If you have an underlying need to control, you are being driven by fear. The question to ask yourself is this – “what do you think will happen if you don’t control this situation, person”?
If that thing happens, how will you feel?
This is what you are ultimately afraid of yourself and how you will feel. You have not learned yet how to manage uncomfortable emotions. The thing is feelings can be uncomfortable, but they don’t last forever.
This is how it works a feeling rises peaks and falls; this is what it means to “let go”. Letting the pain flow through you even if it hurts. Neuroscience research tells us that it takes about 90seconds if you let it happen.
Your mind will be clearer if you allow yourself to first feel the feelings. The key is staying in your body and out of your thoughts. When your body needs to feel thinking is a defense mechanism.
Staying with your body means, placing the focus on the physical sensation of the emotion. Your heart rate, the tightness in your chest, feeling sick in your stomach. Stay with these sensations this is the real emotion and allowing it will allow it to pass. Hold space for it, allow it to be.
Learning to know what it is you can control and what is not yours to control can be a life-changing exercise. Letting go and allowing powerlessness is just sometimes how it will be.
Sharron Brandon
Relationship & Couples Counsellor
Sharron Brandon 