If you are afraid of losing control of yourself. Losing control is an internal instinct

Many people have this problem, although the reasons for its occurrence are different. Sometimes this fear is based on mistrust and unconscious repetition of parental behavior, and more often - psychological trauma, like one of my clients (although strictly speaking, at the basis of any pathological behavior injuries lie). This is the story I want to tell, it is very instructive, especially for those parents who have two or more children. Or maybe someone will remember their story. The main thing to understand is that there is always a reason.

In this story, my heroine controls almost everything, especially her daughter. Actually, she came to me with this problem: her daughter had neglected her studies, and she was very afraid that her daughter would drop out of school, like she did in her time, and go into all sorts of troubles, etc. “If I don’t check, something terrible will happen, so I’ll check everything or do everything myself - it’s safer.” Of course, the basis is distrust of the intelligence, memory, responsibility, capabilities, and abilities of other people. So to begin with I gave her a very good technique For independent work.

On next appointment says with enthusiasm: “My daughter (a teenager) was assigned to read a book at school, I immediately went online and downloaded it from in electronic format on the tablet so that my daughter has a book (well, as usual). And can you imagine, I tell her that I downloaded the book for her, and she shows the book that she took from the library...” My client was both surprised and pleased at the same time by the fact that it turns out that her daughter is quite capable of solving many issues herself, without her participation and control, which is what was actually required in this situation.

When they began to figure out where she got this fear from, I remembered next story: When Anya was 6 years old, she had a brother. My brother is 3 months old, my mother went to bed with a migraine, she put my brother on the sofa, sat Anya next to her and strictly ordered her to sit next to him and not take her eyes off him until it was time to feed - “You’ll wake me up in an hour!” - the mother ordered. Anya sat for the allotted time, the mother continued to sleep, and the child needed to be fed. And now, almost verbatim: I decided not to wake up my mother so that she could get some sleep and not yell at me (screaming, dissatisfaction and irritation were the norm for mom), and went to the kitchen to prepare food for him. The brother had not yet turned over, he lay calmly.

I’m in the kitchen, I hear the cry of a child, and while I was fussing to do something with the food, my mother flies into the kitchen and slaps me in the face, shouting: “Who did I tell you not to leave!” Well, and many more unpleasant words and moral teachings, the essence of which is to control.

The child rolled over for the first time and fell off the sofa, cried, the mother woke up... Of course, nothing bad happened to his brother, something bad happened to Anya - she was injured - there was a fear of losing control. Anya did not want to part with the feeling of guilt; she continued to consider herself guilty of moving away, disobeying her mother, that she should have done as she said. The guilt went away when I asked to say it simple words: “It’s my fault that I’m a child.” She burst into tears and said: No, it’s not my fault that I’m a child.

Here, once again, I want to draw attention to seemingly obvious things that are rarely taken into account when raising children:
1. You cannot shift responsibility for younger children to an older child. In this situation, the little girl could not foresee that the child would turn over and fall off the sofa. It was already hard for her to sit for an hour next to the baby. She herself was still a small child.

2. Being a child means, among other things, not knowing something, not being able to, not foreseeing, playing around, making mistakes, doing stupid things, playing and much more. A child is not an adult. And in this situation, the responsibility of an adult was transferred to the girl, and then also the responsibility for what happened.

For another client, the fear of losing control over the situation arose in connection with rape. The girl was 16 years old, she and her boyfriend were at some event on fresh air, something like a demonstration. They came to her house, ate (her parents, by the way, were at home), moved into her room, and she, tired, fell asleep. The young man took advantage of this. Her parents were already very tough, but here it was... The young man began to intimidate her, and for a long time she could not tell her parents, she was afraid to confess, but when she did (she had to, she became pregnant), she heard a lot of nasty things in response, including: Herself guilty...
Fear of relaxing, losing control, feeling of guilt, did not let her go long years, she stopped trusting people...

Another story, with a different context, but according to the reaction of the parents - even worse. One of my clients, among other things, difficult relationships with Father. They hate each other, there's no other way to put it. One of the stories that left a very heavy mark on Alexander’s soul: when he was 10 years old, the whole family went to visit his grandparents in Altai. All the relatives gathered at the table, the boy was assigned to look after the younger children (5 and 3 years old), the feast was in full swing, Sasha listened with interest to the stories of the adults, when the parents realized: where are the little ones? Someone remembered that he and local children went to a water pumping station, a rather dangerous place for small children. The mother ran to look for the children, and the father flew into a rage and severely beat his eldest son, kicking him. The resentment remained for life, damaged relationships, and... - fear of losing control...

I don’t want to comment, read, think, realize, remember, there is always a reason...

Popova I.V. The article is protected by copyright law.

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Do you keep a diary? And if you do, how? Sit down at the table in the evening and carefully write down your plans for next days, making sure that all notes correspond to the dates of the month? Or do you open your notebook on the first page you come across and hastily scribble down the necessary information, and then don’t remember where and what you wrote down? Please note that your attitude towards life very much depends on how strict the limits you set for yourself on a daily basis. If the day is scheduled minute by minute, this, of course, mobilizes and helps to get more things done, but sometimes this approach literally drives us into a trap: making sometimes impossible plans, we get upset, consider ourselves lazy, incapable of anything and, most importantly, we are afraid of losing control over life.

It’s as if we brush aside chance, we don’t believe in unexpected circumstances, because we’re terrified that we won’t be able to act correctly in them.

Living exclusively in accordance with entries in diaries, notepads and organizers, we create the illusion that absolutely everything is under our strict control. And the worst thing for us is to lose this control. It’s as if we brush aside chance, we don’t believe in unexpected circumstances, because we’re terrified that we won’t be able to act correctly in them. In the end, the constant desire to program our lives every day plays with us cruel joke- reality cannot be driven into the framework that we ourselves come up with, and sometimes the understanding of this hits us painfully on the head.

If you feel that there is something unhealthy in your tendency to write everything down (even the most banal things, such as “washing the dishes”), plan your day, week, month literally every minute and sincerely worry when reality diverges from your idea of it, then you The following should be understood:

You're robbing yourself of spontaneity.

You are making your life boring. It comes down only to “done or not done,” and you leave no room for chance at all. But the most beautiful things, as a rule, happen to us when we allow ourselves to be a little unpredictable, when we do what not only others, but even ourselves, do not expect from us.

And besides, you don’t think at all about what palette of feelings and emotions you are depriving yourself by writing in your diary that from 5 to 7 you do household chores, and from 7 to 9 you walk in the park. It turns out that from 5 o’clock you will be tense and focused, and only from 7 o’clock you will allow yourself to relax. Controlling own time, you control your sensations, sometimes depriving them of novelty.

You can't control everything

Neither weather, nor condition human health, nor the dollar exchange rate are under your control. In any case, you will adjust your plans to what is happening around you. Therefore, it is much easier to abandon the idea of total control over own life, realizing that there are things in it that will always depend on someone or something else.

The paradox is that those who strive to take control of life make even more mistakes.

Those who control their lives completely and completely make mistakes more often.

The main reason why we try to live according to a plan is the fear of making a mistake, doing something wrong, not being on time, not achieving what we want. But the paradox is that those who strive to take control of life make even more mistakes. The point is the inability to control everything and everyone. As we have already said, there are things that are absolutely beyond our control. And, faced with them, a person also faces the destruction of the illusion of his own omnipotence and takes one wrong step after another.

Wanting to protect yourself from worries, you worry even more

For almost everyone, the desire to gain control of a situation is a way to protect themselves from anxiety. “I control everything, nothing unexpected can happen,” such people think and are very mistaken. What adds much more anxiety is the thought: “Is everything really under control? Am I missing anything? We need to check again, in case something goes wrong.” The result is an inability to relax, leading to chronic stress.

You oppress yourself with your plans

Perhaps on your day off you want to crawl under the covers so that no one touches you, asks for anything, or even starts conversations. But according to the plan - cleaning, going to the grocery store, visiting your aunt, etc. Again, no relaxation. You look at your diary and understand that you simply must do everything that is written there, because it’s right, but your soul asks for something else. And again your mood is at zero, you feel depressed and depressed.

There is nothing wrong with moderate planning.

There is nothing wrong with moderate planning. Surrendering only to chance is quite irresponsible; you need to do your own thing today and tomorrow. But the fanatical desire to cross out the points of the plan one after another, without giving oneself a break for spontaneity, can lead to stress for anyone. Especially when chance intervenes in this deletion. And such with people like this most often it happens.

CHAPTER 4 Fear of losing control of the situation

Due to the influence of personality or negative experiences in the past, many of us stop trusting others. This simple fact makes a huge difference to how you feel during the flight. Flight, being an incomprehensible and potentially dangerous phenomenon, activates distrust in our minds, the inability to transfer responsibility for your life and health to other people, and activates it in an exaggerated form. If you can identify detailed problem in yourself, you need to replace the habit of NOT TRUST with the habit of TRUST. How to do it? It's not difficult, although not entirely pleasant. Detailed instructions I will give below, in the section “What to do with your fear.”

Real dangers and what only APPEARS so.

You will continue to develop aerophobia until you force yourself to think with facts rather than assumptions. Agree, your assumptions may well be wrong, unlike the FACTS. Any phobia is based on ASSUMPTIONS, and to defeat it you only need facts.

Let's consider several situations:

Example #1

You and your friends are relaxing in nature. The weather is beautiful, you are in a delightful mood, the kebab is almost ready and there are no signs of trouble. At this moment, one of your friends screams in fear and says that he thought he just saw a snake in the grass.

All your feelings and emotions will change at that very second, you will be tense, your great mood will be replaced by a desire to leave the place where you are. Everything to ensure your personal safety. There is no fact that there is a snake, but your vacation is ruined, since it SEEMS to you that you are in danger.

Example No. 2 A small child is afraid that Barmaley lives in the toilet. His behavior is associated with the fear of Barmaley, therefore he bypasses the toilet, asks to keep the light on at night, to accompany him to the toilet, etc. There is no fact of Barmaley’s presence, but for the baby’s brain this fiction about Barmaley is almost a fait accompli.

Hence,

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Fear of Losing Control “We believe... that we are in control of our lives; we make plans and keep notebooks, and then when we turn around to look at ourselves, we understand that life has its own structure, its own vector.” * * *One fine day at the end of March I was returning to

The most common manifestation of an obsessive state resulting from the manifestation anxiety disorder– or lose control of yourself. Most often they manifest themselves in the form of fear of harming someone or oneself, fear of losing control and starting to do some stupid things, and in general. Accordingly, most people who are susceptible to these phobias believe that they can go crazy. Fear encourages them to take certain actions that keep them stuck in their own problem. Therefore, it is important to talk about this problem in more detail and touch upon the reasons for its occurrence. Find out why this condition persists and what needs to be done to get rid of it.

Fears of going crazy or losing control of yourself: how to deal with them?

As is known, in general, the cause of obsessive behavior is increased level anxiety, which is caused by a person’s distorted worldview and his peculiarities of worldview. And in certain moments a person has thoughts that frighten him. Moreover, these thoughts can be of different nature. For example, related to God: a person is haunted by some blasphemous thoughts, and he begins to be afraid of the fact that he thinks so. Or, for example, the thought appears that he has a sharp object with which he can harm himself or another person. These thoughts frighten a person, forcing him to consider himself crazy or a maniac - this is how it arises.

Because of the fear of committing some uncontrollable action, a person begins to hide knives and other sharp objects. He tries to avoid situations in which he can use them as a weapon. At the same time, a person is sure that in this way he controls himself and his actions. It seems to him that it is this control that keeps him from harming himself or someone else, and it is he who extinguishes. The huge mistake is that any attempt to resist an obsessive thought only strengthens it, aggravating the state of anxiety.

Two important facts that help you remove or lose control

A person who is truly going crazy is not aware of it. This is a reliable, scientifically proven fact. And the person who is overcome by pain treats this consciously. He understands what he is thinking about and perceives his thoughts adequately. This suggests that it has no real basis - it’s just that his anxiety is manifested in this way.
Controlling anxious thoughts, the desire to not allow them into your head actually worsens the condition. How more people resists, the more often he tries not to think thoughts that disturb him - the more he spends his energy, his attention and the more he grows fear go crazy. The more restrictive actions a person introduces into his life - not going somewhere, hiding knives, not approaching the balcony, not thinking about it, etc. - all this only strengthens, constantly reinforcing it. If a person takes some actions in order not to feel anxiety, then his brain perceives this as if danger really exists. Therefore he strengthens his defense mechanism. And all these limiting actions only aggravate the anxiety state and increase.

Therefore one of best exercises in the practice of obsessive thinking is allowing thoughts to be this, realizing that thoughts are not the person himself, he simply identified himself with them. After all, animals, for example, do not think. This is the first. Secondly, in addition to the fact that a person thinks, he can also be aware of his thoughts. Here it is important to understand that there is a person, and there are his thoughts, which he can simply observe, but not identify with them.

How to get rid of fear of going crazy and lose control?

The main rule is that you need to complete your script to the end. fear of going crazy, no matter how much a person fears him. You can get rid of such thoughts just by allowing them to be. He can finally understand that a person will not commit acts that frighten him only by relying on the fact that these are simply obsessive thoughts, a consequence of anxiety. By reducing anxiety (and anxiety will begin to decrease when a person stops fighting these thoughts), he will let them into his life and begin to play out these frightening scenarios. And, ultimately, he will pass, and only one fear will remain - the fear of shame.

If, for example, a person begins to play out his picture of fear to the end (for example, a picture of suicide), then he will see that he will end up with a fear of shame. Fear of what others will think: he was like that normal person, and did something to himself. The absurdity here is that if a person is gone, what difference does it make what they think about him?

It is necessary to work to stop fighting these thoughts, and then they gradually cease to influence the person. And one more important point: according to the statistics observed by psychotherapy, it can be noted that people suffering from obsessive states in the form of fear of losing control and fear of going crazy– these are people who want not to go crazy, but to become free.

As Freud said: “behind fear looms desire.”

If you look at people exposed fear of going crazy, then you can see that they devoted most of their lives to striving to meet the expectations of other people. They put on masks, did not show true emotions, did not always say what they wanted to say, and held back their emotions. This is all essentially a fear of disapproval. People have created a certain image of themselves, and decided that they need to maintain this image.

Naturally, they are almost constantly in anxiety, because they have a fear of exposure, a fear that people will find out who they really are, and not the ones they are trying to keep in their minds. Accordingly, they have anxiety, which increases throughout their lives. It also increases due to certain life circumstances. Naturally, this manifests itself in the form obsessive states. In fact, through them the body, the human subconscious, shouts: “friend, start living your life, start living normally, become yourself!”

Therefore, in order to get rid of fear of going crazy and lose control of yourself, you need to start doing the following:

Reduce anxiety, remove actions that a person takes to avoid these thoughts;

Work on your worldview and self-esteem. Start, essentially, becoming yourself. Remove expectations, obligations, etc.

And gradually the person will see that all these obsessive thoughts will go away, his brain will calm down and disappear. But all this happens gradually.

To summarize, there are many different types obsessive thoughts. For some, for example, they are associated with homophobia, for others with God. It is important to understand here that if a person has a thought and does not want to think about it, then he begins to resist. And this resistance, the fight against it, gives rise to a vicious cycle of obsessive fears of going crazy or loss of control, which only unwinds and grows.

Losing control of yourself

Asked by: Marina

Female gender

Age: 26

Chronic diseases: Depression

Hello, Doctor.
I have been having problems controlling my anger for about a year now and have almost... persistent disorder sleep. I can’t sleep at night for 2-3 days in a row, it has become difficult to communicate with people and even with my family. Heavy thoughts constantly weigh on me. There is a history of prolonged depression (about 7 years). I didn’t treat it, I thought I could handle it myself.
My husband and I are no longer normal intimate relationships 4 years. He does not strive to take care of himself, he is very weak-willed for diets, etc. This greatly upsets me and I have the feeling that I am not a woman, but already neuter gender. He loves me, he doesn’t cheat on me, but he feels good as it is. Eventually hormonal disbalance led to surgery and removal of the ovary due to a cyst. Gynecologists unanimously say to have an affair on the side. I don’t want to get a divorce because of the feeling of guilt, which will drive more than one nail into my coffin. But there is a person I like (we’ve been communicating for 4 years). For his sake, I could have gotten a divorce, but he began to behave worse towards me, he would either leave me or come back again, sometimes I loved him, sometimes I didn’t love him.
Since childhood, my mother did not love me very much and did not hide it. Now he calls and often humiliates. I can’t stop communicating with her for a number of reasons.
Everything has led to the fact that it’s difficult to even go outside for a walk. It's like some kind of test. I prepare an hour in advance so that I can leave the house alone.
I recently graduated from psychology, but it’s like a shoemaker without boots or I already doubt myself so much that it’s some kind of Hell.

Manic-depressive symptom, depression, isolation, social phobia, telephone phobia, psychological pressure It all started (suspicion of manic-depressive syndrome) a long time ago - 4.5 months ago. I started to notice myself characteristic symptoms(later I read a lot of literature on the topic, after reading it, I realized that this is exactly what was happening). I started to seriously pay attention to this only 2 months ago: I started having problems sleeping (I have to persuade myself, I constantly put off going to bed), and frequent falls into depression ( anxiety states, constant stress, low self-esteem, self-flagellation, apathy, decreased appetite, fatigue, decreased performance, absent-minded concentration,) may change manic syndrome(temporarily high spirits, activity, optimistic attitude, many new ideas and projects, rapid speech, need for communication (usually I have little need for it). Memory has deteriorated: I forget many things in less than a minute. All this against the background of acute social phobia and an unstable climate in the family. I don’t find support, mostly I get reproaches, although I’m working on myself, trying to do better. Recently I started to notice uncontrollable seizures crying (the need to cry for literally a few seconds) is very frightening, as I have been experiencing this need constantly for the last 2 weeks. A very difficult relationship with her mother: she has frequent attacks irritability and aggression, since childhood I have been very afraid of her, and even now nothing has changed - I still cannot establish contact with her, I feel on her part psychological pressure, and during periods when we communicate with her, I am certainly afraid that very soon this will again be replaced by her irritated behavior, and this can happen absolutely suddenly. My father tries to abstract himself from all this and every time my mother and I have a conflict, he remains indifferent, even when I need help. Is there any plan of action possible? Or could my condition be related to the microclimate in the family? At least some advice, since I have no one to turn to. Thank you.

1 answer

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Marina, you have a neurosis. You need help.
You can start taking antidepressants, for example Escitalopram at a dose of -5-10 mg, for a long time; it will not solve your problems, but it will relieve tension, lift your spirits, and give you strength to cope. And start psychotherapy - you have a complex psychological problems As a psychologist, you yourself understand that you need to cope with the help of a specialist. You are inside this situation, so you are not able to help yourself.

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