What's REALLY Behind Controlling Behavior?

I wanted to share a podcast I did called "9 questions with Eric Oliver." In it, Eric asks the same 9 questions to people in different fields. They're fun, light questions–the ones I typically ask on first dates, like: "Who are you? What's your purpose? Who are you, really?"

Listen here.

As an adult, I’ve always been driven to identify the root of every problem (except math).

Perhaps it’s because I discovered decades ago that being able to name a difficult or problematic feeling or experience releases its grip. At least, that’s the effect it has on me. Where it’s tough is when I’m trying to identify the roots of a problem from which I don’t suffer.

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I am not a micro or macro manager, and I don’t feel compelled to control how other people do things, I only have the compulsion to control how I do things. In my apartment, for example, there is not one right way to do the dishes or load the dishwasher (confession: I don't have a dishwasher, but you feel me). There is no one right to clean.

I am not someone who believes my way is the best—or worst—way. I am a go-with-the-flow type of person (sometimes to my own detriment) and follow the road that feels right to me, but may not be right for someone else.

So, naturally, people who need to control their environment, and the people who enter that environment, are curious creatures to me. It’s hard for me to have someone so rigid in my life that they’re trying to stifle my innate character.

While I understand that people’s issues are not personal—as in, they are not about me—the expression of certain problematic behaviors that are directed at me conjure the very feelings I believe the controlling person is trying hard not to feel.

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