Controlling

The Recovery Mindf*ck

“You’re so controlling.”

Have you ever heard the word controlling used in a way that isn’t pejorative?

I haven’t.

When someone says “controlling” we know what they mean. Controlling behavior at work means micromanaging, trying to exert influence over something not in one’s purview or job description. In the personal arena, a controlling individual trys to dictate the behavior, choices and responses of the people around them, often in ways that limit the autonomy or independence of those people.

Bad. Right?

How did that word, and others like it, become honed into weapons, lobbed into conversations at work, home, media?

Our cultural conversation is full of therapy speak. People without any training in psychology label the behavior of others as narcissistic, borderline, PTSD. I get it, those terms are juicy with the authority of science; deep and definitive. We know this.

What I hear less about is the way that recovery speak has also become braided with therapy speak. Words like enabling, controlling, denial are tossed about, in and out of recovery, until they, too, have saturated the cultural conversation.

Recovery speak, like therapy speak, is often used against someone. “You’re controlling” is a phrase wielded as a cudgel. If you protest, you can be accused of being in denial. We all know the disease model of addiction, it is a common scene in television or film – you are incapacitated, not responsible, enmeshed in denial which needs to be smashed.

But what happens when we internalize those narratives? When we use them against ourselves? I’m in recovery, and have been for a long time, and I’ve started to call it the Recovery Mindfuck. It happens in recovery and outside of it, when people use concepts and phrases meant to highlight and help, admonitions intended for instruction and illumination, to weaponized and pathologize ordinary human behaviors.

Take the very idea of addiction itself. I’m a recovering alcoholic. I know addiction and compulsive behavior. I stopped drinking alcohol and started smoking and in early sobriety I smoked two packs of Marlboro Reds a day. I haven’t smoked in years, and it was really hard to quit.

Now many things are labelled compulsive behavior. I am bemused by some of the innocuous activities that are termed “addictions.” A craving for alcohol and drugs is different than a craving for your phone or a purchase you don’t need, or revisiting that porn site. I’m not suggesting that you don’t need to pay attention to any behavior that negatively impacts your life. But it’s different. I’ve had menstrual cramps that left me curled up in bed in pain, but it's not like childbirth. I know because I had one miscarriage and gave birth to two children. It is different. Many alcoholics, drug addicts, and former heavy smokers do other things in a way that could be considered over the top; too much shopping or eating or whatever. But I think we would all agree that craving meth is different than craving another pair of shoes. Not all overindulgence or lack of moderation is an addiction or spiritual failing.

I’m a writer, imprecision in language troubles me. But it also muddies our internal perceptions and narratives. Recovery speak can be a false certainty, stripped of nuance, wielded by people who have never done the actual hard work of recovery.

The primary assumption is that the addict is incapable of accurately assessing their own motivations (denial) and so they need tough love, the real truth. The trope of an intervention, people pulling down the edifice of denial so that the designated patient can crumble and cry and accept help, is a trope for a reason. It’s so binary, so satisfying.

But what if they’re wrong? What if those people wielding recovery speak are wrong?

I have been told that I am controlling. I’ve also been told I’m a bitch, a ball buster, judgmental, harshly critical. Often these comments were a result of me doing my job at a time in my career where I was running large projects and in charge of teams. Some of that feedback was gendered – I was criticized in a way a man doing the same thing would not have been, and in gendered terms.

It’s not controlling if it is your job or duty. If I’m crossing a busy street and insist that my three-year-old grandson hold my hand, he may balk and resist the infringement on his toddler independence, but since it is my job as a grandparent to keep him safe, he needs to hold my hand. That’s my job, whether he likes it or not.

Of course, I am alert to ways in which I try to be in charge of things that are not mine to run. This is part of my spiritual practice as well. It can be a challenge. I am an executive coach. I make a living assessing interpersonal dynamics. I am good at my job, which means I am often right. I have a high level of confidence about my ability to assess the choices and motivations of others. At work, that’s helpful. In my personal life it is far better for me to keep my opinion to myself and let others make their own decisions, choices, and even mistakes.

Which means I am vigilant about ways my behavior might be considered controlling. Which is bad. Unskillful. To be avoided at all costs.

Unless it isn’t always?

People in and out of recovery can internalize the language of therapy speak and recovery speak and weaponize it against themselves. I’ve been doing that with the idea of being controlling. Always bad, something I’m prone to, a specific psychic weed growing out of a deep wound and always wrong, something to be rooted out.

I am striving for a more nuanced approach where I recognize that what is labeled by others as controlling behavior can actually fall across a range of motivations, some good, some less so.

I don’t keep alcohol in my house. My husband doesn’t drink, and guests bring wine or beer to dinner parties and then take it home with them when they leave. Many people organize their physical or emotional environment with specific boundaries and accommodations to help with their mental health, physical limitations, or neurodiversity. Some of those structures may appear controlling. But they are self-protection.

Control is a problem. But it is the societal and cultural control of making us focus on our own individual “failings” rather than the systemic issues that cause them. I understand the impulse to try and control ourselves in a world which, to many, seems entirely out of control.

In this cauldron of therapy/recovery speak, especially when it is tinged with religious overtones, I worry that those of us prone to being self-critical will try a sort of emotional anorexia, worrying over our supposed faults or failings and trying, again, to be better, do better, avoid the list of weapon words: controlling, enabling, denial, addiction, all pathologized.

Of course, there is a profit motive for this – click on the post, engage with the video, buy the podcast or book. Make your discomfort and pain a personal failing that a purchase and more self-discipline will ease, rather than acknowledging the pain a arises from systemic issues which must be addressed with slow, messy collective action and community.

I would invite us all, instead, to feast on compassion. Overindulge in caring for and about ourselves and others. Relinquish judgement of ourselves and those about us. We are complicated, bruised humans in an inhumane environment. Avoid language that carries the tang of science or authority and reach for the plain words about human behavior. Hungry, afraid, tired, happy, lonely, loving. I’m trying to consider my choices through a lens of patience and kindness, not pathology and disease. The complex, often painful experience of being a human being in this time is not improved by self-hatred, but it can be eased by self-acceptance.