The Control Freak at Dissociation Station

CW explicit discussion of abuse and trauma.

I have control issues. 

That statement is so loaded these days, because control freaks can be manipulative and abusive and, well, controlling of others. 

But, for me, it's been a lifelong reaction to trauma. I don't try to control others (someone who's endured the abuse I have would never), but I have long tried to control my environment and myself as a tool to try to keep myself safe. I spin my wheels planning for the future (be it tomorrow, next week, or next year) and imagining all the variables and potential outcomes in order to avoid more trauma. I'm a perfectionist because I can't make mistakes. I'm a perfectionist and control freak, because that's how I stay safe. 

It's why I need to be included in all decisions that affect me, even trivial ones. It's why I can be patient if I know a rough timeline, but panic when the future is uncertain. And it's absolutely why an ongoing pandemic might continuously re-trigger anxiety and depression over and over and over. I can't control anything. 

I was just talking about this with my cousin, how not being able to plan for the future during a pandemic is a huge trigger for us planners. And as I navigate my way through analyzing my control issues, I see it every-fucking-where. Like, I straightened my hair for years because that allowed me to control it. I am a creature of routine, because it's exhausting to constantly readjust to new variables. I rely on rituals and repetition to help me feel in control. This is also why I am a kickass event planner because I am good at controlling a lot of logistics and details at once. And I even control my trauma by over-analyzing myself to the point of exhaustion (more on that later). 

People pleasing also plays into this of course. I try to manage the emotions of those around me for the same reasons. People pleasing is most commonly associated with the Fawn trauma response (see infographic above). And I fully recognize that I've been in Fawn response for most of my life, but it wasn't until I saw the following graphic and went HOLY SHIT THAT IS ALSO ME! 

Take a second, if you will indulge me, and read through all of those. Every single one of those is me. Every single one! I have been in high-functioning Freeze for my entire adult life and I had no idea. And, as I read through, I started to wonder if there is any part of my personality that isn't a trauma response. 

Which brings me back to the control issue. Before I was 27, I quite literally avoided my trauma with memory suppression. I won't recount the story in detail now, but, in therapy for the first time, I recovered a lifetime of memories of abuse that I'd completely suppressed. After that, however, I have delved so deep into therapy and self-analysis that has been healing, but also kind of exhausting. At nearly 14 years of this, despite tons of progress, I keep unearthing more triggers, finding new depths to excavate, and yet I can't really stop. I have to do it. I need to do it!

I said this to my therapist a couple sessions ago, that I think my compulsion, my almost obsessive need to self-analyze is a form of Freeze response, that I'm avoiding trauma by compulsively addressing trauma. And she was skeptical. She was kind of course, but also like, "I'm gonna have to think about this." And I get it! Me too! Because it sounds contradictory. Because addressing trauma IS a positive thing, but I can't stop doing it and I finally figured out why: control. 

If I'm addressing my trauma, especially in a safe and controlled environment, such as therapy, then I am controlling it and it isn't controlling me. I'm in the driver's seat, not the abused child scared and helpless in the backseat. For someone who endured wildly unpredictable and incessant abuse from a narcissistic mother and for someone whose whole sense of safety was ripped out from under her literally at birth, only to be plopped into an extremely insecure environment, you can imagine how I might value a sense of control. 

Because when I'm not in control of it, then it's controlling me, then I'm back in the bad place, where I had no safety, no security, and no way out. Where I was totally helpless. 

Because if I'm not controlling the narrative, then my trauma is and that is a very scary place indeed. 

If I may, I'd like to share with you a scary dissociative episode I had a couple weeks ago, to share what happens when I feel out of control.  This is extremely vulnerable and raw for me to share. You all think I'm transparent on this blog? You have no idea how much I hold back, how much I don't tell you because it's too shameful or too embarrassing or too scary to put in writing. But I'm working very hard here to illustrate both to myself and to others that there's freedom in vulnerability and healing in sharing with my community, so here we go. 

Going into this, let's keep in mind all of the stressors that had been piling up: pandemic, election, impeachment, my dad getting hospitalized with Covid pneumonia and all of my fears of his death and all of my anger at my mom bubbling up and mingling with all of this work and grieving I've been addressing about my adoption. I was tense, but trying my best to cope. My dad was better! He was home! But I didn't feel better. I felt like once the panic of his hospitalization was over, what I had left was a fuckton of sadness and despair and fear. I was deep into depression. 

Then my husband and I decided we'd cut his hair finally. His quarantine hair was getting really long and driving him up a wall. I am by no means any kind of hair stylist and had been avoiding cutting his hair and potentially fucking it up. It was an unpredictable situation, which we've already established isn't my favorite thing, but he said if it didn't turn out, then we'd buzz his head, so it seemed foolproof. 

Cut to: yeah it was turning out like shit. Between my complete lack of hair cutting knowledge and our dull scissors, it wasn't working. So he said just buzz it. So I grabbed the electric shaver thing and proceeded to buzz a straight chunk of hair off my poor husband's head. His face was immediately horrified. "What guard did you use?" he asked. I looked down at the shaver in horror. There wasn't a guard. 

Then I melted down. 

Let me just pause here and say that I haven't reacted like this to any mistake in at least 15 years, let alone one that, in retrospect, wasn't that huge. We're in quarantine still. Nobody is going to see his head (except me, the shame of it). He can wear hats and it'll grow out fast. It wasn't the end of the world. 

But none of that could stop the dissociation. It was a freight train and I was on it whether I wanted to be or not (and I didn't). I was aware it was happening and couldn't stop it. I was locked in my head only a witness to myself. 

I was sobbing. I was panicking. The things I thought. The things I said! I didn't even know I still had those thoughts inside me. I'd worked so hard for so many years to heal, to love myself, to feel confident and worthy, and yet inside me they were, ready to bubble up and scare the poor man who has legally shackled himself to me.

Here's what I thought: I didn't feel worthy of love. I felt like a consummate fuckup. I was worthless and not good enough for him. I always fucked up, always. ALWAYS. And I wanted him to hit me. I wanted it so badly. I felt like I deserved it and I felt like I needed it. I could anticipate how it'd feel, even though I haven't been struck by another person in over 20 years, I could still remember how it felt and if I had to describe how that hit might feel, I would tell you it felt familiar. 

I told him to. I told that poor man to hit me. He, of course, did not and would not ever, and did his best to comfort me and to help me calm down. But I wanted him to. I really wanted it. My mother hasn't hit me in so very long, but my brain went right back there, right back to that old place. 

And I feel it's important to note that, in my childhood household, a mistake was never predictable. I'd like to think that, in most homes, kids know when they've messed up and can gauge what the severity of the mistake was. Like, I imagine it's like: here are the rules and here are the consequences to breaking those rules. In my home, however, I never knew how big or how small a mistake was. Something that seemed small to me would result in my mother flying into a rage, but other things that felt huge might not illicit a reaction at all. And often I didn't even know what the offense was; I'd angered or displeased her somehow and would pay for it, despite never knowing what I did. I walked on eggshells and eventually learned that I was never allowed to make mistakes or be imperfect. 

I wasn't allowed to make mistakes or be human. No wonder I'm a control freak. It's how I've survived. No wonder that, under all the stress I've been under, a small mistake sent me into complete dissociation, and brought out the abused child I've worked so hard to protect. 

He said the hair thing was funny and then I got scared that he would tell people and that they would know what had happened and that it would confirm all their suspicions that I wasn't good enough for him after all. I didn't want him to take a photo, because then everyone would see my shame, my fuckup. I told him that I felt like I couldn't make mistakes and he just listened and let me cry. And then I was crying for being this broken person and felt like he deserved someone whole, someone stable. I broke down and then felt bad about breaking down. 

This is all from the abuse. I'm 40 and here it still is.  

And, as I said before, as it was happening, I could observe myself from inside. I remember thinking that this was all due to the trauma and abuse and I wanted to help myself through it, but couldn't. 

Then I remembered a memory I'd all but suppressed. When I was 25 years old, I was engaged to a narcissist who, while he never hit me, manipulated and gaslit me daily. And when I was feeling especially crazy (apologies for that word, but it's how he made me feel), I would lock myself inside somewhere (car, bathroom, closet) and slap my face. 

I told this to my therapist last session, all of it, and I was trying to describe the feeling of needing to be hit and hitting myself. I wasn't a release, like other self-harming behaviors can be; it was that I'd been hit for so many years that it felt like I needed it. I deserved it. It felt like home. The brain tries to go back to what is familiar, now matter how destructive. 

My therapist thinks that this episode, while scary, was kind of a breakthrough. I was able to observe myself through it, which is growth, and we think that it was a rare episode (hasn't happened like that in MANY years) and that I'll be able to see the signs of it and calm down faster if it does happen again. My homework is to counter all that abusive energy with nurturing energy, like countering my mom's abuse with nurturing myself in the ways she never did and I deserved. I'm working on that. I'm working on feeling deserving of all the love I do have, from my husband and friends and family. I'm working on not beating myself up for having a trauma brain, because it certainly wasn't my choice to endure what I did, and I certainly deserved worlds better. 

And I'm working on not controlling things so much. Living day by day is super hard for me, but in a world of triggers and very little hope for the future, it's the best thing for me.