaranteed.

  • Planning is wise. Expecting it to go your way? Recipe for resentment.

  • If someone misreads your boundary as betrayal - that’s their nervous system, not your sin.





A Practice To Close The Loop



Next time you’re spiraling in “what ifs” or over-carrying someone else’s chaos, pause. Place your hand on your chest. Ask:


  1. Is this mine to control?

  2. Can I influence it with my energy or actions?

  3. Or is this in the ‘neither’ pile, something I’ve been hauling that was never mine to begin with?



And if it’s not yours? Breathe out. Whisper it if you want: “I’m allowed to let go of what I was never meant to hold.”




Your Soul-Gold Reframe



When you stop chasing control where there is none, you make space for what’s real, your own boundaries, your own regulation, your own growth. And that is where your power actually lives.



Ready to practice this in your everyday life? Keep showing up for your SHIFT. Little by little, we remember what’s ours, and we give the rest back to the wild, unpredictable, beautifully human mess of the world.


You’ve got this.


Ready to practice this in real time?

Join us for SHIFT Live, every Thursday at 11 AM PST- a grounded space to learn, unlearn, and regulate together. Bring your questions, your stuck spots, and your whole self.



The Truth About Control: How Chasing It Feeds Your Distress


 
 
 

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