309. The Control Freak's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Cycle

The Control Freak's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Cycle

In entry 285 I attempted to explain the abuse hoovering cycle, in which women experience, how a narcissist converts inexplicably from a nice Dr. Jekyll into a nasty Mr. Hyde by his oscillating between feeling uplifted by a valued woman and uplifting himself by devaluing a woman.  

But when the narcissist is a control freak driven by anxieties, there can also be a different explanation, especially for short term switches between the two personalities.    Dr. Jekyll can be nice and friendly, when he is in control or when he believes to be in control, his fears and panic temporarily being alleviated or numbed, so that he can feel relaxed. 

As soon as she innocently does something by her own initiative, this simple little proactivity is experienced by him as a serious indication, that he lacks the control he wants and needs.    When his fear overwhelms him again, from one moment to the next, he mutates into the nasty Mr. Hyde, who attempts to reestablish his control with any method that seems to promise success.   He rages at her, hollers at her, until she freezes in terror and intimidation.   As soon as she freezes or withdraws and seizes any proactivity, he believes to have regained control, and he calms down and again becomes Dr. Jekyll for a while.  

Most people like it, when someone does them a favor.   A favor is a deliberate act by choice and goodwill as a result of sympathy, appreciation, maybe affection.    As paradox as it seems, a control freak does not feel honored by favors, but provoked into another Dr. Jekyll session to reestablish control.   Because when doing a favor, someone is a proactive and under his own control. 
In the control freak's perception, favors are logically impossible.    If the favor is something of value for the control freak with an entitlement delusion, getting it is his due and nobody is supposed to have an own decision to deny or to grant it.    The control freak experiences a favor as getting something by having lost control, that he feels entitled to get and to have control too.     Therefore the control freak prefers coercion over receiving favors.  

308. Control Freak or Dominator

Control Freak or Dominator

Domination is abomination.  I have already written several blog entries about how devastating it is for a woman to be dominated.   Domination over a woman can have many reasons.  

1. It can be an expression of the hierarchy instinct, a man is sometimes misguided to establish a hierarchy in his private life, when he had to struggle in competition to earn his living.    
2. Over centuries in western societies and in many societies it is still like this today, that women on average had and have less access to get an education appropriate to their intelligence.   Men dominated and dominate over women, who having been deprived of developing their real intellectual potential. 
3. Domination over a woman can also be the misguided consequence of having grown up under feudalism as a member of the ruling class being so used to be served on command.  A man takes his entitlement to dominate over everybody including a woman for granted.  

Dominators, who are no Control Freaks, can be quite content with their own life.  They dominate by a distortion of their thinking and judgement only.  Petruccio in 'The Taming Of The Shrew' (entries 301 and 302) is an example of a jerk, who just takes his entitlement for granted.    In spite of the ludicrous ending of the play, it could have ended very differently, if he would have matured to learn, that Kathrina is an intelligent and educated partner, who could enhance his life much more as an equal partner than under domination.   
Mark Twain's 'The Prince And The Pauper' is an example from literature, how someone can discover, that there are alternatives to dominate.    

Such dominators dominate, as long as they get rewarded by benefits from domination, but they are able to give it up, should equality become more beneficial.

Control Freaks as already described in entry 307 are a subform of dominators, who are driven to alleviate their pathological fears and anxieties by control over people, including the women in their life.   Control Freaks are very unhappy people, who have succeeded in using domination as a method to reduce their own suffering by making others suffer as their proxy and scape goats.    Control Freaks dominate as a consequence of emotional problems, that are often enhanced by the delusion of being entitled to do so.    Control Freaks are driven to dominate by an urge to reduce their own suffering and they do not experience having any choice to give up control.

This is a good description of Control Freaks:
http://home.comcast.net/~pobrien48/Control_freaks.htm

There are several scenarios of control freaks, depending on the severity of the morbidity or co-morbidity.

1. The basic factors are a combination of pathological fears, anxiety, paranoia and worries, in combination with an inability to trust.  The Control Freak has never trusted anybody in his life.   Therefore even forcing himself to try behaving as if trusting is not an option for him.    He has as little imagination of trusting as has a person born blind of colors. 
   If someone with anxiety issues were able to trust, a loving and caring partner could support him to live with his troubles without harming her. 
   But when there is no trust, then the control freak is caught in the trap of his morbidity.   Without trust, he can never let go of his control and attempts to control, so he can never make the experience of what would happen without control.   He is deprived of ever making the experience, that without control, he would get just as much of a fair deal by consideration and compassion, as he gets by coercion.   He makes the woman's life miserable and gains nothing by this except a reduction of his fears. 
   
   In this scenario, he keeps the woman at bay as a friend with benefits, with whom he limits his interaction to his own convenience.
   
2. If the Control Freak is additionally afflicted with selfishness and the delusion of being entitled to get more than he gives, then controlling serves a dual purpose.   Not only does it reduce his fears, but it is also a cruel but logical method to usurp his selfish wants and needs, that he would not get otherwise.   In this case, he uses rage, intimidation and other means of extortion to get advantages and benefits.   The relationship is a power struggle between his selfish greed and her attempts to get a fair deal and to protect herself.    She is exploited, but as someone taken for serious, a respected enemy in the war for resources. 
   
   In this scenario, he expects the woman to have the role of a mother with benefits.  The mother gives all her unconditional love to a child, but the child does not give anything back to her.  
   
3. Another scenarios is the control freak, who is also a narcissist.   He adds a grandiosity delusion to anxiety, distrust and entitlement to selfish advantages.    That means, he adds disrespect and depreciation to the pain of being dominated.   He considers her as faulty and inferior, as someone, who should be grateful to be allowed to be under his control.    He believes himself to be a good person by doing what he does, because in his delusion, his behavior is what he perceives as correct by his birthright, while her inferior role is her purpose in life.   Being aware, that she has some needs, he cares for her only by giving her, what he believes that she needs.    This believe is a combination of projections of his own needs and of what he has gathered from hearsay as how women should allegedly be treated.   It does not even occur to him to consider direct information to be obtained from her concerning her real needs.  
   
   In this scenario, the woman is like a well cared for pet with benefits.   Just like a pet owner, he may consult with other women owners about how to care for the women, but he does not ask the woman herself.    Had he no physical needs, he would choose a pet, where control is easier and socially more acceptible.    Instead he gets the benefits in bed, but controls her just like the pet, that he would prefer.
   
4. In a variety of scenario 3, the woman is not a pet with benefits, that is taken and treated as a being with innate limits.    He takes on the role of a father, whose task is to improve his daughter with benefits and to fix her.   He believes that he is doing this as a favor to her.     The power to modify her to better serve his convenience is an even more rewarding form of control than just forcing her to do, what he wants.   So his believe to be able to fix her is especially effective in reducing his fears.      
    
5. In a more extreme variety of scenario 3, he is a not only a narcissistic control freak, but also an emotional moron.   He confounds caring for her with the maintenance of a commodity and utility, as if her body needs to be maintained to function similarly to the maintenance of a robot. 
   
   In this scenario, the woman is a painstakingly maintained robot with benefits. 
   
6. The worst scenario is the narcissistic control freak, who is psychopathic.   He has no conscience, and he knows exactly, that all the atrocities done by him to the woman are hurting her, and are not, what other people consider correct and moral behavior.    He commits transgression knowingly, but he is just not bothered or concerned.   
   
   In this scenario, a woman is a utility with benefits, used and then thrown away, not considered worth neither care nor maintenance.     

Control Freaks of all subtypes are the most devastating dominators.    I am willing to be a supportive partner to anybody, who has problems and entrusts himself to my support.   But without trust, a relationship is doomed to become toxic.  

307. Alleged and Real Control Freaks

Alleged and Real Control Freaks
I have been accused of being a control freak a few times in my life.    Maybe what I am writing in this blog may also give a wrong impression.    I am a rationality freak, but not a control freak.    

A control freak is a person, whose high level of anxiety, fear, paranoia, insecurity drives him to get alleviation and reduction of these feelings by establishing control over his environment and all people in it.   
A control freak can appear to be a nice person, when he either really is in control or believes to be in control, because people of goodwill do him favors or just happen to accidentially do, what he wants.   A control freak becomes a nasty jerk, as soon as he feels out of control and attempts to reestablish it, ruthlessly oblivious or unconcerned of what harm he does to his victims.  

I fear wild animals like bears, I fear male animals using physical force to abuse of my body.   I feel fear, when I stand inside a house during an earthquake, and I would certainly feel fear of any real threat to my life.    Nothing of this gives me any reason to want to control people.    I am lacking the kind of anxiety to be a control freak. 

Rationality is in the core of my identity.  I want to live in an environment controlled by rationality.  But I do not want to fight for rationality, I wish it to just be there without me making any efforts.   

I can be nice and tolerant to anybody, whose brain is wired differently, who is religious, gullible and who believes in any nonsense, no matter if god or homeopathy.    I am polite and I hide my true opinion, but I have compassion for their bad luck of having this dysfunction and delusion wired in their brains.  But they have to be kept at a distance.  These kind of people just do not qualify to be my intellectual equals in a relationship.   It is not possible that I can respect someone like this enough to get involved with.  

It is obvious, that a relationship is doomed, when one partner considers the other as stupid and with a dysfunctional brain.    Therefore a rational person like me can only have a relationship with a truly rational partner.  

As a consequence, I may feel very strong about some topics, not to control someone's thinking, but to find an agreement based upon shared rationality.    I do not like the word control, so I want a relationship guided and determined by rationality and logic.

Also I am very eager to comprehend people's good rational reason for what they do.    If someone's behavior is incomprehensible, I feel uncomfortable, because this gives me the suspicion that he could be a believer and a gullible person, whom I cannot respect, and I feel an urge to restore respect by comprehending his rational reasons.    Therefore I have no wish to be right, I am just as content to be convinced, that I am wrong, as long as I can respect the reasons of the other as rational

To illustrate the difference between my importance of rationality and a control freak, the following is a hypothetical scenario.   It is immediately comprehensible to everybody, whose rational brain enables him to know, that NLP is  pseudoscience and a cult.   

In this scenario, I get in contact with someone, who claims to be an atheist and a skeptic.   Before I really know him well, he tells me, that he just has read his first book about NLP and that he has booked a course to learn more.    When I hear something like this, a flash of disappointment goes immediately through me, and my respect for that man is temporarily damaged, while I wonder, what is wrong with his brain.   

There are four different possible continuations.

1.  I explain, that NLP is pseudoscience, I give him the link to some skeptical articles and I let his rationality do the rest.  He will find out the obvious for himself, which he would find out sooner or later anyhow.   I do not control his thinking, I just give him a hint to avoid a detour to the obvious.

2.  All my explanations about NLP being pseudoscience bounce off him with no effect, as if he were deaf.   He really is a control freak, who grasps at NLP with some urgency, because NLP promises simple tricks how to manipulate people to gain power.    He believes to have found a method of control, that he perceives as too important for his survival in a hostile fear invoking world to allow himself to be deprived of by allowing reasonable doubts.    

Depending on my level of interest in him, I may continue my futile compulsive efforts to point out the facts to him much longer than it would make sense.    Reasoning with him is futile, because as little as NLP does, what it promises, for an anxiety driven control freak already the believe to have found a method to gain control helps him to reduce his anxiety.    So from then on, my respect is damaged and thus is my interest for this man.   
For him, I appear as If I were a control freak attempting to control his thoughts.    For him, agreement or not is of no importance, he wants to gain power by his learning NLP tricks.   He would allow me to disagree with NLP as much as I do, he concedes me tolerance, because what I think it not important, only gaining control over me is.     

3.  I know that it is never good to jump to conclusions.   As soon as I mention, that NLP is pseudoscience, he agrees immediately and explains, that he does not believe in it at all, but that he wants to have some first hand experience about the kind of gullible people, who attend such a course.   He may be writing an article about why quackery attracts people.    So something only appears weird, until I get a rationally convincing explanation.  


To sum it up:  My mindmate is someone, who really is rational, an atheist and a skeptic down to the bone.    Only in this case mutual respect, appreciation and valuation can be maintained.