The Shadow of the Control Freak

“Keeping the peace” is a common coping mechanism that you may have adopted to maintain control of a situation. In its most destructive terms it is a survival technique used in many abusive relationships. Whether it is mental abuse or physical abuse, many resort to avoidance as a way to diffuse an attack. Censorship is one form of avoidance. This is when we remove any potential sources of tension or triggers in order to keep the peace. Whether violence is or isn’t involved, we still alter our behavior for two primary motives: control and acceptance.

For all of the “control freaks” out there, this is commonly referred to as an attempt to manipulate one’s external environment and the people in it, so that it remains the same OR in state which you believe you can manage. As a result, you believe you are able to avoid tension, upset and stress. Yes it may seen this is an effective management technique however it is futile in our attempts to transform. We adopt control to keep a situation the same or known. But if nothing changes, nothing changes. This is the law of order. In order to transform, we must adopt change. “Change” to a control freak is counter-productive.

Combine control and acceptance and we have bred a new rampant beast. Our attempt to control our acceptance is something that is indoctrinated into our psyche throughout our adolescence. Instead of our adolescence (13 – 19 years) being a magnificent opportunity to mark our turf in regards to our individual character, talents and future aspirations, teens are force fed the idea of conforming into a box labelled “normal”; this prevents (avoidance) us from being put into the “weird” or “outcast” pile.

 Welcome media and propaganda.

Not fitting into the boxes of “normal” and/or “perfect” supposedly means that you are disordered and to an adolescent mind, this means chaos. For any of you who have teenagers, you have witnessed the volatile response if you hinder their acceptance as a parent. At this age our emotional intelligence is still developing and therefore we naturally lack the tools (unless passed down by strong elders) and motives to stand up and claim our Red Print (our authentic identity), even if it is disordered according to the generic social standard. Add to this the fact that we haven’t developed our resistance to chaos yet and what results can be perceived as mayhem. In some of our ancient cultures, children are taught to handle chaos at a very young age; the youths of some cultures were forced into tests of self-survival in order to build resilience against said mayhem, where the youths of other cultures had rituals and traditions such as a ‘Rite of Passage’, designed to teach them to overcome the idea of chaos. Without these skills, the fastest way to prevent any mayhem or judgement is avoidance. This keeps the peace at any cost; control.

Welcome to adulthood.

The people I have worked with who feel their individuality (their Red Print) was hindered, suppressed or damaged during these years, have carried this debilitation into adulthood. Many become very efficient “avoiders” and have mastered a stealth mode of avoidance throughout their life, however, even after the suppression, bullying, domestic violence, dominating parents, media pressure, social conditioning and gender discrimination, there is ONE powerful, robust, and in some cases brutal, force that lives hard wired inside each and every one of us.

 Rise o’Rebel.

There are many facets of the Manifesto of the Rebel archetype, it is one of the most influential characteristics of any transformation process. It is a powerful force that scares us as it is responsible for “break out” and, as I see it, responsible for our self sabotage and sub-conscious rejection of any notion, belief or action that is not our authentic truth. Our inner Rebel’s job is to create a little chaos to help unleash the TRUE YOU. How the rebel does this and the notion of the TRUE YOU is explored. In the next additional of Rebelology I expand on the greater source of intelligence that lives inside each of us and why the Rebel is a vital ally of this intelligence.