Imagine a dog inside an electric fence. After he touches it once or
twice, you can turn off the power, because he won’t go near it again.
This is the way people with control problems deal with their fear of
doing something wrong. Somewhere in the dim past they were stung;
now they never get close enough to see whether the power is still on.
They avoid the challenge of facing their fears, but cover it over with
piles of work.
The strategy is self-defeating. Unconfronted fears mutate in the dark-
ness beyond the fence like alien fungi. Gradually they take over more and
more of the person’s daylight world. The safe area becomes narrower,
and the only way to keep back the creatures of the night is with more
control and more distance from the awful possibility of error.
If you ask them about it, they’ll just say they’re doing their job.
So, what do you do if you are attacked by one of these poor, fright-
ened people?
MAKE NO ATTEMPT TO DEFEND YOURSELF. Even if you’re right—espe-
cially then—never try to explain your point of view. There’s no way you can
do it without sounding defensive. Don’t start a fight you can’t possibly win.
Getting mad and calling them controlling will make the situation
worse. They will see your behavior as clear evidence that they must watch
you even more closely. You’ll be the one with the problem, not them.
Forget trying to talk them out of their need for control. Even seasoned
therapists have trouble with that. (Remember what I said about the diffi-
culty of treating someone for something you have.)
ASK, “WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO DO?” Dealing effectively with
control freaks is a matter of negotiation, not recrimination. Most control
freaks prefer lecturing about the dangers of what you’ve already done
rather than thinking about what to do next. This sort of pointless catastro-
phizing is what they say in their own heads to scare themselves into good
performance. It may be scary, but it does little to improve performance—
theirs or yours.
Explosions are often merely the externalization of the internal pro-
cess that is fanning the flames. Explosive people are talking to themselves,
140 ❧Explosions into Fear