What if our need for control is not really about control at all?
Most of the time, we are not trying to control life itself. We are trying to avoid disappointment. We are trying not to be abandoned, caught off guard, or left vulnerable to pain. Yet from the outside, these efforts often look like a desire for control. We think more, plan more, and analyse more. We try to anticipate the next step, calculate every possibility, and find a level of certainty that will allow us to feel safe.
There is, however, something paradoxical about this process. People do not necessarily become anxious when confronted with things they cannot control. More often, anxiety emerges when they begin to believe that those things might be controllable after all. The need for control, then, is rarely about power. It is about safety.
So why do we seek control? And when does an effort that once protected us become a cycle that distances us from life itself?
Uncertainty and the Search for Certainty
To understand the need for control, we may first need to examine our relationship with uncertainty. What troubles us is often not the event itself, but our inability to know how it will unfold. The end of a relationship may be painful, yet not knowing whether it will end can be even more exhausting. The news we are waiting for may turn out to be negative, but spending days imagining what it might be can consume far more mental energy. For this reason, people sometimes prefer bad news to uncertainty itself.
In psychological literature, this phenomenon is often explained through the concept of intolerance of uncertainty. Intolerance of uncertainty refers to the tendency to experience not knowing what the future holds as threatening or difficult to endure (Carleton, 2016). Research suggests that uncertainty plays a significant role in the persistence and escalation of anxiety because the mind responds not only to what has happened, but also to what might happen.
According to Grupe and Nitschke (2013), unpredictability lies at the heart of anxiety. We do not struggle solely with reality; we struggle with possibility. We replay scenarios that have not yet occurred, evaluate alternative outcomes, and mentally rehearse futures that may never arrive.
Perhaps this is why people do not merely search for answers; they search for certainty. Certainty may not promise to change an outcome, but it can temporarily ease the tension created by uncertainty. Yet uncertainty may not be the only force driving our need for control. Perhaps what unsettles us most are the moments that remind us that life does not always move within the boundaries of our influence.
The Illusion of Control and Human Limits
Studying for an exam is not the same as controlling its outcome. Investing in a relationship is not the same as controlling where that relationship will lead. We can prepare for a job interview, but we are not the ones making the final decision. We can love someone deeply, but we cannot determine how they will feel in return.
Despite this, the human mind does not always draw a clear distinction between what can be influenced and what cannot.
Psychologist Ellen Langer (1975) described this tendency as the illusion of control: the belief that we can influence outcomes even when our actual influence is limited or nonexistent. At first glance, this may seem irrational. Psychologically, however, it makes perfect sense. A sense of control offers protection against uncertainty. For many of us, it is easier to believe that we can influence an outcome than to accept that some outcomes are fundamentally unpredictable.
Yet there is something striking about the things we try to control: how someone feels, how a relationship will unfold, whether our efforts will be rewarded, and what time itself will bring. None of these things are entirely ours to determine.
Perhaps this is why the need for control is not only about uncertainty. It is also about confronting our own limits. Some realities are not difficult because we lack information; they are difficult because they remind us of the limits of being human.
We can love someone, but we cannot decide on their behalf. We can do our best, but we cannot guarantee every outcome. We can influence life, but we cannot fully direct it. Many of the things we try hardest to control slip away precisely because they were never entirely ours to hold.
Living the Future Before It Arrives
The need for control does not always appear as an attempt to manage events. Sometimes, it appears as an attempt to live the future before it arrives.
We assign certainty to events that have not yet unfolded. We convince ourselves that something will never happen before it has had the chance to happen. We try not to hope. We narrow possibilities.
On the surface, this can look like realism. Yet beneath it often lies something else: a desire to be prepared for disappointment. Because uncertainty is not simply the absence of knowledge. It is also the possibility of being surprised.
Perhaps this is why some people are not trying to know the future; they are trying to ensure that the future does not catch them unprepared.
Yet here, a subtle paradox emerges. Predicting life is not the same as living it. In trying to secure the future, we can end up living inside possibilities that have not yet come to pass. We think about what might happen, protect ourselves from outcomes that may never occur, and gradually begin to spend today under the shadow of a tomorrow that has not yet arrived.
Yet believing that something will not happen does not guarantee that it will not. And believing that something will happen does not make it so.
Because this is precisely what life does not offer: a guarantee.
Letting Go of Control or Making Room for Uncertainty?
The founders of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Hayes and colleagues (1999), argue that many psychological difficulties are linked to attempts to eliminate unwanted thoughts and emotions. From this perspective, the problem is often not anxiety itself, but the effort to avoid ever feeling anxious at all.
Perhaps the goal is not to abandon control entirely. Perhaps the goal is to recognise what belongs within our responsibility and what does not.
Psychological resilience does not emerge from being able to manage every circumstance. Sometimes, it emerges from moving forward without knowing exactly what will happen, from waiting without a definite answer, and from taking action despite uncertainty.
Perhaps the difficulty in letting go of control is not uncertainty itself. Perhaps what is truly difficult is accepting that life will not always yield to our will.
Because sometimes, what exhausts us is not uncertainty, but our continued struggle against life in the places where it reminds us of our limits—and our refusal to allow ourselves to live despite uncertainty.
References
Carleton, R. N. (2016). Into the unknown: A review and synthesis of contemporary models involving uncertainty. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 39, 30–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2016.02.007
Grupe, D. W., & Nitschke, J. B. (2013). Uncertainty and anticipation in anxiety: An integrated neurobiological and psychological perspective. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14(7), 488–501. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3524
Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K., & Wilson, K. G. (1999). Acceptance and commitment therapy: An experiential approach to behavior change. Guilford Press.
Langer, E. J. (1975). The illusion of control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(2), 311–328. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.32.2.311