Control

One aspect of my life that was impacted was the level of control and organization I need (or needed) around me.  I noticed from talking to other people who have been abused that this seems to be a common theme.  I think that by having control over the world around us we feel that we can protect ourselves.  Control for me even went as far as deciding I had no boundaries, then I was in control of what happened to me because I had made the choice not to care.  Another aspect for coping that control fulfills is it directs your attention outward.  If you can keep yourself busy then you don't have to think about anything.  In part I see myself using this strategy right now with this page.  I dove in headfirst here and have focused on pretty much nothing else.  I am trying to take my need for control and put it towards good use. Though it helped me to look good on paper, this need for control caused immense problems for me.  In fact at this point in my life I probably look worse on paper than I have in my entire adult life but I feel more freedom and happiness.  So in my case having less organization and being less of a perfectionist is a sign that things are going better for me. Control behaviours tend to present in abuse survivors fairly often.  They can take many forms and can be present in almost any area of life.  There are no set rules to what or where you decide to control or for what reasons. In my case I became ultra-responsible.  Part of what I learned from abuse was taking care of people from taking care of my family to protecting the world from the horrible me (because they couldn't handle what happened to me, I felt I was horrible and needed to take care of everyone and make everyone happy).  I am a basic pleaser with some perfectionist tendencies.  While some of this stuff seems very benign when I talk about it, you have to understand the depth at which I was in control.  If things were not in my realm of control or if something was off a little, I would panic or become unable to function.  When you have everything organized and controlled and in its place, then you can just exist and be on autopilot through life.  You can do life, not live it.

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My need for control presented itself in several aspects of my life.  First was in the financial area.  I became very aware of how my credit looked and focused a lot of attention on maintaining and developing good credit.  I also tried to make sure that I was never late with any bills and that I had savings enough to be all right if I was ever without work for an extended amount of time.  I focused on earning more money and moving up and up in my career.  This lead to a focus on career achievement and a great resume'.

Happiness

So, then I always had fairly good jobs and worked very hard at them.  I was doing this while I was also a full time University student.  I worked often full time weeks or more at work and then did full time work at school. Being the best at school became another focus of mine.  This developed after high school.  When I went to University I started focusing a great deal on my grades and performance, something I had never done before.  I did manage to be in the top 5% of my University until this semester I am currently in, but I am still in the top 10%.  I focused so much on my schooling and work that I had little or not time for anything else.  The problem with this type of control is that it kills you slowly, but you get a lot of positive feedback because of it.  I managed to get a position teaching at University when I was only a second year student because it was language and they made an exception for me.  When you are doing this kind of control, you are trying to prove that you are alright to the world and yourself (I think), and then everyone tells you how together and wonderful you are and you start to believe it.

Another area where I needed complete organization and control was in my own home.  Some people become very neat and clean, my control was a bit different.  I would have problems letting other people do things in the house, and if people did a job a different way then I got very upset.  I would get panic attacks if things were out of place or if someone wasn't doing things a way thatI perceived wrong.  I think that also goes along

with being able to just be on autopilot.  Also if everything was clean and organized then there were no surprises and things were all right.  I didn't like chaos.  One interesting thing is that when things are chaotic or unpredictable, I am very good at getting through them.  I can think very quickly on my feet.  I think I just didn't want to.  If things were organized and easy then I didn't have to think at all. One kind of funny story around this I will share with you is the way I have my kitchen.  It is frighteningly organized.  I have a set of small shelves that are like small bookshelves.  This is where I store my canned goods.  The creepy part is that I organize them by type and allocate them to different shelves, then I organize them by sub-type (so like vegetable, bean) and then I alphabetize them to organize them on the shelves, and then I order them from left to right with left being the oldest and in chronological order to the right which is the most recently purchased.  The guy I am dating always thought this was funny and just to annoy me and watch me panic and basically lose my min, he would do something like turn the labels facing the wrong way (yes, labels had to face the correct way) or he would move a can to another category.  I would get so upset about it.  I am a bit calmer now, but I still to keep things very organized.

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