8 Signs You're a Control Freak (and What the Control Is Protecting)

You might not know you're a control freak. Your team does.

Control freaks rarely recognize themselves. They believe they are helping, with their "constructive criticism," or that they took over the project because "no one else will do it right." They do not see the controlling behavior as a symptom of what is actually going on: their own anxiety, running the show.

Irrational thoughts are everywhere in a high-stress life. If I don't land this contract, I'll get fired. If I'm not home by six, I'm a terrible parent. If I don't get that raise, I'm bad at my job. Any of these might be true. Probably not. But rather than take on our own thinking and work it into something more realistic, we try to control the situation, and the fastest way to feel in control of a situation is to control the people in it.

Want to know if you're a control freak? Here are eight signs, for your self-diagnosing pleasure.

The eight signs

1. You believe that if someone would change one or two things about themselves, you'd be happier. So you try to "help" them change, by pointing it out. Usually more than once.
2. You micromanage people to make them fit your expectations, which are often unrealistic. You don't believe in imperfection, and you don't think anyone else should either.
3. You judge other people's behavior as right or wrong, and withhold attention until they fall in line. Sitting in silent judgment is a master form of control.
4. You offer "constructive criticism" as a veiled way to advance your own agenda.
5. You change who you are, or what you believe, so someone will accept you. Instead of being yourself, you manage their impression of you.
6. You present worst-case scenarios to steer people away from some behaviors and toward others. This has another name: fear-mongering.
7. You have a hard time with ambiguity, and with being okay not knowing something.
8. You intervene on people's behalf, explaining or dismissing their behavior to others before they can speak for themselves.

Underneath all eight is one belief: if you can change another person's undesirable behavior, you will be happier or more fulfilled. You have made someone else responsible for how you feel.

Which Enneagram types do this most?

Everyone controls something. The Enneagram is useful here because it says what each pattern is controlling and why, which is the part a list of signs cannot tell you.

The classic control freak is a Type One. The One's core drive is to be right and to make things right, and the anger underneath it is usually held so far under that it comes out as correction, standards and "just trying to help." Signs 1 through 4 are the One at work. The Self-Preservation One does it as worry: the helpfulness is a way of keeping things safe. The Social One does it as the standard: the right way, modeled and enforced. The One-to-One One does it as reform: you, specifically, could be better, and they will tell you.

The other obvious controller is a Type Eight, who controls to avoid ever being controlled. That looks different: less correcting, more taking over. Signs 2, 6 and 8 in a louder key. The Self-Preservation Eight runs their territory; the One-to-One Eight runs the room.

And then there is the version nobody calls control. Sign 5 (changing who you are so someone will accept you) and sign 3 (withholding until people fall in line) are not the moves of a loud person. They belong to types that control through relationship: a Two managing how they are seen, a Nine whose silent judgment is the only "no" they will let themselves say. Control does not always look like control.

The point is not which box you are in. It is that the behavior is protecting something, and until you know what, you will keep doing it while calling it something else. If you want to know your own pattern at the level that actually explains this, find your subtype. It takes five minutes.

How to ease up

The thing is, you are only responsible for you. The road to better relationships always starts there. Instead of trying to control everyone else, work on becoming a better version of yourself. A few places to start:

• Be vulnerable with people. Say the thing you are afraid of instead of managing everyone so you never have to feel it.
• Never compromise your self-respect by altering your core beliefs. Managing someone's impression of you is also a form of control, aimed at yourself.
• Be realistic about your expectations of others. Most of the gap between what you expected and what you got is in the expectation.
• Quit the passive-aggressive nonsense. Be direct. Silent judgment is not restraint.
• Accept that a large portion of life is laced with unknowns. The ambiguity is not a problem to be solved.
• Embrace confrontation. It really is sometimes the only thing you can do, and it is more respectful than steering.
• Take responsibility for your own happiness. Nobody else can carry it, and they resent being asked to.

If you work on your own improvement instead of on controlling other people, healthier relationships at work, and everywhere else, tend to arrive on their own.