You’re Not In Control. You’re Just Afraid.

Lately, I’ve been sitting with a hard truth:
How often I still confuse control with strength?
How even in healing—I’ve built subtle defenses that keep love and life at a distance.

This one’s from the fire.
From the parts of me that still grip…
even when life is asking me to let go.

You’re Not In Control. You’re Just Afraid.

We like to be in control.
We feel safe when we’re in control.

But can we really control anything?
Not others—barely even ourselves.

And even then…
You’re not controlling your life.
You’re controlling your pain.

Trying to make sure you never feel that again.
The heartbreak.
The abandonment.
The betrayal.

So you lock the gates.
Guard the heart.
Run the scripts.
And call it “being intentional.”

But here’s the truth:
You’re not discerning.
You’re defending.
And you’re calling it healing.

Real healing isn’t just understanding your trauma.
It’s seeing how you’ve built your life to avoid it.
How much of your “control” is just a trauma response?
A survival strategy dressed up as self-mastery?

We try to control life to avoid pain.
To protect ourselves from what once broke us.
But how many moments do we miss in doing that?
How much love do we push away to feel safe?

Getting out of your own way,
That’s the real work.

This doesn’t mean letting everyone into your beautiful heart.
But it also doesn’t mean building walls and calling them boundaries.

In men’s work, we talk about expanding our capacity.
But capacity without discernment?
That’s just spiritual bypass in a masculine wrapper.

And lately, I’ve noticed it in myself,
After pain, we overcorrect.
We swing the pendulum:
From over-giving to over-guarded.
From codependent to hyper-independent.
From blind trust to no trust at all.

But in trying to avoid the past,
We block the future we’re asking for.

Control doesn’t create safety.
Presence does.
Discernment does.
Self-trust does.

The biggest problem isn’t them.
It’s us.
Getting in our own way.

Where are you still gripping to control when life is asking for trust?