Try to lose control a little

It’s nice to have some control over things, but journalist Catelijne Elzes discovered it can also be limiting. She shares what happens when she is able to loosen the reins.

It’s logical to want to have some control; after all, this is what helps 
us get things done in our lives. But how do we know when we’re going overboard? “When other people tell us it bothers them,” Dutch psychologist Carien Karsten says. “When all we can see are the things that aren’t good enough, at home 
or at work, for example. When every little bit of fuzz on the floor starts to irritate us and we always have to say something about it. Personally, we believe that we are completely justified in feeling irritated, but someone else might see us as a control freak, and might just say something about it.”

We can feel it ourselves too: we get tired, overly sensitive, easily thrown off balance and vulnerable. And even if we take a week off, things don’t improve afterward. “Oddly enough,” Karsten says, “we don’t notice that we want to have way too much control until we start to lose control. We can’t control our emotions anymore because we are wearing ourselves out.”