Her Campus Logo Her Campus Logo
The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the views of Her Campus.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Kent State chapter.

Let’s get one thing crystal clear, I have excruciating, suffocating control issues. I always have for as early as I can remember. I always have to win everything, everyone has to do exactly what I want when I want them to do it, I always have to be perfect and I have no tolerance for failure from anyone in my life and especially from myself.

My life is completely ruled by, well, rules, and I believe there is a certain way, time and order to properly do everything from the certain days I’m supposed to wear certain shoes to the age I’m supposed to be married by. My “supposed to” statements, or so my therapist and all my best friends call them, apply to everything I’ll ever do and I extend those high expectations to everyone I love. 

The root of this issue could be anything; the side effects of being born the oldest sister, gifted kid burn out or my hyper individuality complex that tends to make me a little judgemental and superior when other people don’t conform to my rigid way of existing. I don’t know, the jury’s still out. Unfortunately, I’ll never be able to find an obvious source of blame for my control issues, which is naturally something that I struggle to comprehend, but I live on anyway and I decided to use this article to gain some catharsis about these struggles because recently, they’ve been rougher than usual. 

It’s such a challenge to ease up on myself for making mistakes long enough to remember to breathe, but then I let it affect my relationships. I mentioned this but I extend this struggle and these “supposed to” statements to my relationships as well. It makes my skin crawl when I’m in an argument of any size with someone and they won’t give in and admit I’m right, naturally, I can never be wrong. I can’t even wrap my head around the fact that not everyone else is as tough and principled and trying to run their own life like the Navy. 

I am self-aware enough to know that this causes me to hurt people and to come off as a little harsh and demanding, but to anyone who’s reading this and has argued with me before, I do it because I care. My entire being is a meticulously designed machine that I’ve been working my whole life to craft to perfection because I spent so long not knowing who I was.

I take so much pride in who I am now. I love my self-assuredness, my confidence, my strength, my competitive drive and my unapologetic loyalty to myself first and foremost. I hold myself to these high standards because I know how good it feels to be on top of your game and I’m perpetually terrified of falling off the pedestal I constructed for myself. I hold my loved ones to these standards as well because I just want them to know that feeling and I can get frustrated when they don’t see the world like I do.

This article is also supposed to provide advice, so for anyone else who struggles with control I definitely don’t have all the answers, but it’s not impossible to be able to push past all the voices that tell you “you’ve failed” when you feel control slipping.

Oddly enough, I get so much comfort from internalizing the fact that life is crazy and inherently uncontrollable. It is absolutely impossible to predict and micro-manage every detail of your life for the entirety of it because there will always, always be curveballs. This is true for everyone, everywhere in the world, and it’s nice to remember that everyone feels out of control at some point in their lifetime.

This extends to relationships with people as well. As much as I would like to customize and modify people in my life like Sims to make them behave in a way that is more compatible with my perception of life, that is impossible and kind of villainous. People are also inherently uncontrollable, and, as much as we like to think we know each other pretty well, their behavior and words cannot be completely predicted.

That’s actually what’s really cool about people, though. It’s easy to get so wrapped up in our own lives that sometimes friends and family feel like side characters in our TV show. They’re just there to move our plot lines forward and they couldn’t possibly have their own lives and identities outside of their relationships with us, but that’s, of course, not true.

There is variety in every family, friend group and set of co-workers and that’s what keeps everything so exciting and interesting. If everyone was actually a Sim I made with my psyche in mind, those unique relationships and character dynamics would be gone, and we’d probably spend all our time stealing each other’s clothes anyway.

The other advice I have for you, which I never, ever follow myself but try really hard to, just be kind to yourself. People make mistakes, things go wrong, you’ll have bad days and you won’t always feel perfectly placed on that pedestal. That is completely and totally normal, so really work hard to talk to yourself gently and remember that the only thing you can do every day is try your best.

Naturally, you’ll try to stay in control all the time but, again, mistakes happen, so don’t beat yourself up too much when you feel like you’ve made a mistake and lost control because it can happen, and has happened, to everyone. It also helps me to think about how I would treat someone I love if they were going through my situation.

When I sleep through an important class or forget to submit a quiz, I can feel my entire world crumbling and I just want to scream at myself in the mirror. However, if this had happened to one of my best friends, I would tell them to relax, not be so hard on themselves and just email their professor. Taking yourself out of the situation is very helpful in remembering to practice positive self-talk.

I always recommend taking up journaling, too. Not all of you have a captive audience you can force to read your therapeutic articles, but I’ve blown through so many private journals and furiously scribbling my thoughts out really helps me to calm myself down and remember that whatever is causing me to spiral will eventually be a faded, irrelevant memory at the end of it all.

I hope this was helpful to some of you because I know there is a target audience for this advice out there somewhere and remember that life is too absurd to completely control, no matter how hard we try. All we can do is control ourselves and our minds, so please be kind to yourself next time you stumble and know you’ll be okay.

Olivia Weber

Kent State '27

Olivia Weber is a sophomore at Kent State with a major in Journalism and a minor in Fashion Media. She was born and raised in Pittsburgh and has aspirations of writing for a fashion magazine after graduation. In her free time she can be found journaling, reading, watching her favorite shows/movies, or spending time with her friends and her cat, Dixie.