not you; you can hear them convincing themselves that the situation is
bad, dangerous, hopeless, or all three. These internal monologues are the
evil twin of cognitive therapy. You can actually hear people making them-
selves feel worse. By asking simple questions, such as, What would you
like me to do? or What are you going to do? you press the stop button and
get explosive people to focus outward. There is no greater service you can
do for them. It will also make your life considerably easier.
Once control freaks—or any other explosive people, for that matter—
tell you what they want you to do, you’re on the road to negotiation. They
are using the part of their brain that thinks rather than emotes, and a
solution is possible.
ASK THAT THEY CLEARLY DEFINE THE PRODUCT. Every task has an
end product—whatever needs to be done—and a process—the actual
behaviors through which the end product is achieved. Controlling people
will act as if you should already know what you’re supposed to do. Usually
this is because they haven’t thought through the situation well enough to
explain it in terms of actions. This is an appropriate time to be persistent.
Catherine sighs. “Do I have to tell you everything?”
“I guess so,” you say with an even tone and a completely
straight face. “What, exactly do you want me to do?”Negotiate to deliver a very specific product at a very specific time. If
you hand over the goods, there is less motivation to quibble about how
you got them.
REQUEST PRIORITIES. We have also seen that anxious people will let
everything sneak up to top priority if you let them. Don’t let them. If
they’re managing you, make them do their job by telling you the relative
order of importance of the tasks they assign.
Needless to say, you need to have some history of delivering the
goods for strategies like these to protect you from control freaks. If you do
what you say, when you say you’ll do it, they’ll probably go away and bother
somebody less reliable.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder ❧ 141