Tools for Handling Control Issues

Handling the Need to Control

Need to Control: A Self-Assessment
DIRECTIONS: Review the following reasons you may feel the need to control people, places, and things in your life. Put an ``X'' next to those reasons usually true for you.

1. If you control other people, they will do what you want them to do.

2. It's a way to keep everything orderly, precise, and predictable, so that you don't go crazy or insane.

3. You hate to be out of control or to lose your control.

4. If things don't go your way, then you feel you'll have to work harder or have to struggle to reorganize and correct them.

5. You have a hard time seeing people you care for hurting because their lives are out of control.

6. You hate to have people see your true feelings especially if they are angry, unpleasant, or negative so you struggle to control them and keep them in so as not to upset others.

7. You are on the watch for being taken advantage of by others.

8. You are afraid of being manipulated or led into doing something you really don't want to do.

9. When you see something or someone who needs to be fixed, you often step in.

10. You came from a dysfunctional or crazy homelife and you have no desire to repeat it in your current homelife.

11. You have an image, dream, or ideal of the way things are supposed to be and you work at trying to get it to be that way.

12. You are afraid that if you don't take care of things, things will never get done.

13. You feel if "you don't do it, then no one will.''

14. You are afraid that everything you have worked for will be lost, so you take control to ensure this doesn't happen.

15. When you feel intimidated, you compensate by taking more control of the situation.

16. You find it difficult not to help when you are presented with a person or thing which appears helpless and out of control.

17. You tend to hold to an "it's my way or the highway'' approach with people who don't do what you want them to do. You hope this will ensure they change their bad behaviors.

18. You are frightened, scared, or nervous when things seem to be crazy or out of control so your first impulse is to take charge.

19. You want everybody in your immediate life to be happy and you'll do whatever it takes to make it so.

20. You know how hard life can be on those who go into it unprepared and unaware, so you do whatever it takes to make sure the people you care for are not taken advantage of.

INTERPRETATION: If you checked 3 or more, you have a tendency to overcontrol the people, places, and things in your life.

Control Mechanisms: A Self-Assessment
DIRECTIONS: Here are some ways in which you control people to do for you the things you could do for yourself. Put an ``X'' next to those behaviors usually true for you.

1. You act helpless, incompetent, or lost.

2. You make the other person feel very important and essential in your life.

3. You tell them reasons which are a lie why you couldn't get things done.

4. You feel self-pity and act out the belief that you have done everything for everyone in your life so it's your turn now to be taken care of.

5. You act tense, anxious, and stressed out and incapable of caring for yourself.

6. You resort to threats of suicide or self-destruction to get others to care for you.

7. You give others a set of conditions they must do for you before you will give them acceptance, care, or approval.

8. You offer them rewards if they will do what you want done.

9. You threaten others with withdrawal of attention, support, affection, or approval if they don't do what you want done.

10. You withhold your involvement, attention, and concern if they don't do what you want done.

11 You play on their sympathy and concern by being a pathetic martyr, overworked and unappreciated victim.

12. You play on your physical or emotional illness, be it real or perceived, to get them to do for you.

13. You play on their need to be needed to get them to take care of you.

14. You play up to their guilt and overresponsible nature to get what you want.

15. You act dependent in order to give the other a sense of importance and value in helping you.

16. You fall apart when faced with having to do something which you would rather not do.

17. You play up to a person who has a need to fix things that things have gotten so "out of control'' for you.

18. You promise to change or reform the behaviors the other wants you to change in order to get what you want out of the other, never meaning to change or reform.

19. When you sense another person is pulling away from you, you feign a problem or need which you believe will get that person involved with you again.

20. You act as if you have forgotten to do something which you know the other will do for you.

INTERPRETATION: If you checked 3 or more items, you overuse control mechanisms to get people to do what you could do for yourself. Now find out if others are controlling you to do things for them they could do for themselves. Go back and put an ``X'' next to those statements true for people in your life. If 3 or more are checked, then you are being overcontrolled by others to do for them what they could do for themselves.

With kind Permision
James J. Messina, Ph.D., & Constance M. Messina, Ph.D.Copin www.coping.org