It's true. We grant to others the power to control us.
But it is so very hard not to grant it to them.
Look at the family. See injustice there so you can see it in grander things.
We love others. Can they hurt us as we love them? Yes we can. We wish we could not love through damage, but many of us do and we pay dearly as we nevertheless continue to love.
Some of us leave. Some are left. We then seek again or find those who can hurt us again, control us, tell us what to do.
Where do you dominate, or are you dominated? Is it the same as with others who cudgel and herd you?
Does this make it different? Does this make it better, that you are so free to be with others? Does it not make it worse, for we can so much more easily leave. There are many ready bosses in the world. Some protect us; all injure us.
My trick for taking away the power of others to control me is to address the perception that others are trying to be controlling. If the are not physically pushing me or tying me up with a rope, the perception of controlling intentions may be a misinterpretation. Whenever I feel uncertain, which coincidentally also happens to be the times I feel like I am being controlled, I simply articulate the questions underlying my uncertainty and ask the perceived source of uncertainty what their intentions are until I run out of questions. I allow myself to feel the emotional response and try not to form any thoughts explaining why I am emotional because thinking while emotional and uncertain leads to very hazy rationalizations of your perceptions. If you have suffered some trauma where you felt out of control of large and chaotic forces, you hate and fear being controlled. Over time, this can evolve into a desire to control others, even if you do not admit it. A repressed desire to control others becomes a masochistic impulse and the desire is self-contained. If you become self-aware of the reality, that masochism is the same thing as sadism depending on your perspective, then you are perceiving intent to control you because you have the intent to control others by inflicting pain on yourself. You may already be evolving the rationalizations to justify your actions to control without knowing it. You see them as desires to control you, which rationalize your response to fight back. Once you are aware of this, you can stop by fighting what your perceptions are telling you rather than fighting with what your perceptions are telling you.
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