http://www.womensselfesteem.com

Good day to everyone. I hope that the sun is shining for you and that your life is cruising along with positive goals.

Positive goals can be very challenging to reach most of the time. Life just has a way of contributing all sorts of twists and turns that are totally out of our control. So we try to ride the bumps as smoothly as we can. I for one, do my best at trying to avoid what I cannot change or control and put more of my energy into the things in life that ARE within my reach and control.

Control is a very powerful word when you think about it. It determines ones mood, ones happiness, ones ability to succeed, ones need to feel safe, it also is a very powerful weapon when in the hands of an abuser.

In relationships, it is almost impossible to not trust someone enough to hand over all of the power and control of your mind and person. This type of power and control is passed on through your love for your partner. When you fall in love, you are opening up your most fragile person. You are in a sense handing over your most vulnerable self. Through that deep love you are also handing your partner the ability to affect you in a very serious way.

No matter what the relationship is, whether it be, a lover, a parent or a child, in order to truly accept them, you will offer more than you realize.

Where there is a relationship, there will be power & control. In a healthy relationship

the balance will differ throughout that relationship. In an unhealthy relationship but there will always be one partner holding the upper hand.

A person that feels the constant need to take control and be all powerful over their partners every thought or move, is a person that is themselves feeling inadequate or inferior. They exercise their control to avoid being found out. This is an obsessive controller.

The obsessive controller will :

-start an argument and then very quickly turn it against you.

-order certain things in a very authoritative tone.

-never allow your tone to be authoritative.

-lead you into believing that you are the one being insensitive.

-become overly needy and insecure.

-overcompensate with loving gestures as a cushion when being accused of being controlling.

-have you feeling like you are always wrong in everything that you say.

-never forget a wrong doing on your part especially if it had any embarrassing or shameful results on you  and will most certainly use it to weaken you when the need arises.

-manage to twist your thinking and bring your self-respect down to the floor.

-always justifies his/her reasoning or actions.

-never allow you to take lead in any conversation and if you manage to get that far, they will surely stop you by talking over you as though you are invisible or very unintelligent.

-never let you finish what you were saying.

-always make you leave a discussion or argument feeling upset, confused, frustrated and anxious and very unheard or misunderstood.

Now, after you have read all of these red flags, do you think any of these actions are from a loving person?

Does a controller even really know how to love or is it a confusion of ownership and possession? To own and  to possess is to control and over power.

Obsessive controllers are a master in their trade of control. They are so good at it that they get away with it in most everyone's eyes, except the victims of course. Some victims of control and power relationships, will identify with it early in the relationship, others spend a long time putting excuses in the forefront so as to not have to deal with it.

When you are the victim of a power & control relationship, you are emotionally involved and the controller will sense those feelings. To a controller those feelings are an open target for manipulation. Those emotions will weaken your stand in any argument because you will not be on the same level as the controller to see clearly or act rationally. Your reactions weaken due to your emotional level and you then become submissive just to end the negativity or abuse.

It is up to each individual to not allow their partner to take control and abuse that power.

As I have said so many times throughout my articles, an abuser will take control and power if he/she is allowed to.

So what does one do when they find themselves in this type of relationship?

Do they spend the rest of their relationship unhappy and fighting a no-win fight?

 OR

Do they leave, purely out of survival even though they may love that person deeply?

 OR

Do they stay and become submissive to that way of life and watch things get even more out of control?

The answers to these questions vary. It is up to each individual that knows of this type of relationship and is part of it to make that decision.

How much do you value your life?

How much time do you think you can wait for the controller to change?

What are your alternatives?

There are so many ways of allowing others to control your thoughts. Even outside of our relationships we allow others to taint our own thoughts in regards to what we look like, how we do things ect.

 How many of you worry about what that person said or how that person looked at you?

I can almost guarantee that most of us have walked a mile in those shoes at one point in our lives. What have you done about it?

Chances are you allowed it to get inside of your brain. Then proceeded to turn the comment whether it be negative or sarcasm into a personal attack. This attack was allowed to take control of what you use to know about yourself. You have in-fact allowed yourself to be abused.

Everyone is allowed an opinion, it is a free country. It is what you do with that opinion that sets you free or sends you to a prison of  feeling low in self-respect, self-worth & self-esteem.

It is so obvious that we, our own selves are responsible for what we allow to affect us.

I have many written articles in the how's and whys of control & self-esteem. One that that partners with this one is an article titled, "So What"!   http://www.womensselfesteem.com/articles/article/1967110/55821.htm  -check it out!

In this article I talk about how to avoid certain strong holds such as power & control.

It is also about not allowing what people say or think to affect you.

It is also about how SO MUCH of what you allow in your own mind can make you or break you.

My final words on this subject are actually never going to be final :)

Just remember, people will take power, control and they will abuse you  IF YOU LET THEM. Take a stand for your self, because if you do not, no-one else will!

These are my thoughts and you can do with them as you wish!

ONWARD & UPWARD

~D~