Psychological Control Drama-A Self-Perpetual Game of Power Play

Google defines control as “the power to influence or direct people's behavior or the course of events.” It is the innate desire in humans to have things cater to his liking until he wants it otherwise. Both physiologically and psychologically we are constantly in a state of control. For instance, in an exam where our brains are calculating the perfect speed to finish the paper in the allotted time, our bodies are regulating the temperature and maintaining the right posture at the same moment. All for controlling the outcome of scoring good marks and feeling accomplished. Consciously or unconsciously, mostly unconsciously, psychological control is the strategy our mind implements to function on a day-to-day basis.  

Have you ever wondered why humans treat each other violently? The Covid-19 pandemic has witnessed a rise in domestic violence cases worldwide. India's National Commission for Women (NCW) registered 587 domestic violence complaints between March 23 and April 16, 2020 compared to 396 complaints registered between Feb and March. And India is a country where only one-third of women have access to the internet, let alone the conservative culture that further contributes to low complaint rates. Where does this urge to control and dominate come from? What is it at the level of individual consciousness that gives rise to this desire to dominate?

In any given conversation, one of two things happen, either we come out of it feeling strong or weak depending on the quality of the conversation. It is quite a common phenomenon where we humans say what we have to only to prevail in a conversation. If our viewpoint wins, we come out of it feeling strong and get a psychological or an ego boost. We often witness this in political debates, how some individuals raise their voices to prevail in their arguments despite it being invalid. This is where our desire to control others comes from, to get a psychological lift. And when this need is taken to its extreme it leads to psychological violence. 

When parents dominate their kids, rebels are born, and often times this is exactly how bullies are born as well. The child uses this mechanism as a way to gain some control. And unless the child is self-aware as an adult, he will forever be conditioned with this behavior to dominate. Probably the parent’s need to dominate arises because they were dominated by their parents and in this manner psychological violence is passed down from one generation to another.

In fact, all of us have a certain control drama, one that is formed during our childhood. To identify it, we have to dig into our early family life and understand how this habit was formed. This control drama is nothing but a strategy to win energy back. Since most of the past generation operated in this drama themselves, deciphering these energy dynamics can help us move past this drama into a deeper understanding of selves. The idea is to evaluate our lives from an evolutionary point of view keeping in mind the major events that shaped us and understanding its impact on our personality. 

There are four kinds of control drama divided into two categories - active and passive. The active drama is called intimidator while the passive dramas are poor me, interrogator, and aloof. Intimidators try to gain energy directly by forcing people to give them attention. They use physical or verbal abuse, force, fear, or aggression to manipulate situations and use control. On the other hand, there are people who play the poor me drama wherein they subtly imply that somebody’s lack of responsibility or help is causing horrible things in their life to continue. Sometimes they also come out as people who are perpetually in victim mode where someone is always trying to cause them harm. Being around them can make one feel guilty even though there is nothing to feel guilty about. Less passive than poor me is the aloof control drama. People with this control drama act cold and distant, mysterious, and coy. They do this so that others will pay attention and try to understand them. Once they show attention, the dramatist acts vaguely for they want others to dig deeper to discern their true feelings. And in this way, they get the energy they desire. The last control drama is the interrogator. As the name suggests, the interrogator’s mechanism of gaining energy is to probe into people’s lives with the sole purpose of finding flaws in them. Then they go on to criticize others’ lives. The person being criticized gets self-conscious and wonders what the interrogator thinks about them. They avoid doing anything wrong lest the interrogator should pick on them again. This gives the interrogator the energy he desires. Some people use these control dramas in combination but most of us have one dominant drama that forms the way we gain energy in our relationships with others. 

Imagine a child with a parent who is an intimidator, what would the child do to gain energy from this parent? Being aloof wouldn’t work. Instead, playing poor-me could serve the purpose by making the intimidator feel guilty of his actions. If this doesn’t work the child would probably become an intimidator himself, fighting aggression with aggression. Take for instance a child with both parents who are aloof, busy in their own lives, and no time for the child. Resorting to probing, prying, and questioning could help the child in gaining the desired attention. Aloofness creates intimidators which in-turn creates poor-me or more intimidators.  This is how control drama self-perpetuates.

We can see how we are all sort of stuck in a competition for each other’s energy because we somehow feel short of it. However, once we transcend this powerplay, this unconscious act of energy manipulation we can then find the higher meaning of our lives. This leads us towards our true self and we can then begin to live life authentically in alignment with who we really are. 

Sources:

Redfield, J. (2018). The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure. New York: Grand Central Publishing.

S, R. (2020, April 18). Locked down with abusers: India sees surge in domestic violence. Retrieved May 15, 2020, from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/locked-abusers-india-domestic-violence-surge-200415092014621.html