I was so close. I felt my muscles relaxing, getting comfortable, almost safe. The tension was easing and a wave of panic washed over my brain. I had to move and activate my muscles again. As alluring as relaxation seemed, my back was holding itself in position to prevent further injury. Letting go of tension, from my back’s point of view, was dangerous.
I learnt that when healing, the brain can upgrade or reorder chaos in the body when we allow rest. It sounds good in theory, but in practice, allowing rest into an area of injury is terrifying. When we are nursing an acute injury, relaxing threatens equal potential for healing or pain. We’ve braced ourselves for the pain because it’s our most recent or common experience. Who can tell when the body is going to heal? So many times, I lay on the cusp of sleep and my back demanded that I move one more time so that I didn’t relax too much – just in case it went into spasm.
There were the few occasions that as I dropped into sleep, my back jolted me awake with what felt like a bolt of electricity shooting through it.
I remember the relief as I realised that jolt was a positive one with no pain attached.
Having experienced the positive jolt a few times, I tried to talk myself through the panic of letting go. I reasoned with myself – if I am lying straight with my back in a good position, why should it go into spasm rather than healing?
But the challenge is real. When there’s a 50/50 chance that relaxing could help or hurt, our bodies fight to protect us from pain and tension is its coping mechanism.
Some of us can apply that to our tendency to control. We might have really good reasons why we started controlling in the first place. Perhaps it was helpful when we were immature. Perhaps we were trying to instill good habits in ourselves or others. Perhaps it was a way to cope through a difficult patch.
But when controlling becomes a habit, how terrifying is it to let go?
There’s equal possibility that things might go well or everything could fall apart, and we end up with a mess to clean up. Pain.
There comes a time in the process of growth that we face the reality that our controlling behaviour has ballooned past the point of helping us through a definable period and it has just become our habit.
The idea of letting go seems like a good idea, you can feel your hold loosening, relaxing, permitting freedom, almost there. Yet in that last moment when you’re so close to taking your hands off, your reflexes kick in and you snatch control back. Just in case.
It might have gone well, but what if it had turned out a disaster?
Here you are, control firmly back in position, no different than you were before. Or are you?
There are times that getting things done is a positive thing. Just like there are times that tensing your back muscles support your body or allow you to lift or pull.
The trouble comes when you can’t turn that impulse off.
When your back is out of alignment, the muscles will do what they can to protect your spine even if they pull you in the wrong direction.
When things are out of order, we each try to make sense of the situation in our own way. Control is one technique we might use temporarily, but don’t get stuck there.
Do what you can to set things up for success. Bring capable people alongside you that you can learn to rely on. When things are in order, when they line up, it is much easier to let go and let others make decisions or do things a different way.
When my back was healing, I checked that I was in alignment before I allowed myself to relax. When you’re trying to take your hands off, check that things are in place and there are people who can handle the situation, then take your hands off and trust them. Even if it scares you.
I have observed high-functioning individuals who can’t bring themselves to take a break because they perceive that everything will fall apart without them. They grasp tighter and tighter until there’s no life left – their hands have lost feeling and that thing they’re holding onto, it’s paralysed. It can’t move.
The amazing thing about taking a break is that things go on. It might not be done how you would do it, but it will get done. There may be errors, but the person doing this thing for the first time without you will walk their own learning journey. If errors truly are a disaster, surely you would leave them a mentor in your absence.
To go away and find that things actually work out without you may come as a happy surprise. I remember those times I fell asleep and my back actually reordered itself. I wasn’t going to allow it to happen while I was conscious, but when I was asleep it happened spontaneously.
Maybe you can’t let go while you’re there. Could you go away for a day or a few days and see if you come across any happy surprises? Of course, those surprises don’t happen every time but look for them when the temptation is to squeeze tighter.
When I was a young, very opinionated mother, I had kind people come and offer to hang out my washing. I found that stressful because they hung the washing differently from me. One day I realised that however they hung the washing, the point was that they had hung it out for me and I was saved a job. I learned to be thankful. The colours of the pegs might not have been how I would have arranged them, sometimes the bigger items didn’t hide the smaller ones or horror of horrors there were peg marks on the shoulders, but the fact of the matter was that if they hadn’t of helped, I would have a pile of damp musty washing in the basket.
If it doesn’t work out this time, let them deal with the situation. Have a conversation rather than taking back control. The problem of peg marks on the shoulders was easily fixed with a simple request to please hang the shirts from the hem. The colours of the pegs? That was my issue, not theirs.
When you have a win, your brain will realise that there is a different way of managing. It may remain terrifying to let go, but as you practise your brain will gather more evidence that it can work. As you strengthen your delegation muscles or simply allow things to happen without your direct input, controlling the situation will find its rightful place back in your toolbox as one of many strategies.
The beauty of healing is that it comes in stages. There may be a jolt of reordering, but that doesn’t mean that all the issues are resolved in one hit. It takes strengthening of other skills and easing the stranglehold of control to allow alignment and proper function to resume.
Practising a different movement, gently stretching where we are tight, strengthening our other muscles, allowing ourselves to release the tension; all these things together contribute to healing and the ability to function in a healthier way.
When you were so close, but you grabbed the control back again, do not despair. When you fail you are still creating new ways of operating. Don’t let the old way of thinking remain the only way of thinking. Create space for your tension to ease and allow the healing to begin. Little by little, with practise and perseverance, you will change.
