S2 EP276 – The Power of Letting Go: Embracing Love Over Control

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. A major issue with both individuals and relationships is the issue of controlling versus loving. It’s so easy to fool ourselves that we are being loving when we are actually being controlling. Your wounded self might be very good at masking as a loving adult, and when this is the case, you might be having a hard time understanding why things might not be working well for you, either within yourself or within your relationship.

How often do you hear a parental voice in your head that says things like, “You’ve got to lose weight,” or “You should get up earlier every morning and exercise,” or “Today I should get caught up on the bills,” or “I’ve got to get rid of this clutter.” Let’s explore what happens in response to this voice.

We have a very good reason for judging ourselves: the judgmental part of us believes that by judging, criticizing, and “shoulding” ourselves, we will motivate ourselves to take action and therefore protect against failure or rejection. We may have been judging ourselves to get ourselves to do things “right” since we were kids, hoping to keep ourselves in line. If you judge yourself, you do this because you believe it’s working for you.

Let’s take the example of my client Karl, who is a high-powered executive in a large accounting firm. Karl has had a heart attack and is supposed to watch his diet. Right after his heart attack, he did well avoiding sugar and processed food, but after six months or so, he found himself struggling with his food plan. In one of our sessions, Karl told me he was upset with himself for having had a big desert as well as a big unhealthy meal the night before. I asked Karl to put himself back into the situation and recreate what he had been feeling.

“Well, I was out to dinner with one of our biggest clients. He asked me a question and I didn’t remember the facts, so I couldn’t answer him. As soon as this happened, that voice came into my head telling me that I’m stupid, that I should have remembered it and ‘What’s the matter with me anyway?'”

“What did you feel as soon as you judged yourself?” I asked.

“Well, looking back,” he said, “I think I felt that sad, sort of dark empty hollow feeling I often get inside. And you know what – that’s when I started to eat a lot of bread with tons of butter and ordered the desert! I didn’t realize it was in response to that empty feeling that I hate!”

“So the sad empty feeling is what you feel when you judge yourself,” I said. “Judging yourself is an inner abandonment, so your inner child then feels alone, sad, and empty. When you judge yourself, you are telling your inner child that he is not good enough. I know that you don’t do this with your actual children, but you do it a lot with yourself, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I think it do it all the time. After I judged myself for not knowing the answer, then I judged myself for eating too much and having desert. And then I felt even worse.”

“So what did you hope for by judging yourself? I asked him.

“I guess I hoped that I could control my eating and also get myself to work harder so I wouldn’t forget things.”

“It doesn’t seem to be working,” I offered.

“No,” he said. “It just makes me feel terrible. In fact, I can see that judging myself for not knowing the answer made me feel so badly that then I wanted to eat more. Instead of giving me more control, it gave me less!”

“So you are trying to have control over yourself through your self-judgments, but what actually happens is that you feel awful and behave in addictive ways to avoid the pain. I think what also happens is that some part of you goes into resistance to being judged and told what to do, so you end up doing the opposite of what you tell yourself you should do.”

“Right,” he said. “As soon as I tell myself not to eat so much and judge myself for eating, that’s when I really want to eat. So I’m eating to not be controlled and also because when I judge myself I’m abandoning myself, which makes me feel sad and empty, and I’ve always used food to fill up that emptiness. I don’t want to do this anymore. How do I stop this cycle?”

“You can’t stop it until you are conscious of it,” I said. “As long as you are unconsciously judging yourself you have no choice over it. So the first thing you can do is just notice it. As you become very aware of this pattern, you will have the choice to change it. You will have the choice to be loving and caring toward yourself instead of judgmental once you become aware of how you are treating yourself. You can start by noticing every time you feel that empty sad feeling and then explore what you were telling yourself that led to the painful feeling.”

Karl did start to notice and over time was able to stop judging himself. Not only did the sad empty feeling that he had experienced so often in his life go away, but he was able to keep to his nutrition plan for his heart. When his inner child felt loved instead of judged, he didn’t need to eat to take away the pain.

Often, people get confused between the difference between self-control versus controlling yourself and others.

The word “control” can be confusing. Is control always harmful or can it be beneficial? Aren’t there times when we need to be in control of ourselves or others?

Whether control is harmful or beneficial depends upon your intention.

When your intention is to be loving to yourself and others, then control can be beneficial – like stopping a child from running into the street. Self-control – actually I prefer the term self-discipline – is definitely beneficial. Self-discipline is when the loving adult does not indulge the wounded self in acting in ways that are harmful to yourself – such as eating badly, watching too much TV, overworking, abusing alcohol or drugs, and so on – or behaving in ways that are harmful to others. When the wounded self wants to act out in ways that are harmful to yourself or others, the loving adult exerts “control” by metaphorically “sitting on the wounded self,” or making sure the wounded self steps back. In other words, the loving adult, connected with your higher guidance, exerts control by preventing the wounded self from acting out. This is self-discipline, and the intent is to be loving to yourself and to others.

This is quite different from the wounded self being in charge and trying to have control over not feeling pain through various substance and process addictions. Don’t forget, the intent of the wounded self is to have control over getting love and avoiding pain. It has nothing to do with being loving to yourself and others.

The attempts to control of the wounded self are always about having control over getting love, avoiding pain, and feeling safe.

The “control” of the loving adult is about choosing the intention to learn, limiting the acting out behavior of your wounded self, limiting an actual child’s behavior in areas of health and safety, and taking helpful actions for yourself or others. The loving adult always has your own and others highest good at heart and is connecting with a spiritual source of guidance regarding what is in the highest good of all.

The intention of the wounded self is never about your highest good. It’s always self-serving – getting money, power, love, and avoiding rejection, abandonment, engulfment, failure, embarrassment, loss. The loving adult is willing to suffer pain in order to be loving, while the wounded self will do anything to avoid that which it fears.

When I talk about the intent to control, I’m referring to the intent of the wounded self. The intent of the loving adult is never to control yourself and others but rather to be loving to yourself and others, and sometimes this includes self-discipline or limitations on yourself or others to stop or prevent harm.

Things become clear when you look at them in the light of intention.

If you discern your own and others’ behavior in terms of whether it is self-serving or genuinely supportive of the highest good of yourself and others, you can begin to understand what is loving and what is just controlling. In our society, we have far too much controlling behavior and very little self-control. Developing the loving adult means developing self-discipline through utilizing the power that comes from spirit to limit self-destructive behaviors and behaviors that are harmful to others. This is not a matter of willpower. The wounded self tries to use willpower as a form of control over oneself, but it doesn’t work. Self-discipline is using the power of spirit to strengthen your own will and ability to take loving actions. This occurs when you consciously invite spirit to act through you rather than trying to act on your own.

When it comes to control, it’s important to remember that the only thing you actually have control over is yourself – your attitudes, your beliefs, your behavior, and of course your intention. Beneficial control is the control we have over choosing the intention to learn about love. Harmful control is when we attempt to control our feelings rather than learn from them and attempt to control others and outcomes.

Self-discipline of one of the rewards of practicing Inner Bonding. These Six Steps exercise the muscle of the loving adult, developing new neural pathways in the brain. The more you practice them, the more you discover that you no longer need to operate on willpower, for you now have the self-discipline, the self-control, the power to choose the intention to learn and make loving choices on your own behalf and in the highest good of all.

I’ve often spoken about the fact that many of us have the false belief that we can control how others feel about us and treat us. Do you believe that you can control how others feel about you and treat you? The wounded self generally operates under this false belief. We have all learned both overt and covert ways of trying to have this control, and we spend a lot of energy trying to get others to love us and care for us, instead of spending that same energy in learning to love and care for ourselves and share our love with others. Our wounded self falsely believes that our feelings of worth and our sense of safety come from others loving us, rather than from connecting with a spiritual source of unconditional love and bringing that love to ourselves.

Often, you might try to control others in the ways your parents tried to control you or each other, or in ways you learned in childhood from other children or from media. Until you learn to connect with your guidance and give to yourself what you may be trying to get from others, you will continue to try to control others in many ways.

The list of ways most of us have learned to try to control others is long, and I don’t want you to get overwhelmed as I go over this list. As you hear this list, or read it in the transcription, be gentle with yourself rather than judgmental – and be honest with yourself. All of us have learned to be controlling and all of us have the choice to be compassionate with ourselves so we can learn about love, rather than judge ourselves, which cuts off our learning. You might be surprised at some of the ways you learned to control, not realizing that these behaviors are controlling rather than loving.

I encourage you to put judgments aside and tune into the ways you try to control as I go over this list:

• Yelling
• Getting angry
• Criticizing, judging
• Being arrogant and self-righteous, acting like a know-it-all
• Demanding
• Defending
• Saying “Tsk, tsk” and shaking your head
• Getting annoyed, irritated, short, curt
• Accusing
• Blaming
• Pouting, sulking
• Becoming ill
• Drama
• Being sneaky and deceptive
• Lying or withholding the truth
• Therapizing, analyzing
• Dismissing
• Moralizing
• Nagging, bitching, complaining
• Lecturing, giving advice
• Arguing
• Explaining, convincing, selling
• Justifying
• Interrogating
• Denying
• Talking others out of their feelings by telling them they are wrong
• Asking leading questions to which only one answer is acceptable
• Bribery
• Scowling
• Hitting, spanking
• Changing the subject
• Using sarcasm
• Raising your eyebrows
• Whining
• Shrugging your shoulders
• Making comparisons
• Throwing things
• Interrupting
• Telling your feelings as an accusation that the other is causing them
• Silent angry withdrawal, the silent treatment
• Interpreting
• Pushing others into therapy
• Disapproving looks
• Disapproving sighs
• Blaming tears
• “Poor me” tears
• Temper tantrums
• Put-downs
• A superior attitude
• Half-truths
• Being overly nice
• Giving gifts with strings attached
• Being emotionally or financially indispensable
• Teaching, point things out without being asked
• Flattery or giving false compliments
• Giving in, giving yourself up, going along
• Caretaking – giving to get
• Not asking for what you want, putting aside what you want
• Agreeing with others’ points of view when you actually disagree
• People pleasing
• Incessant talking
• Rescuing
• Censoring what you say about what you want and feel
• Second-guessing and anticipating what others want
• Putting yourself down
• Using threats of:
• Financial withdrawal
• Emotional withdrawal
• Sexual withdrawal
• Exposure to others
• Abandonment
• Illness
• Violence
• Suicide
• Alcohol or drug abuse 

Our controlling behavior may eventually result in creating whatever it is you are trying to prevent.

You control to get love and avoid pain, yet by controlling rather than loving yourself and others, you are likely creating the very pain you are trying to avoid.

Try accepting that while you can influence others, you can’t control them. You can control yourself by consciously choosing the intention to learn to love yourself, rather than the intention to control.

An underlying issue in many relationships is that both people are stuck in various forms of controlling behavior and are not aware that this is what is causing big problems in their relationship. 

When Zack and Tiffany started having sessions with me, they were on the verge of divorce after 16 years of marriage. Neither really wanted to end the marriage, yet both were miserable. Both of them believed that their misery was because of the other person, and both could clearly articulate what the other person was doing to cause the problems.

“Tiffany is just so distant and unaffectionate most of the time,” Zack told me, “and when we are together, she is so critical of me. I can’t seem to do anything right in her eyes. I try really hard to please her, but no matter what I do, it’s not good enough.”

“I can’t seem to connect with Zack,” said Tiffany. “He’s a really nice guy but I can’t feel him. I feel irritated with him a lot and I don’t really know why. He just annoys me. I feel like he’s always wanting something from me, and I just don’t like being around him. And he’s so darn nice! What’s wrong with me that I don’t like someone being so nice?”

I could see immediately that the underlying problem in this relationship was that both Zack and Tiffany were stuck in various forms of controlling behavior, yet neither of them were consciously trying to control. They had a very typical system of the nice guy and the critic.

Zack was a caretaker. He tried to control by being a “nice guy” and doing everything he thought Tiffany wanted, including making dinner every night, doing the laundry, and doing most of the childcare, even though both of them worked. He secretly believed that if he was nice enough, he could have control over Tiffany loving him and being turned on to him. What he didn’t realize is that his niceness was a “pull” on Tiffany, which is one reason she kept her distance. Underneath, Zack had a big fear of rejection and was trying to have control over Tiffany not rejecting him.

Tiffany was trying to control Zack primarily with her criticism, as well as with her withdrawal. She was critical any time she felt Zack wanting something from her to make him feel safe and loved. She had a secret hope that if she criticized him enough, he would stop pulling on her for affection, sex, and attention. Unconsciously, Tiffany had a huge fear of engulfment and was trying to protect herself from being engulfed and controlled by Zack. In addition, Tiffany could not experience who Zack was because he was putting himself aside to please her. She could not connect with him until he was authentically himself.

Everything Zack did to protect against rejection tapped into Tiffany’s fear of engulfment, while everything Tiffany did to protect against engulfment tapped into Zack’s fear of rejection. The more Zack pulled with niceness, the more Tiffany judged him and moved away, and the more Tiffany criticized and moved away, the more Zack pulled. Was there a the way out of this protective circle? Fortunately, there was.

Both Zack and Tiffany needed to learn how to take loving care of themselves, rather than attempt to control the other. Zack needed to learn how to not take Tiffany’s behavior as a personal rejection. He needed to see that her criticism and withdrawal was coming from her fear of engulfment that he was tapping into, but he was not the cause of her fear. She had this fear way before meeting him. Zack also needed to start to be loving to himself rather than overly nice to Tiffany. He needed to learn to take responsibility for his own feelings of well-being instead of being dependent upon Tiffany for them. In learning to take loving care of himself, he would naturally stop pulling on Tiffany for his sense of worth and security.

Tiffany needed to learn to speak her truth without blaming or judging. Instead of withdrawing and criticizing, she needed to let Zack know that she felt unloved and lonely when he pulled on her. She needed to learn to say things like, “Zack, I end up feeling sad and lonely when you make dinner with an expectation that I should now have sex with you, rather than because you felt like making dinner. I’d rather that you not make dinner unless you are doing it because you really want to and without an expectation attached. I don’t feel loved by you when you have strings attached to what you do for me.”

Zack and Tiffany decided that it was worth learning how to be loving to themselves and then see what happened with their marriage. Fortunately, because both of them were devoted to learning and practicing Inner Bonding – learning to take responsibility for their own feelings and needs – they were able to move out of their protective, controlling circle and into a loving circle. As they learned to take responsibility for themselves through their Inner Bonding practice, their love for each other gradually returned.

Becoming aware of how you control means that you let go of all judgment regarding your controlling behavior and instead get curious about the false beliefs about control that underlie your controlling behavior. These false beliefs heal over time as you learn to choose love over control. As you practice Inner Bonding and learn to connect with your higher guidance, accessing the truth about your beliefs and the loving behavior toward yourself and others, you will be amazed at what happens in your life and in your relationships. Everything changes for the better when you are guided by your higher self rather than by your wounded self, and you make loving yourself and others your highest priority. Letting go to truth and love works miracles!

I invite you to join me for my bi-monthly masterclass and receive my live help, which you can learn about at https://innerbondinghub.com/membership. 

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.