One question I get asked a lot is How can I work to release control? I’ve personally been working on this for over a year now and so I’m sharing my struggle and the journey I’ve been on toward healing, because I want you to be healed too. Let’s jump in!

In This Episode Allie Discusses:

• Fear based control 

• Finding the source of the fear

• Getting support to work through this 

• Doing the inner work

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Mom life. We’re surrounded by the message that it’s the tired life. The no-time-for-myself life. The hard life. We’re supposed to get through it. Survive. Cling on by the last little thread. And at the same time, Carpe Diem—enjoy every moment because it’s going to go by so fast. The typical mom culture that sends us all kinds of mixed, typically negative messages. We shouldn’t take care of ourselves; it’s selfish. The more ragged you run yourself, the bigger your badge of honor. But also, ditch your mom bod and work out. Don’t yell. Make more money. Show up. Be better, but not at the expense of time with your kids. I am putting a hard stop to all of this. While being a mom, running a business, and whatever else you might have going on is hard, it is a lot and there’s lots of giving of yourself, the idea that motherhood means living a joyless, nonstop-hustle-with-zero-balance kind of life, where you give and give and give and never take, needs to stop. 

I’m on a mission to help you stop counting down the minutes till bedtime (at least most days). Stop the mom guilt and shame game. Stop cleaning up after your kids’ childhood and start being present for it. I want to help you thrive in work, home and life. I believe in John 10:10 that we are called to living an abundant life and I know moms are not excluded from that promise. Join me in conversations about simplicity, some business and life hacks, spirituality and lots of other good stuff that leads to a life of less for the sake of enjoying more in your motherhood. I’m Allie Casazza and this is The Purpose Show.

Hi beautiful! Welcome to another episode of The Purpose Show podcast. I’m super excited to be able to be a part of your day today. Thanks for hanging out with me. 

I’ve been doing question boxes a lot lately, getting a lot of feedback from you all. I’ve been putting them on social media and asking, “Hey, what do you want to talk about? What should we do for the podcast? What questions do you guys have that I could answer?” 

The last several question boxes that I did, I got one question or another that was basically asking the same thing—How can I work to release control?

I’ve shared pretty openly about my personality type and my struggle with maintaining control and needing to be in control of different situations in the past. Because I had unhealed emotional baggage I felt like I had to control other people and I needed to control situations. Because I’ve shared bits and pieces of that, I hope that it makes you guys feel safe with me and helps you know that I get it. 

I’m not a therapist by any means. My God, I am not. But I am a strong woman. 

I’m an Enneagram 8. I have a lot of feelings and emotions. I tend to feel my emotions all the way, 100%. Whatever the emotion is, I feel it 100%.  

I tend to struggle with feeling like I am a lot, like I am too much. I’ve seen this echoed in so many friendships and relationships, and it’s hard. 

If your personality is super different than mine, or if you’re not married to somebody that has a similar personality, or if you have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s okay. We all are different. We all have our different strengths and different struggles. But all of this kind of ties in to being a lot and feeling like you need to control things. 

I know the reasons. I know the things that have happened in my life that have led me to be controlling. I know the traumas that I have experienced. 

I know what has happened along my path of life to lead to me to tending to need to be very controlling. And it’s not fun. Being controlling is not fun. 

At this point in my life, it actually feels really weird to be describing myself like this. As I’m talking to you guys and I’m describing the way that I used to be, I am realizing that I’m really just not this way anymore. I don’t struggle as much at all with being controlling or feeling the need to control other people. 

I own my own company, so I am a boss. I’m a really good boss. I think I’m a really great boss. I have no problem telling people what I need them to do and communicating very clearly. 

But in terms of needing to control people around me and circumstances around me perfectly all the time based on fear, which is what I want to talk to you about today—control that’s based in fear—I just don’t really feel like that is accurate anymore. So, that’s really good because that means healing has taken place. 

I knew it had, but it’s always cool to see proof of progress, Especially when you are doing the inner work, because doing that kind of emotional healing and clearing of the past is ugly and it’s hard. 

I have done therapy. I work with a therapist. I work with an energy healer. I really show up for my emotional self. I don’t want to be the kind of person that has emotional baggage or has been through really hard things and then just uses it as an excuse. 

I always want to be in the mindset of, “Okay, this happened and it’s left me feeling like this. What is the lesson in this circumstance that I can learn? How can I learn from this and have it make me a better version of myself, not a worse, more controlling, more emotionally needy version of myself?” 

I guess I’m hoping that encourages you if you struggle with needing to control. And honestly if you struggle with anything that you would classify as emotionally unhealthy. I just want to encourage you to show up for yourself, to do the work, to get support, whatever that looks like for you. 

However that fits into your belief system, find a way to get support, get help, and work through stuff. Don’t let it sit there like you’re taking a bath in your own filth and you’re just not dealing with your emotional stuff.

Trauma, emotions, resentment, bitterness, anger, hurt and pain—all of these things hang out in our emotions and they hang out in our bodies, too. They make us sick. Studies are showing this more and more. There’s such a connection with the emotional health of a person and the physical health of a person, the mental and spiritual health of a person and the physical health of a person. 

I have come to learn and truly believe that what is going on in other parts of our being—the mental, the emotional, the spiritual—does actually physically manifest in our bodies. Our bodies are the final step of the process, the last place that symptoms show up. We have to keep that in check. It’s so important. 

As a person who is walking the path of self-healing, being open to learning and noticing what emotions come up in what situations, knowing what is a sign from my body saying, “Hey, something here needs to be healed because you just got super pissed off at this person and what they did was not even that big of a deal. This is a waving red flag that this needs attention.” 

That’s what I’m talking about. Notice the signs. Notice the explosions. Notice the emotions. And just being willing to dive in, do the work, and heal. 

Find the source of pain and heal from that memory in whatever way you want to do that, whatever it looks like for you. But show up for yourself in a way where you are doing that inner work. When I say “inner work” and I talk about my journey, my process, that’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about.

To give an answer to the questions of How do you release control? How do you release the need to be in control? 

Feeling like you need to be in control comes from fear. Fear of something. It could be different in every circumstance. It could be the same fear in different circumstances in your life. 

For me, the fear is just that it’s not going to be okay. And for me, that stemmed from a lot of trauma that I’ve experienced in my life, including, but not limited to, trauma that Brian and I walked together in the beginning of our marriage and in the beginning of starting our family with money problems. 

Just feeling like it’s never okay. Money is not there. I’m not in control. 

I was a stay-at-home mom. I wasn’t the one working. Brian was, and he was working his butt off. But it was never enough. 

And that’s the thing. That’s the limiting belief that I formed about money through that time is that it’s never enough. It always runs out. It’s never going to be okay. I’m never going to have what I need. 

There were times where I would be in the car with a friend and all of our kids and we were all gonna go and do something that day but all I could think about was how anxious I was because I was afraid that she would want to go to lunch after we went to the park and I couldn’t because I didn’t have any money. I only had a dollar in my checking account and I needed to put it in for gas on the way home. 

I was walking around with this anxiety. Walking around with the anxiety of the car getting repossessed, which happened several times to us. Things were a mess. 

And when things are a mess and everyone else is normal and okay, it gives you anxiety. And that anxiety will take a toll on you and it leads to a sense of needing to be in control all the time.

One of the things that I say to myself when I do start to feel anxious, when I start to feel the need to control a person or a circumstance, or I start to feel like my emotions are getting carried away and I’m triggered and reacting way bigger than the situation really warrants. When I slow down and look at it instead of judging myself or the anxiety instead of judging myself for the fear or judging myself for the emotional response I just had. 

I look at it and I tell myself, “This makes sense. Considering what I have been through this totally makes sense. I am allowed to be a person. I am allowed to be flawed. I am allowed to have an emotional response. And I can go and apologize if that is necessary to anyone else involved. I can notice what emotions came up. I can notice what my emotions are telling me needs to be healed. I can get my journal out and journal through it. I can work through this. I can get to the bottom of it. Then I can go and make it right and act from there.”

Basically, I guess my answer to releasing control and releasing negative emotions of any kind is finding the source. Being willing to have the awareness to find the source, to find the root issue. 

Go back in your memories to that time where you first started to feel that way or you first started to experience the trauma and the difficult emotions. To the the difficult circumstances that started to cause this emotional pattern in you. You revisit those memories and you heal.

Like I said, this could be a spiritual thing you do on your own or between you and God. It could involve a therapist, which I highly recommend. You can do anything that feels good for you and that feels comfortable for you to go through this process. 

But the point is that you’re dealing with it instead of just suppressing it. That’s what I did for so many years. I just suppressed, suppressed, suppressed.

You guys, in 2017 I got diagnosed with PTSD based off of all of the trauma that was experienced because of money. I was having full-on panic attacks in the Target checkout line. When the card reader would make the noise that it made to take your card out, it reminded me of the old noise it used to make when it would decline your card. 

There was a noise that the card machine would make when your card was accepted and when your card was declined. In 2017, they changed it to where that sound was the same, no matter what, and it just meant you needed to get your card out. 

But I’d heard that decline noise so many times that when it was doing it every single time I swiped my card (because it was telling me to take my card out), I literally would have panic attacks right there in front of the checkout person, in front of whoever I was with. It was so embarrassing, so terrifying. Panic attacks are no joke. God, it was awful. 

I would just get so triggered. I would go into the store and I would try to be brave, try to be fine. I’d tell myself, “I’m good.” I would check my bank account balance. 

This was after I had started the business and I would see, “Okay, there’s money in there. There’s a lot of money in there. We’re good.” 

I would go and do my Target run and I would still get triggered by that noise and start to spiral into a panic attack, into anxiety. They gave me meds for this, which for me I thought, “Fine. To stop a panic attack? Yes. Sure.” 

But I still want to get to the root of this though. I still want to know what’s causing this, why it’s happening, what I can do about it. I still want to get the root out so that this isn’t happening anymore. 

It’s still a work in progress. I’m so much better. I don’t have those panic attacks anymore from that circumstance. I’ve healed from that. 

I actually used a technique called hypnotherapy. I hired a hypnotherapist. I worked with her. We went back in my subconscious mind and we rewired stuff. We worked through the traumatic experiences. This is deep, deep work.

This question about releasing control is so loaded. Because the need to control usually comes from something that was really hard. Something that was traumatizing for you. 

And you’re not allowing yourself to even label it trauma because we feel like we’re not allowed to feel. We feel like we’re not allowed to need anything. We feel like we have to just keep going and pressing through. We’re not giving our emotions and the things that we have experienced as human beings enough space to even give it a label and go get help with it.

You’re allowed to feel. You are allowed to need help. You are allowed to need therapy. You are allowed to have experienced trauma and need help getting through it so that you can be at your most healthy self emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically. It’s all connected. 

I actually think we have a responsibility to notice when unhealthy emotions come up and ask ourselves, “Okay, why do I feel like this? Why do I feel like I want to control my husband right now? Why can’t he just go and do what he wants to do? Why am I feeling like this? Why do I feel like I have to hyper control the kids right now? Why am I feeling like I need to be in control of a situation right now?”

I guarantee you it’s always because of fear. In some way, shape, or form it’s because of fear. And that fear stems from somewhere.

We are born with only two fears—fear of falling and fear of loud noises. Every other fear is learned. So where did you get that fear? 

The fear that is at the root of you needing to control whatever you’re trying to control, where did that fear come from? When did it start and what do you need to heal, to go back and revisit it, let it go, notice how it feels in your body to go back and remember that time? 

This could be anything guys. It could be sexual abuse. It could be physical abuse. It could be verbal abuse. It could be something really, really hard that happened to you. 

The loss of somebody in your life. Just a traumatizing, really difficult, really humiliating period in your life, like mine was. It could be anything.

I’ve been wanting to talk about this for a long time. And I keep getting questions about the feelings of needing to control, feeling really, really big emotions like snapping and just having a total meltdown over something that really wasn’t that big of a deal. And then coming off of that and thinking, “What the hell just happened? Why did I do that?”

This is why, because your body, your spirit is trying to tell you something needs to be dealt with, something needs to be healed. And we’ve got to use our emotions as a secret code that could be read to better understand what needs healing, what needs to be released, what we’re still holding onto, what we never dealt with, so that it doesn’t physically manifest in our bodies.

This has been a huge key to my wellness journey, this emotional work. Then it wraps up into physical and it’s all connected.

I feel like I could talk for hours about this. I just want to leave that here because I feel like I want you guys to chew on this. I would love to hear from you if this impacted you, if this helped you, if this was like an “a-ha!” moment for you.

I would love to record more on this process. I feel like this is a lot. It’s a lot. It has taken me over a year now that I have been working on these emotions, on the trauma, on the healing. It’s been such a process.

And it’s been the best thing I ever did. It started by noticing these symptoms, “Whoa, I seem to really need to control this particular person in my life.” Or “Wow, I did not like the way that I reacted to that. Where did that come from?” 

Noticing it and hiring support and therapists for me to work through this with. That’s what I’m going to leave you all with. Let me know how this helped you. Let me know what you realized. 

This is an important mental health episode. Take a screenshot, share it on social media. Let’s normalize talking about mental health. Let’s normalize talking about our emotions, trauma, and being a person that feels. Let’s talk about needing help. 

Please let me know if this was an “a-ha!” moment for you. 

I would love, love, love to hear from you. I love you guys so much. You’re so beautiful. You’re so perfectly made. You are so worthy of taking up space. 

You are so worthy of feeling. You are so worthy of getting healing. You’re so worthy of investing in yourself so you can get the help you need to be your best self. 

I see you. You’re amazing. You’re so loved. Have an amazing day!

Thanks so much for hanging out with me! In case you didn’t know, there’s actually an exclusive community that’s been created solely for the purpose of continuing discussions around The Purpose Show episodes. It’s designed to get you to actually take action and make the positive changes that we talk about here. I want you to go and be a part of it. To do that, go to alliecasazza.com/facebookgroup. 

Thank you so much for tuning in! If you’d like to learn more about me, how I can help you, how you can implement all these things and more into your life to make it simpler, better, and more abundant, head to alliecasazza.com. There are free downloads, online courses, programs, and other resources to help you create the life you really want. 

I am always rooting for you, friend! See you next time! I’m Allie Casazza and this is The Purpose Show.

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