Are You A Control Freak?

Are You a Control Freak?

People with understanding control their anger.

Proverbs 14:29

Isn’t a little controlling behavior healthy? Sure. Recent research indicates that feeling in control is vital to mental and physical health, as well as happiness at home and satisfaction at work. In fact, feeling to some degree that you are master of your own fate is one of the key traits of happy people, according to David Myers, author of The Pursuit of Happiness. What’s more, psychologist Judith Rodin has demonstrated in experiments at Yale University how merely feeling in control can alter the functioning of a person’s immune system.

Being in control, however, can be too much of a good thing. It certainly was in my case. I’m the first to admit that I can be controlling. In fact, the people who know me best will admit it for me. When I first told Leslie I was going to write a book called The Control Freak, she joked about it being my autobiography.

Some of the best advice I ever received on my road to recovery from being a control freak was from my father. As a retired college president with many years of knowing what it’s like to be in charge as well as to have fun, my dad sat me down as an adult child and asked me a question: “Why are you driving so hard, son?”

My knee-jerk response was a joke: “To keep up with you, Dad.”

He thought I was serious. We talked about the psychological pressure that is transmitted, intentionally or not, from one generation to the next. We talked about the drive to produce and our mutual compulsions for control. Then my dad told me his secret for keeping life under control without being a control freak. “Count your blessings,” he said. “Don’t let a day slip away without taking time to appreciate God’s gifts.”

How about you? Do you have some controlling tendencies? If so, how have those tendencies affected your marriage? What blessings are you counting today?

It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people.

—Henri Nouwen