Letting Go of Control: How Releasing Anxiety Leads to Emotional Freedom

A trait I often encounter in people struggling with anxiety disorders, obsessive and intrusive thoughts, stress, and challenging relationships is the attempt to control their emotions and life events.

Is that really possible?

Let’s try a metaphor from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), by Steven Hayes: Imagine I hook you up to the most advanced lie detector in the world where every tiny emotional fluctuation is immediately detected. I warn you: “Don’t feel anything. Control your emotions!” To make it more interesting, I pull out a gun and add, “If the machine detects any emotional change, you’re in trouble.”

What do you think would happen? The machine would probably explode from the sheer intensity of your emotions trying not to move.

Recently I spoke with the parents of a young man I’m treating. His mother reminded me of the sessions I had with her and her husband two years ago when they came for couples counseling. Back then, her anxiety came up during the sessions, and although the focus was their relationship, I gave her a few tools to manage it. After we finished working together, she took the anxiety piece seriously and committed to freeing herself from the fear and emotional dependency that had been weighing heavily on her and her husband.

She did incredible work. Where she once had several panic attacks a day, it’s now gone. Where she used to panic over her husband’s behavior and spiral into irrational fears, she now lets things flow, calmly and confidently.

This is the answer to dealing with fear, worry, and anxiety. People are afraid of the feeling of fear and of losing control, and so they try to control what isn’t controllable, which only intensifies the fear and the sense of losing control!

Paradoxically, the ability to let go actually gives you back more control. Another person described his battle with anxiety in Hayes’ book: "I felt like I was in a tug-of-war with a monster. She was pulling the rope one way, I was pulling the other, and between us was a giant pit. I was terrified of falling, so I kept pulling harder. Until suddenly, I realized that I could just let go of the rope."

Ironically, the secret of control is to let go.