I’ve had a blissful day, I experienced so much productivity at work, I had meetings that felt fluid and connected and I taught a yoga class that was immensely nourishing for myself. I felt richly connected to my heart by the end of the day. But when I walked into my house one recent evening, both my daughter and partner were of completely different mindsets. They were each struggling for vastly different reasons, and they were in foul moods. It definitely pivoted how I was feeling.
I wanted to keep my ‘peace,’ so I did everything in my power to settle both of them by pointing out that their behaviour was intense. I started telling them how to settle themselves. My desire to control kicked in and instead of allowing them space to have their own experiences and move through what they needed to move through, I tried to change their moods. The result was failure, with both of them feeling unheard and unseen.
That little dirty word creeps up in all our lives, control. I’ve mentioned it frequently in my writings because it has such a strong hold on us and our society. It makes us confuse right from wrong. Keeping ourselves out of situations in which we feel like we have no control prevents us from taking risks. It keeps us arrogant and certain. It destroys curiosity and empowers divisiveness.
Control is used in insidious ways. We attempt to control people’s perception of us with various tactics: like being successful in business or accumulating wealth represented by fancy homes, cars, material items, friends etc. We control by using our education to have power over people. We utilize control to predict our next moves and design our lives. We manipulate perceptions with social media and in person. We scheme, plan and try to be better than others through sports, recreation, education, books, money, the accumulation of material items, vacations, and so on.
We control others by trying to get them to do what we want. At home we want our children to be a certain way so that we feel comfortable, but when we do that, we disempower them. We’ll take control over our kids in order to feel like we have some kind of agency. People love ‘good’ kids, the ones that don’t cause many disturbances. We have little tolerance for kids, teens, or adults that upset us.
We use modern psychology vernacular to point out problems with others. We use this language to pathologize people and make them feel small by acting like we get to diagnose them or their choices. We tell stories about others to feel like we can control what people think. We’re certain when others are wrong and we can’t tolerate differences, all to make us feel in control.
A psychologist won’t diagnose a friend or family member because they know that’s an abuse of power and a misuse of their knowledge. So why do we feel like we know what’s best for others?
It’s possible we do this because so much of what we’ve built in western society revolves around control. We have systems for control, in our homes, schools, workplace, police forces, and politics. But we don’t have systems of letting go and we don’t teach how to release, we’re taught how to hold tight.
We’re obsessed with systems that help us be more productive, successful, and wealthy. Those ideals have trickled into our wellness and mindful practices. We’ve decided to rely on handbooks with commandments to achievement instead of learning how to release things that are no longer meant for us.
What’s your practice of releasing? You likely have a practice for staying healthy, but most of us don’t have ‘practices’ for releasing. Do you lose your shit and scream at your loved ones? That’s one way we control. Do you go silent and disconnect? That’s another way to control. Do you snap at someone and then shut them out because of how you felt you had to respond to them? Do you put systems in place to manage your life and those around you, whether at work or home?
We need systems to keep us accountable, but have the systems gotten out of control? Have the systems become the things that control us? In my own life, I had to create chaos (not intentionally) in order to release the things that were causing me harm. I’m not speaking of the people and situations in my life that caused chaotic experiences, but of the belief systems in my body that created those relationships. The ways in which I held tight to control, how I wanted things to be a certain way. I became so rigid and unmovable that the only thing that could move me was an absolute collapse of my life.
This was all because I hadn’t been taught how to release. Think about how it feels when someone tries to control you: it’s palpable, we can feel it in our bodies and we don’t like it. Yet we do this everyday with those in our lives, seeking ways to control.
If you’re looking for a way to release, walk into the forest, sit on a fallen tree, and look at all the ways nature is in a constant cycle of birth, growth, decomposing, and letting go.
There have been many times that my own process of letting go has been a wild and emotionally exhausting experience. Isn’t it fascinating the level of control that directs our minds and culture. We have this incredible need to control, to manage, police, judge, critique, and stifle ourselves and others in order to keep our worship to control intact.
Do you have to create chaos and drama in your life to feel like you have control? We all need friction, but if that friction isn’t done by using rituals and ceremonies to help us burn away what is no longer serving us, including of our belief systems and attachments, how do we release in healthy ways?
Other ways we can develop practices of releasing can be through maintaining practices that we devote ourselves to, breathwork, meditation, yoga, rising early, journaling, and/or cold plunges. But those are popularized ways to maintain a practice.
There are other ways, ones that are not so traditional each of these could be done without ever receiving outside recognition: studying with indigenous cultures, caring for another for a prolonged period of time, working through struggles in relationships and coming out the other side with more compassion for the other, or building a carer over decades and remaining humble as you become more skilled. Growing a garden, tending to it, harvesting it, all to feed others. Studying with teachers who are able to take you into deep places without needing to take those learnings and share them with others. Sitting in your own growth without feeling better than anyone else.
So many of the mundane things in life are meant to teach us to be with the friction of serving others, of doing for no other reason other than growth, of learning to find steadiness in all the parts of ourselves that feel unsteady. Healing our pains and finding healthy ways to be in relationship with ourselves is deep work, work that no one will ever give us attention or praise for.
Love, Noelle