So I am sitting down to do my morning prayer and meditation saying the words and trying to listen for guidance when, without knowing it, my mind is going over something I have to do later in the day.   Does this sound familiar?    I am trying to have a relaxing conversation with someone and then suddenly they get up to pick a piece of dirt off the floor or have to text someone an answer.    This may be all too common.

Control freaks are everywhere!  Inside and out.   Hopefully this post will shed some light on the subject.  I am writing out loud.   Here is what I have found out about myself.

My control freak gets me to hide out and stay away from people.  It has a lot of justifications for doing this, almost endless.     When I first started doing the work on it,  it showed me that it would find out everything that  was wrong with me so that I wouldn’t have to interact.   The list was so long that the control freak always won.  If a list was finished, it would invent a new list.   My mind just kept going to what was wrong with me. It knows how to interrupt which explains what it does in meditation.    As long as something is wrong with me, the control freak can dominate the desire to be more out there with people.    Instead of just being more out there with people,  I just work on things that are wrong with me.

To let the more “out there” part of me loose  I first had to stop the obsession of finding things wrong with me and trying to fix them.   I had to let go of the tension filled memory of things I have to fix in myself.   Instead I just relax and see the vision of enthusiastically relating to others.   That was pretty interesting.

The control freaks on the outside are a bit more complicated for me because there is an element of exclusion in their behavior.  Their intention in controlling is to exclude others who are not doing what they want them to do.   A lot of them are pretty adept at what they do including the use of guilt mongering and anger.   One of the ways that they control, especially those in leadership, is to find small mistakes or small weaknesses and then blow them up.   It gives them and advantage over others.  They also take advantage of complaints from outside sources about a person as leverage for control.  Rather than investigating the truth of a complaint,  they take the side of the person who will give them more leverage.  The truth is absolutely irrelevant.   If it were a father who wanted to control his child,  he would take the side of whoever has something against his child whether or not the person is right in his claim.

What to do?

The key to dealing with control freaks is to understand that their goal is exclusion for self glorification sake.   They don’t want to include you if you are going to be inclusive because it threatens their hegemony on being glorified.    It is best to be detached from interacting with them.   You can be friendly and polite,  but as long as they are ruled by self glorification,  they are going to do what they can to exclude you especially if they have authority over you.

Detachment means refraining from having huge expectations about working closely with them.  It is not going to happen.   Instead of focusing on them, focus on others who are open to inclusion.   Gradually over time the strength of the inclusive energy will build,the control freak will be left all alone which may serve as motivation for change.

Controlling, where inside or out, leaves you alone in the world.     If you have an internal control freak, then when you change how it works you just find yourself so much more together with others.  Likewise when you let go of externally controlling others, you also are more together with others.   In the end the goal is inclusion.