Recovery is about influence, not control.

Trauma recovery is not about “control.” 

But we sure want it to be. 

We want to feel “in control” of ourselves— of our feelings, our reactions, our symptoms, our story. 

We feel that “controlling” our self and our environment would surely “solve” this entire problem of trauma symptoms and struggles— right? 

The problem is: control is pretty much an illusion. 

We don’t “control” our feelings— and, what’s more, we really can’t “control” them. 

We feel feelings. They arise in us in response to internal and external stimuli, very little of which we meaningfully “control.” 

If we keep telling ourselves we need to “control” our feelings and reactions to “successfully” recover from trauma, we’re going to disappoint ourselves— again, and again, and again. 

The First Step of the Twelve Step tradition brings us face to face with the illusion of “control.” 

It encourages us to accept that we are struggling with something we can’t, by definition, “control”— and it’s not a coincidence that they made that the very first step. 

Until we was our head around the fact that “control” isn’t the key to clawing our way out of this, we’re going to stay stuck. 

I’ll spoil the suspense: nether you nor I are going to be in perfect “control” of our emotional and physical reactions. Striving to “control” them is going to solve zero problems— and create infinite problems. 

We need to stop thinking in terms of “control.” 

Try swapping out the word “control,” in your mental vocabulary, for the word “influence.” 

Our goal in trauma recovery isn’t to “control” anything— it’s to influence and manage our emotional life and behavioral choices. 

Does this distinction matter? To me, it matters a great deal. 

“Control” is all or nothing. You’re either in control— or you’re not. And for most of us human beings, let alone most of us trauma survivors, we’re going to expense ourselves as not in control approximately 100% of the time. 

We can, however, work on gaining progressively more influence over how we feel. 

Every day we can learn more and more how what we say to ourselves, what we focus on, and how we use our physiology and breathing influence the emotions we find it easy or harder to feel. 

Every day we can learn to make distinctions in how to realistically manage— not control, manage— our behaviors in the moments and hours after we’re triggered. 

Demanding of ourselves that we be “in control” of ourselves is unrealistic and counterproductive. 

Getting curious and proactive about how we can influence ourselves is the way change actually happens in the real world. 

Trauma Brain is gong to tell us, if we’re not “in control,” that means we’re undisciplined, we’re sh*tty, we’re lazy, we’re immature. 

As we work our recovery, we come to realize: imagining that we NEED to be “in control” is a trap— a trap laid for us by Trauma Brain, which wants to keep us stuck and discouraged. 

We trauma servers can get absolutely obsessive about control. Trauma Brain will insist to us that the only way to be truly “safe,” is by controlling everything and everyone around us. And because we literally can’t do that, it will conclude that no place and nobody is, or can ever be, “safe.” 

“Control” is kind of a garbage concept, when it comes to realistic, sustainable trauma recovery. 

Yeet “control.” 

Start getting real curious and real serious about influence.