On Trust and Control
I’ve been thinking a lot about trust and control recently. I had started a post about a week after my mom’s passing on this very topic, only to be pulled away by life’s duties and responsibilities, as well as my own block. I didn’t really know what I had figured out yet; I’m not sure I have now either. But today, I wanted to honor the impulse to write in order to process.
I don’t often think of myself as controlling anymore. I certainly know I have preferences and small rituals I try to maintain, but in general, the practice I’ve tried to uphold with others is collaboration. I want your input before I act. I will ask for that input, and delay acting until I’ve heard your side. When learning how to lean into collaboration and asking for help, I was in rigorous therapy working on my anxious attachment. Past partners can confirm that there were behaviors I had that were highly reactive, and were often the primary causes for friction in our relationships. Part of repairing an anxious attachment is learning to self soothe. Now, when my fiance goes out with friends, when that set of worries creeps in I don’t text her nonstop, distracting her and centering myself. Instead, I do things like play with our dog, snuggle our cat, or play a cozy game.
If you play cozy games, you know that the appeal of games like Stardew Valley or Littlewood is repetition and control. You shape the world, and you do so through repetition and community ritual. The cozy game provides the safety of predictability and the illusion of omnipotence. You always know what is expected, what needs to be done, and how to wrap it all up by the end of the day. This version of control has helped me not project my worries and anxiety onto my fiance. But with all the habits and self-soothing strategies I’d developed, I neglected to think about how the fear of losing control continued to show up in my life.
There are two ways that recently, feedback from my fiance and from colleagues has helped me think about how control still shows up in my life. The first is through trying to do it all. The second is through the guise of collaboration. I had been thinking about these two themes in my life because right now, I feel woefully over capacity. I can feel the tendrils of burnout in how it aches to think, the shallowness of my breath, and in the stiffness of my body. So when one of my volunteer projects ramped back up, I really began to wonder if I could stick it out for another year. My fiance pointed something out to me one night while I was messaging back and forth on Slack with my new collaborator for the project, who was unfamiliar with the program.
“Why don’t you just let them figure it out? You don’t need to answer everything.”
I gave her many rationalizations. Most important to me was that I didn’t want my collaborator to feel as overwhelmed and confused by the program logistics as I had a year ago. I wanted them to feel prepared, capable, and like they had enough understanding to feel confident in what we were working towards.
The next night, my fiance and I again were discussing how I had been feeling like the emotional labor of running our home has been falling squarely on me. We had been noticing a pattern emerging where we were becoming short with one another, in ways neither of us liked. As we talked through the dynamic, my fiance one again pointed out something to which I was totally ignorant:
“You often have really high expectations for the house. Like who dusts the baseboards every week? Also, instead of letting something sit so I can get to it on my timeline, you just do it. I know I can be more communicative around regular house tasks, but can you share some of why you have trouble letting me even do them?”
I was absolutely stunned. I didn’t really know! I did, however, start to tear up, which told me it was tied to something much older in me than a spousal frustration.
“I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to let it out. I don’t trust you to do things because my mom never did those things and I want us to have a safe home.”
Underneath my need for control is a childhood wish for safety and stability. Whether it’s on work projects or homemaking, there is a large part of me that is always afraid that if I don’t take care of it, I or the people I care about will be in danger. What danger? Doesn’t matter. Any danger will do. What matters is obstructing all possible avenues by which danger might arrive. So, I make sure everyone has what they need to move forward on a project, being involved in every decision so it doesn’t go off the rails and cause harm. I clean the baseboards and try to make elaborate dinners every night, even though I’m exhausted, so that I can be certain our home is clean and we are well nourished. Now that I am aware of how this wish continues to inform my fear, I feel like I’ve reached a choice point.
On the one hand, I could find other avenues for experiencing control that don’t frustrate people I work and live with. Redirecting the fear doesn’t seem like the best option though. While I will always love my cozy games, I don’t know if redirecting in this way will be most productive. If anything, it wouldn’t repair the source of my wish for safety. Instead, I’ve been trying to recognize my opportunities to trust other people.
I got so stuck in the story I was telling myself about my fiance, for instance, that I didn’t take the time to appreciate how she does an array of things that contribute to our home. As we talked, I found myself saying how much I appreciate her, and that I was sorry I’d stopped naming my recognition of her support. Even now, as I write, she’s rewriting our fridge calendar for the new month, a small thing that makes us both feel on the same page. Similarly, I’ve stopped being so quick to reply to every Slack message as it came through, knowing that the information someone might need is in the program folders (and also, reminding myself that most things aren’t that urgent or serious).
I recognize I’ve come a long way from the anxious, reactive person I once was. And I’m grateful for the people in my life who were brave enough to share with me insights about how I was still letting my fear manifest through benevolent control–a perhaps even more pernicious and damaging means of centering our own needs at the expense of others. If you’re finding that you’re “collaborating” because you don’t trust the other person, or if you’re often feeling like you’re doing it all and no one is helping, I encourage you to get curious about the root cause behind it. What is the worry? And what evidence would you need to prove that worry is unfounded?
If you’ve read this far, thanks for sticking with me. Until next time, stay curious.
-Rachel
