Get your [control] freak on...

Yea, I took another week of from the blog, what’s it to you?!?! What’s that, you don’t care? Didn’t even notice? Well…then I’ll save the defensive rant.

I promised myself at the start of this that I’d aim to blog once a week. I think a weekly written reflection is a solid way to recap on life and try to put some things in perspective. I’ve obviously faltered twice in that quest now, but I’m trying to give myself the space to do that. I don’t want this to become an obligation, ya know? I don’t want to make a resolution and force myself to stick to it just for the sake of it. Then it becomes a chore. I also bought a house/moved this week (SO EXCITING - see pic below) so I have been VERY BUSY. Alas…

So on to this week’s topic…I’ll just come right out and say it, I have a bit of a control issue. I know, I know. This is shocking news…thinks no one. Anyone who knows me knows this to be true. Admitting out loud that I’m a control freak elicits the same response I got when I came out of the closet, a polite, yet knowing nod followed by, “Yea, I’ve known for a long time, I was just waiting for you to figure it out.”

In much the same way that it was silly to assume people would think I was straight when my favorite childhood hobby was sewing and my favorite movie was The Birdcage, it has been and continues to be silly to assume that people will think I am a cool, calm, collected, laid-back, go with the flow guy when I do shit like make two-page long flowcharts for first dates.

We have been exploring my control issues in therapy for the past few years. When I started therapy, I fully believed that I was a cool, calm, collected, laid-back, go with the flow guy. I for sure always described myself as “Type B” and adaptable and flexible. Turns out, none of these things are true. At least not as true as I thought they were.

My understanding of my need to have a control over a situation, or at least my need to have the perception of control, came to the forefront when I first got sick. In hindsight, athletics, and especially pole vaulting, likely appealed to me because of the element of control. In sport, you make specific training plans and strategies in order to obtain the desired outcome of performance. Great! The vault in particular is such a technical sport that you really need to hone in on specific skills and movements and minute pieces of the action of pole vaulting in order to produce a result. Again, right up my alley.

So imagine being a Division 1 athlete, working out 6 days a week, 2 hours a day for basically 4 years. Imagine completing in a sport as technically complicated as pole vaulting. Now imagine that you mysteriously become so sick and acquire daily pain so intense that you can’t even go for a walk anymore. Right? It was alarming as it sounds. I was in deep shit and I wanted out as quickly as possible. So, what did I do? I took the reins: I sought out doctor after doctor, read article after article, developed theory after theory, all in the hopes of finding an answer and finding relief/healing from my pain.

Well, a year passed and nothing changed. Then another year passed, nothing changed. Then another…and while nothing changed much with my body save for minor improvements in my health, what did change was my mental state. My mental health declined VERY quickly over this period of time. I know now that is because I was attempting to exert so much control over parts of a situation that I literally had no control over. And with each perceived failed outcome, my spirit depleted, as did my overall mental well-being.

I can’t explain it in words here, but the people who have seen me through this journey know what I’m talking about. I would spend hours each day researching different muscle groups and rehab plans and specialists in the area, and symptoms and solutions. Despite having no experience with the medical field (save for HIV care) I can tell you every hip flexor in the human body, the potential satellite trigger points for each muscle, as well as the potential symptoms of a strain in each muscle.

I started, over time, to recognize all the areas of my life wherein I try to exert control over things. My most hilarious “a-ha!” moment in this journey came when I told my therapist about an upcoming date I was going on. This was about 2 years back and I was going on a date with a guy I had met online. He had just moved to Columbia, SC and was coming to Charleston to visit. I of course told him to “come down whenever” and we’d “keep it casual” and just “play it by ear”. LOLZ. I made a two-page long flow chart of potential date options that took into account time of arrival, level of attraction, and the weather, amongst other data points. Did he arrive after 1PM? is the level of attraction decent? Is it raining? If so, see option 4c. Yea, it’s like that. And here I thought I was SO cool and laid back. Ugh.

After 3 years in therapy, as with so many of the other things I have been working on, I have gotten myself to a place where I can at least recognize my behaviors and I can do so much sooner than I used to be able to. I have explored the triggers for my need to control (aka ANY encounter with uncertainty, the potential for change, and lack of structure). I have also learned to recognize some of the manifestations of my control issues such as: making impossibly long lists, cleaning the entire house from top to bottom, feverish googling, obsessive amounts of research, and repeatedly exploring the same topic with the same people in order to receive affirmation that everything I have in mind is alright. Any of these sounds familiar.

In exploring and recognizing the ways in which I attempt to exert control in my life, my therapist asked me a damn good question that I hate asking myself because if I’m asking myself that question, it means I have spiraled out of control in my attempt to gain control. Make sense? Anyway, the question is, “How does this behavior serve me?” In this context specifically it would be, “How does me doing [insert controlling behavior] serve me?”

More often than not, the function of my controlling ways is the desire for comfort/protection from uncertainty. I have learned that I REALLY do not like uncertainty. I want to know what’s coming. I’m that motherfucker who HATES surprises in any form. They make me physically uncomfortable. So, I know the function of these behaviors and the purpose they serve. And so the next question becomes, “Is it worth it?” Let me work it, put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it. Sorry, couldn’t resist. Is this behavior worth it? For example, is making a two-page flowchart of date options so that I have some piece of mind worth it? In that case, probably not too bad of a thing, albeit a bit neurotic. But then there are scenarios like staying up all night stressing about the tone in that coworkers voice when they said that thing and surmising all the potential meanings behind that tone until I find the one I think is most accurate. In this case, as you might imagine, the perceived sense of comfort and control I get from running through a million scenarios in my head when I should be sleeping is in fact, not worth it.

Identifying these behaviors is a skill and one that took me a long time to build. Dismantling these behaviors is much more difficult. Convincing myself that my compulsive behaviors are not worth it is really hard. Especially when being meticulous and having the propensity to imagine every possible negative outcome and plan for it comes in handy, like at work. My ability to do just that is what helps me be successful as the manager of a multi-faceted program. I can see the line in the sand, and I know when I’ve crossed it, but I don’t always know how to being myself back.

I have owned my house for a week now and in that time, I have found myself on control freak OVERLOAD. I am making multiple lists a day, I am working myself to the point of exhaustion every day, I am waking up in cold sweats wondering if I should go get the pain buckets and touch up that spot in the corner. I have talked to my roommate about shelving options 5 times today alone. So needless to say this home (while a journey in many ways) is presenting itself as an opportunity to practice these skills. My therapist always tells me that when you are trying to break a negative habit or cycle or belief system, life will start throwing multiple opportunities your way to either practice your new habit or sink back into the old. So…we’ll see how it goes…

Peace, love, and flow[charts],

Adam