Do you struggle trying to CONTROL everything?  I know I do!  I am a self-professed control freak in many ways.  It has taken me years to tame this control beast!  I have asked my friend and colleague Alida Wagner, RN to discuss how to take charge of your life and regain your worth.  As you read this blog please feel free to join us on FACEBOOK Live Nov 14 at 7pm central for a discussion on this super important topic of self-care.  Until then, enjoy this guest blog post!

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By trying to control everything and everyone around you, you’ve lost control of your own life, your happiness, and your self-worth. Here are 5 ways to take charge of your life and regain your worth.

1-Stop trying to fix everything

Many women feel responsible to take care of the needs of the people they love in their life. Taking care of people isn’t a bad thing, but it is when it turns into a need to control everything and everyone. The weird thing is, you don’t even know that you’re trying to control everything. You probably see it as being caring or trying to help. For example, my son has my personality to a T! I recognize a lot of myself in his actions and behaviors. I stuffed my emotions down for most of my life and I see him doing the same things I would do when I was uncomfortable or upset. I don’t want to see him repeat the same mistakes I’ve made, so I try to make him talk to me and tell me what’s wrong because I want to help fix it! One day, I finally realized that I wasn’t helping him by forcing him to talk to me about his feelings as a way of trying to protect him. Instead of letting him experience his own feelings and work through problems in his own way, I was trying to control him to respond how I thought he should.That can be really hard as a parent, to just stand by and watch your kid struggle. But it’s his life and he is entitled to make his own decisions about his happiness and relationships with others (for the most part). All I can do is let him know that I support him and am always available to listen if he wants to talk about anything that’s bothering him.

There’s actually a name for this type of caring behavior, and it might surprise you. It’s considered being codependent. Codependence is often described in relationships involving substance abuse in which one person relies on the other person to meet their needs. You don’t have to be in a setting involving substance abuse to be codependent. Codependence can show up when one person feels a need to control the behavior of others through tactics like manipulation and conditional love.

Another way I see this show up is with nurses. I’m a nurse myself and have experienced this firsthand. You find yourself wanting to fix things for people and take away their pain, whether it’s physical or emotional pain. Let’s say you have a patient who just got bad news, a diagnosis of terminal cancer. That person is crying and upset, their whole world has been turned upside down. But as a nurse, you want to take away that pain and make the person feel better. In some cases, you might even take on that pain. You feel what the patient feels. This is not healthy for either party. When you try to fix things and take away other people’s pain, you’re depriving them of their right to feel, to experience, and process their own emotions. There is absolutely nothing anyone can do to take away the fear and distress of receiving terrible news like a terminal diagnosis. That person needs to process and experience their feelings in order to work through them and move on. As a health care provider, you can absolutely be available as support to hold space for that person to experience their feelings, but that doesn’t mean you should take on those feelings as your own or somehow feel responsible for making it better or fixing it.

2-Figure out what is essential to YOU

You need to figure out what is essential to you and what your priority is. If you aren’t clear about what it is that really matters to you, then someone else will decide it for you.

I worked with a woman who was high performing in her job and everyone saw her as this wonderful person who always got the job done. When I learned more about her, I found out that she was stressed out beyond belief and working crazy hours to try to get her work, and other people’s work, done. She was accepting assignments from everyone and anyone in the organization. She didn’t know how to say no, she wanted everyone to like her and didn’t want to make anyone mad. She even told me that if she didn’t do what was asked of her, then no one else in the whole organization would do it, so she had to. She wasn’t getting the core essentials of her own job done because she had allowed so many people to manage her time. Let’s be honest, if any one of us didn’t show up to work anymore, we would be replaced in a heartbeat. Sure our co-workers may miss us, but life goes on and so does the work.  You get to decide what is essential to you. Not just at work, but at home too. Just because someone asks you to do something, doesn’t mean you have to do it. It is okay to say no politely and with grace. That might look something like, “thank you for thinking of me, but I won’t be able to do that this time.” You also don’t have to justify your reasons to anyone. Just stop talking! We often start making excuses for saying no and then end up talking ourselves right back into doing the very thing we don’t want to do. Take back your power by knowing and sticking to what is most essential to you.

3-Do checklists the right way

Everyone is so busy these days that checklists can be a great way to keep yourself organized and on track. But there’s a dark side to checklists too. Checklists are great for providing structure and organizing the work you need to do, but they can also be a source of pain if you rely on completing that checklist to feel good about yourself. Everyone is so busy and sometimes it can feel like we’re all trying to out busy each other. It’s not healthy. Social media feeds this, moms’ groups feed this, even your friends can feed this. I’ve found myself creating an overly ambitious to-do list and then feeling like a failure when I don’t finish it. Or like I don’t deserve to rest, relax, or have fun until I finish my list. You don’t need a checklist to validate your worth. You deserve time to relax and unwind without having to justify it to anyone or your list. If you are crazy busy all the time, you might want to stop and ask yourself how being so busy is serving you. Are you avoiding something else by keeping so busy? It is important to have goals and work to achieve them. But allow yourself a break when you need it. You don’t need to justify taking a rest. You deserve it just because you’re you! Be patient and kind with yourself. After all, would you berate your best friend if she didn’t finish her to do list? Heck no! You’d tell her to give herself a break and work on it later. Give yourself that same courtesy.

4-Boundaries are your best friend

If you find yourself in the situation where other people are dictating your priorities, then it’s time to establish and maintain some boundaries. Boundaries always felt like big harsh walls to me. But they don’t have to be. Boundaries are simply your instructions for how you expect to be treated. I had a friend in college who was notorious for dropping by late at night and wanting to hang out. I’m the kind of person who needs my sleep and I don’t function well without it. I found myself getting very annoyed with her, but not saying anything. She wasn’t deliberately trying to mess with my sleep, she just genuinely wanted to hang out and that was a good time for her. One day I decided enough was enough and told her that I really need to sleep in order to function at class and work and that I couldn’t hang out after 10pm anymore. It worked for a while, but then she started back up with her late night visits. I needed to enforce this boundary, so I finally told her that I would no longer answer the door after 10pm because I would be sleeping. Your boundaries have to be about you and not the other person’s behavior. In the example with my friend, the boundary was about my need for sleep and not about her need to hang out. When it comes to boundaries you must also have consequences for breaking your boundaries. In my example, the consequence was that I would just stop answering the door. It can be difficult to enforce boundaries, but if you’re clear in the consequences, over time you’re going to find yourself feeling less stressed out and worried about what other people think of you and feel more free. I have an amazing relationship with that friend today, but I may not have if I never established that boundary and continued to be irritated with her. A lack of boundaries invites a lack of respect.

5-Be present

It is really easy to get into little habits that result in escaping from the chaos in your life. Maybe it’s having a glass of wine every night after work to unwind. Maybe it’s plopping down on the couch and scrolling through Facebook on your phone while the kids watch TV. Maybe it’s finding things to do so that you’re so busy you don’t have time to think about or deal with the stress in your life. It might be a nice short-term solution, but these things hurt you in the long run. What you’re basically doing is avoiding dealing with your feelings, or numbing out to avoid the pain. Like the old saying goes, you can run, but you can’t hide! Those unprocessed emotions or feelings are going to catch up with you one way or another. It might be an outburst where you lash out at some innocent bystander. Or it might manifest itself as a physical problem. I know this because I’ve lived it. For many years, I worked as an ER and ICU nurse and dealt with stressful situations on a daily basis. There is no time to process all that stress in the moment so you end up stuffing it down, soldiering on, and taking it home with you. For me, years of this resulted in finally developing an autoimmune disease. It was basically my body’s way of telling me “that’s enough, I’m going to force you to take care of me now”. The other crazy thing about avoiding all the bad stuff is that you eventually can’t even appreciate the good stuff and the joy in your life. I remember when my son was a baby and thinking how wonderful it was to watch him play and explore but I couldn’t feel that feeling of joy. The remedy for that is to practice being mindful, or present in the moment. Put the technology down and use your five senses to experience everything in the present moment. Soak it in! Getting into habits like this help you stay connected and present in the moments that matter. Finally, meditation is a great practice for helping to stay present and mindful. Anyone can meditate and if you’re not sure how to do it, there are tons of YouTube videos and apps that can guide you through the process.

Taking charge of your life is a lot about just taking care of yourself and letting go of worrying about everyone else and trying to fix everything. If you take care of yourself and make yourself happy first, then people in your life will be happier too. Your worth is dependent on you and not about what other people think or what other people may think you owe them. Prioritizing your own needs is essential to living a fulfilled and happy life.

By Alida Wagner, RN, MSN

www.alidawagner.com