Why You Can’t Loosen the Reins

Sometimes, controlling behavior starts earlier than you remember.

It doesn't always look like bossiness or feistiness. More often than not, it looks like responsibility and leadership; like being the one who holds everything together because otherwise, it would fall apart.

I see this a lot in my work, and it almost always starts much earlier on in her story.

A given situation can affect different people in very different ways. The loss of a loved one, growing up with a single parent, being the "parentified" child, socio-economic insecurity, traumatic events—they are all cases that inform the adult a child can become, knowing that their lived experience vastly depends on how they made sense of their environment.

So when a woman teaches her brain that control is what keeps her safe, she's reacting to an upbringing that impacted her more deeply than it did others in the same household or the same community.

Somewhere in there, her brain draws a connective line between control and safety, and never really erases it. Full control of a situation means fewer surprises. Fewer surprises mean less disappointment. Less disappointment means she wins. But does she, really?

She holds onto control the way one would hold onto a trapeze when the net is right beneath them to catch them if they fall.

She's not experiencing this as control, though; she's experiencing it as survival with better manners, and for a long time, as success.

Predictable outcomes feel like proof it's working: do the right things, get the right result.

It holds up like a math equation, until it doesn't. Because the people closest to her aren't variables she can solve for. Her children grow into their own minds. Her partner has wants that don't always match her plan. In the midst of it all, the equation stops working, and the outcome ceases to be predictable, and therefore safe.

Here's what she doesn't see coming: the same instinct that maintained her safety starts costing her the closeness she wants most, and it's exhausting her in ways she can't always identify.

She's tired, but rest doesn't fix it. She's actually afraid of what might happen to the people she loves if she isn't the one holding the outcome steady for them, and that's the fear running the show behind the leadership and the responsibility—and it's an expensive one.

People simply don't feel close to someone who's managing them. What they truly and practically feel is being managed. Even those who love her, maybe especially them, start keeping a little more distance than they used to, and neither side really talks about why.

This is the hard part of the work. She's not being asked to care less, lead less, or become some looser, more laid-back version of herself. She's being asked to pose a completely different question than the one she's used to leading with.

Instead of deciding how something should go, the shift is to ask what the other person actually needs. And then, that shift requires her to hold space for their answer, even if it's not the one she would have chosen, and even when—because it's a when, not an if—her nervous system screams that something bad might happen lest she steps in.

Sounds simple—it isn't.

If you've spent years believing things only work when you're the one steering, actually asking someone else what they want, and meaning it, can feel like hanging onto a trapeze—net still there, safety still real—but your hands won't believe it yet.

Most of my clients get stuck right here: understanding the pattern usually happens fast, almost with relief, but disrupting it is the hard part. Knowing the old way isn't working anymore, and not yet trusting the new one enough to let go of the bar.

This is where practice, slow and steady, creates the magic. It's just where the real change happens, and nobody skips it.

Sounds familiar?

If you've built your sense of safety out of managing everyone and everything around you, and you're starting to feel what it's costing you, that's the kind of shift I help people work through.

A Coffee Chat with me is a great first step.

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