Care and control

I can't hold on to both of these things at once

My mom had surgery this week. She’s fine now, thank goodness, but I have been reflecting about care a lot while having to care for her.

For the last month, I have watched my mother in more pain than I have ever seen her in. The pain drove her to tears, and I am not used to seeing my mother so vulnerable in that way. My childhood fears around caring for my mother being out of my capacity surfaced again.

But I want to make this post about me (so my mother won’t get too mad at me “telling all her business). This week of caretaking made me think about how control is linked so much to my idea of care.

One of my old therapists showed me that I can’t control other people’s feelings, behaviors, or perceptions of me; I can only control my own. I am realizing a lot of my issues around control are directly linked to care—both how I want to care for other people and how I want people to care for me.

I don’t mean that my need for control when I care for people is about controlling them, but I need my care for other people to actually make a difference in their lives. I need to see a tangible outcome as a result of my care. If I don’t, it proves that I am inadequate in some way.

Which I am sometimes. I cannot be everything to everyone every time.¹ I don’t want to be, so I don’t understand why my need to be is so strong (jk, I do, but I will get into that in a second). There are things the people I love need that are outside of my capacity. I am learning to celebrate my loved ones getting the best care from the people who are best qualified to fulfill that need.

And it’s so exhausting to also feel the intense need for control for how I want people to care for me. Again, this isn’t control in the sense that I want to control the people around me to care for me and only me (or to the point I don’t need to care for myself sometimes), but it’s about earning their care for me.

I feel like I owe people a lot before I am worthy of their care. This shows up in my protests when people offer me money or things for free. It shows up when people praise me for what I believe is the bare minimum. It shows up when people offer to help me with things I believe I should be able to do all on my own.

I know this stems from childhood and wanting to control how others felt about me through perfectionism. I was praised for being the good student, the responsible kid, the one no one ever had to worry about. I kept doing all of the things people expected of me because I wanted to keep them caring about me (even if I had no evidence that disappointment meant withholding care).

In this quest to redefine what love means to me,² I am proud to see that sometimes care is about surrender. I have been learning to receive the help that is offered and to not be afraid to ask. I now am learning that I can’t control how I want people to be cared for and can only show up lovingly for the things they actually need. Life is one big lesson on learning how to care for yourself and others.

1. The Vulnerability of Limits

2. Redefining Love