Becoming You Again

You Can’t Control Them, But You Can Control You

• Karin Nelson • Episode 240

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Control promises certainty, but then pulls that certainty right out from under you. In this episode I’m talking about the power of letting go of needing to control others and instead putting your focus on what you can control – you! You’ll learn how to stop outsourcing your emotions to an ex, stop trying to fix your kids’ feelings, and start responding with clear boundaries, reframes, and values you can rely on under pressure.
 
I break down why the urge to control spikes after a split and how it backfires, leaving you reactive and exhausted. Then I walk you through some practical implementation. The result of this shift is real power: fewer sleepless nights, more clarity about who people are, and energy freed up for healing, growth, and connection. Most importantly, you reclaim agency. You still choose your thoughts, your words, your boundaries, and your next step. That’s how you model resilience for your kids and build a life that feels like yours again.

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Karin Nelson:

You are listening to Becoming You Again, episode number 240, and I am your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome to Becoming You Again, the podcast where you learn to step into your power as a woman in this world, where you learn to reconnect to your wholeness, your integrity, and bring into alignment your brain, your body, and your intuition after divorce. This is the podcast where you learn to trust yourself again and move forward toward a life that you truly want. You are listening to Becoming You Again, and I am your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast, my lovely, lovely ladies. As always, I'm so happy that you're here. I hope you're doing great this week. Today I want to talk about something that I believe is going to help you move out of a lot of pain and friction that you might be living with right now as you're going through your divorce or after your divorce. And that is learning to let go of the things that you can't control, whether it's people, whether it's situations, whether it's like literally anything outside of you. When we learn to let go of trying to control those things, we let go of so much of the unnecessary emotional pain that we are creating for ourselves. And it is a very powerful thing. So I want you to have this tool in your life because I think that it can shift so many things for you. And it's not just because trying to control things that are outside of us doesn't work, but it's because trying to control those things actually steals your peace, your energy, your mental capacity, your mental space, especially when you're already going through really hard things that come along with the divorce. So let's make things a little bit easier on you as you go through this process and as you are learning to heal yourself from all of the changes that you're facing in your life now. And let's bring it back to what we truly can control, which is you. You can't change someone else's choices or the way they show up, but you can always change how you experience something. You can always change how you show up. So let's focus on that. All right. I want to talk for a minute about why we try to control everything, especially when we're going through a divorce. When we go through a divorce, it's not just an ending of the marriage or an ending of that relationship, right? It's a change to your daily routine, your kids' daily routine. It's an ending of expectations of what you thought your life was going to look like, of what your life did look like. It is an end to existing plans, perhaps. It is an end to sometimes your identity and who you were in that relationship and figuring out who you are now. Sometimes it's an end for many women, especially, to your financial security and wondering what your life is going to look like financially moving forward. So it forces you to kind of look at all of these places that you were expecting certain things or certain people to show up in a certain way. And then those things don't happen. And so when they don't happen in that way, we're like, this feels really crappy. I don't know what to expect. I don't know how to show up. I don't know what to do in this situation. And we try to control it all because, as we all know, uncertainty does not feel good. And that is one of the reasons why we try to control, because we want things to be certain. We want to know that they're going to work out. We want to know that this person's going to show up in the way that we need them or want them or think they should show up, so that we don't have to feel crappy about it. So that we don't have to worry about it or feel anxious about it or, you know, whatever. That's why we try and control things. Like maybe you thought that your ex was going to respond reasonably to the divorce decree and that he was just going to show up on time and, you know, take the kids and drop them off where they needed to be dropped off, or make the appointments like he said he would, or et cetera, et cetera. And then he doesn't. That feels shitty. We're like, why can't he just do the things that he's supposed to do? It's written down in the decree. Why can't he just do it? But the point is, is they're going to do it anyway. We've never been able to control our ex or our soon-to-be-ex or our husband when we were married or our kids or our parents or our friends or our neighbors. We never, we've never been able to control what they do and how they do it. Never. Not one time. You want to know what that control looks like? If we thought that we had that control, it's those stories that you read about the parents who tied their kids to their bed because they didn't want them getting up in the middle of the night for a drink of water. So I'm teaching you these tools to help you create more emotional control over yourself and the ability to let go of the need to control the other things outside of you that you can't control. Okay. So it's natural to feel like you need to push someone in a certain way to show up in the way you expect them to or want them to or think they should, right? Or try and persuade with them or negotiate with them or manipulate them even, just so that it will align with your expectations so that you can feel safe or you can feel respected or you can feel heard. But more often than not, when we show up with that kind of energy of, I need you to hear this, I need you to show up in this way, it will backfire on us. And it will usually typically create the exact thing that we didn't want to happen. The more you fight for control over how other people show up, the less control you actually have over them, which you never had, but you actually have less control over yourself. You have less control over your own peace, over your own confidence, over your own emotional health because you are letting it go and you are putting it on them, saying, I need you to show up this way so that I can feel this way. And when you don't show up this way, I don't allow myself to feel this way, and that's on you, which is like backwards thinking, right? Our emotions are up to us, their emotions are up to them. Let's just take back control over what we can actually control, which is ourselves. Okay. So, what does this look like? Let me give you some examples when it comes to your divorce and the many moving parts that are painful and confusing and emotionally charged. Okay. So let's say that you have an ex who is behaving in ways that like you absolutely hate. They are just being the biggest piece of shit of all time. Letting go of control means you let them behave in the way that you don't like, that you don't agree with. They are missing agreements, they're they've introduced your kids to their new partner early, they are parenting differently in their home than the way you would parent, or maybe your kids are coming home angry, or they are disappointed, or they're confused, or they're sad over the divorce. We let your ex, we let your kids have all of the feelings and do all of the things, and we stop trying to be like, don't do this. Now I'm not saying don't text them back. I'm not saying any of that. I'm not saying don't love your kids and just let like screw them, let them feel whatever they're feeling like. That's not what I'm saying. And we're gonna explain more of that in a minute. But when we let go of trying to control the things outside of us, it doesn't mean that we don't, we just like check out of our lives and their lives, and we just like, okay, leave it all to you. Bye. I'm out of here. That's not what this means. Okay, don't get me wrong. Uh letting people be in charge of their own lives and doing their own thing is fine. That's the first step. That's the first step of letting go of trying to control things we can't control. Okay. And the second step, which is I think the more powerful step for you, is recognizing what you do have control over. You get to choose how you respond to your ex not upholding his end of the agreement or introducing his partner to the kids, or parenting differently, or your kids being angry or sad or confused. You get to decide how you respond. You. You are the one that you have control over. So you get to decide what you think about, what you say, what you do. Not in a reaction type of way, but in a response, in a way that is aligned with you, with your values, with the person that you are becoming. This could look so many different ways, but it might look like setting healthy boundaries, not trying to control what other people do because that's not what boundaries are, but controlling what you do in response, right? What are you gonna tolerate? What are you not going to tolerate? How are you going to show up? Deciding what you're gonna focus on. Am I gonna dwell on this? Am I gonna think about this? Am I gonna spin about this? Am I gonna redirect my thoughts and my energy? Am I gonna change my thoughts? Am I going to support my kids through the things that they're struggling with? Am I going to find them the support that they need? Am I going to just love them through this, even though it hurts them? And I'm not going to try and fix their feelings. Am I going to let them be them and just love them? How are you going to respond? That's the important question. One of the most common things I hear from women after divorce is I don't even know who I am anymore. And I totally get it because I have been there too. After years of putting everyone else first, I felt completely lost. I didn't know what I liked, I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know what my dreams were. I didn't even really recognize who I was. And that is why I created my new guide, 115 Ways to Get to Know You. This is the exact formula that I used to get to know myself in a way that I hadn't in years. It's a playful, supportive roadmap that helped me reconnect to myself through simple, doable ideas. And because I want you to feel confident as you rediscover you, I've also included two powerful bonuses: the five confidence-building morning habits and self-confidence go-to thoughts. You get all of this and so much more for just $7 because you deserve to know yourself again. Let this guide be your first step. Click the link in the description for more info. So let me give you a few examples. Let's say that your ex, let's take the ex idea, right? Is showing up in a way that like is not cool. Like they're they're not showing up on time to pick up the kids, or uh they keep like dropping the ball and being like, oh, I can't take them this weekend. They need to stay with you, but can I switch you for next weekend? Or just like whatever. Like this could look so many different ways. But let's just say your ex is not showing up in the way that they're supposed to because of the divorce decree, or however it looks, and you feel angry, you feel resentful, you feel let down because they just keep breaking their word over and over and over again. And this is maybe nothing new, but it's worse in the divorce because you're like, why can't they just fucking figure it out? Right? Okay. This is where you start to recognize what you don't have control over. You can't force them to behave differently. You can't make them change. You can ask them, you can request of them to do it the way the decree to says the decree says. You can ask them to stop being late or to stop asking to change weekends, but let go of the expectation that they're actually going to do that. You know who they are. They've shown you over and over. Let them be them. Let them be who they are. And now you get to control who you are. So you can't force them to behave differently. We just expect they're not going to. Acknowledge how you're feeling. Acknowledge how you feel when they behave the way they behave. I feel hurt. I feel disappointed. I feel resentful. I feel angry. And you know what? It makes a lot of sense that I feel this way. Right? It makes sense to feel angry when your ex is being a fucking asshole and letting you and your kids down over and over and over again. It makes sense that you feel that way. We're just gonna validate that you feel that way. We're not gonna like stay stuck in the validation. We're just going to recognize it makes sense that I feel this way. And then what's the next step? The next step is you recognize what do you have control over? Decide what boundaries you're gonna enforce. Decide how you're gonna show up for your kids in this situation when they're with you. Decide intentionally what you're gonna say to him, what your response will be. If you're just gonna, okay, I'm just going to continue to request these things of him and know that most likely he's not gonna follow through. I'm gonna continue to support my kids when they're with me in the way that I want to support them, in the way that I feel they need to be supported. I'm gonna love them through this. Maybe I'm gonna talk to my lawyer and we're gonna go back to court, or we're gonna go back to mediation, or we're gonna go back and change the decree. Like that's where you get to decide. That's where you get to show up controlling what you can control, your response. This not only helps you stay aligned with who you are at your core and what your values are and in becoming the person you want to be, but it also helps you feel more in control of your emotional life because you're not handing it over to your ex anymore, saying, Stop doing these things so that I can feel better. You're saying, you keep being you. I'm going to take care of me feeling better in a way that makes me feel powerful and in control of my own life. It doesn't matter what you do, because I got me, and I'm not gonna let you be in charge of how I feel any longer. So here's another example of how this can show up. Because very often, when other people around us, especially our kids, I want to use our kids, your kids, as an example in this, because this is something that I coach my clients on all the time. But when when other people around us are feeling feelings, they're having emotions, which is very normal and natural, and that's okay. Nothing has gone wrong when we feel negative emotion, right? Uh, but it's uncomfortable for us sometimes to watch other people feel emotional things, especially negative emotion things. So, like, and we want, we feel pressure to fix that because again, that's a way for us to try and feel better, right? So if your ex or your kids or your family members around you are feeling things and you're watching them, we're just gonna let them feel the things, right? Because that's how we recognize I don't control how someone else feels. I'm not in control of that. They are feeling what they're feeling because of what they're thinking and what's going on in their lives and the stories that are happening for them. That is creating their emotional response. I'm not in control of that. So I can let that go. However, I am in control of me, and I am going to decide intentionally how to show up when people are feeling what they're feeling. So I'm gonna give you an example of this in just a minute, using my own child as an example, because this was something that I really had to learn in their teenage years. And it took some time and it took a lot of practice. And I it's something I still have to practice this, but I'm gonna give you an example. But I just want to like reinforce here when you decide intentionally how you are going to show up while other people are feeling what they're feeling without needing to control it or change it or fix it. This is where you can let your values come in as your guide. So, like if your kid comes home angry from school, you don't have to meet their anger with more anger. You don't have to mirror their emotions to try and get them to change so that you can feel better because you might feel uncomfortable that they're angry. This is where you can let your values decide for you who you are going to be in this situation. Like maybe some of your values are like kindness or honesty or consistency or love. You take that value and you go, okay, using that value, what does it look like to show up in this situation when this person is feeling angry or sad or confused? Right. We let those values guide our response. Okay, so here's my example. One of my children used to come home from school angry all the time, like all the time. And I just didn't know what to do with it. I didn't want him to feel angry. I didn't want him to feel that powerful emotion because it is intense and it's powerful. And I didn't know how to help him. And I tried lots of different things to try and control him, to make him change. I'd get upset, I'd yell, I'd be like, go to your room, be in timeout, like whatever. I tried so many different things and nothing seemed to work until I got to this place where I was like, okay, I'm just gonna let him feel what he's feeling. And then I'm going to show up in the way that I want to show up to support him through what he's feeling. So this is what that looked like most of the time. I'm sorry you're feeling angry. Do you want to talk about it? No. Okay. Are you hungry? Would you like me to make you something to eat? Because we all know that hangry is a real thing, right? That could be the problem. No? Okay. I'm gonna be in here in the kitchen. I'm gonna be in my office, I'm gonna be over there, I'm gonna run to the store. But I am around, I am here if you need me, if you want to talk, if you want my support. That's it. That's it. That was how I found was my best way to support this child through what they were feeling. So this can look a lot of different ways. But the point is that you can let other people feel whatever they are feeling, and you don't have to change their emotional response so that you can feel better. Like maybe it means you're not gonna, you're just not gonna engage in arguments until like while emotions are raw, you're just not going to engage, you're gonna step away. You say something like, hey, listen, I gotta step, I gotta take a break. I'm gonna go over here, I'm gonna realign my nervous system, you do you, but I'm not engaging in this right now. Like that's how you control you. They get to do whatever they're gonna do, you're stepping away, right? Or it can look so many different ways. But here's the caveat that I want to point out, and I've had to point this out with my clients as well. As they're going through these parenting experiences with their children and they're being coached on these types of things, and they're like, I don't, you know, I tried to do that, and it was, you know, I tried to just let them feel what they were feeling, and then they just were yelling and throwing things and getting in my face or saying mean things to their siblings or, you know, hitting or kicking or whatever. Doesn't the this doesn't mean like letting go of controlling things outside of you doesn't mean that you stop parenting or you stop, you just don't have a spine anymore and you become a doormat on the floor. No, that is not what I'm saying. You still get to parent in these situations. You still get to show up as the person that you want to be with your ex. Like maybe you do take them back to court. Maybe you do call the lawyers, maybe you do change the decree. Doesn't matter. It doesn't mean you don't let people walk all over you. Doesn't mean that you just let your kids punch holes in the walls and, you know, tackle their siblings and punch them in the face or hang spit over their head or something. You still get to parent. What kind of a parent do I want to be when my child is reacting to their anger in this way? What does that look like? This is not appropriate. We do not treat people like this when we're angry. We do not react to our anger in this way. You will go to your room and you have lost your phone for five days, or like you don't get to hang out with your friends for the next week because you're acting this way. These are not appropriate ways to behave. When you are feeling less anger, we can come up with some ways for you to learn how to process through your anger in a constructive manner that isn't hurting other people or things. The anger is not the problem, it's the behavior that's the problem. Right? These are teaching tools that you can use as you parent without letting your kids just do whatever they want, and without you needing to control and change and fix how they're feeling. So, how do you implement this in your everyday life? You have to start to recognize what you do have control over and what you don't have control over. Okay, so in moments, I want you to start asking yourself, what can I let go of trying to control here? What do I get to choose in this moment? What feelings do I want to bring into this moment? What values do I want to honor? What boundaries am I going to set up or do I need to maintain? Or what is my next action? Not reaction, right? So here are some things that you can do for yourself to help support yourself through this idea of letting go of what you can't control and controlling what you can, which is you. Okay. You can start to define boundaries for yourself ahead of time. Write down what feels okay to you and what doesn't feel okay, what are non-negotiables. Have it clearly defined so that you already know before a situation happens. Have some self-soothing techniques that are your go-to techniques so that you can help realign your nervous system in moments where things might get heated. Right? Know which ones you like, know which ones help you. Like I know I've said this many, many times in the podcast, but the one that works for me is getting to a quiet spot for a few seconds, putting my hand on my chest and rubbing it and saying, in this moment, I am safe. In this moment, my survival is not threatened. And sometimes I have to do that for like five minutes to really remind myself, I am present, I am safe, my survival is not threatened. But it works for me. Find the ones that work for you. Maybe it's journaling, maybe it's talking to your therapist, maybe it's doing a grounding technique, maybe it's getting out in the sun and letting that sun shine on your face, right? It's there's a lot of different ways you can do it. Use the one that works for you. Know your values. What makes you feel authentic authentic to you? Do you have a value of kindness, of love, of fairness, of stability, of confidence, of like there's so many different values that you can lean on. What are yours? And how can you lean on those in different situations where you don't have control over how other people show up? Okay. And I want you to know how this is going to change your life when you really start to do this. When you really start letting go of trying to control everyone and everything around you and just working on controlling you, you're going to have more peace in your life. You're going to have fewer sleepless nights where you're replaying arguments or regretting how you showed up. You're going to have less anger or disappointment that you carry around with you throughout your day. I'm not saying you're never going to feel disappointed or angry again, but you're going to not carry it with you all the time any longer. You're going to have more clarity because you're going to start to see people not through a filter of how you expect them to be, but just you're going to see someone for who they are, not who you wanted them to be or who you hoped they would be, just who they are. That's that's clarity for you. That's understanding for you. You're going to have more energy because your energy is going to stop being wasted on trying to manage how everybody else is showing up around you. The only person you have to manage is you, right? You can redirect to what actually matters, which is healing, which is loving those around you, which is rekindling the relationships that are important to you, which is your own personal growth and being an example to your kids on how they can have their own personal growth as well. You're going to recognize that you still have agency in your life, that you still have choice in your life. You still have control in your life. And that is hard to do when you're going through a divorce because very often we feel like there's nothing in our control, but there really is. And it's the most powerful thing. It's you and how you show up and how you respond. Because you still get to choose your values, your happiness, your future, the direction you're going, the person you're becoming, the person you are in this moment. And that's huge. And you get to be a better role model for your kids. You get to show them someone who is strong, who is composed, who is consistent, who shows up as the person they want to be, the person who you get to show them that you can make mistakes and still try and do better next time. You get to show them someone who is rebuilding and growing and learning and failing and trying again. You get to be a better role model for your kids. All right, my friends, I hope that you found this to be helpful, to be powerful for you, because it really is a powerful tool to be able to let go of trying to control everyone and everything around you and just let them be while you simultaneously step into your own power and really see and take control over what you can control, which is always you. All right, my friends, that is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. I love you. As always, I will be back next week. Hi, friend. I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life with weekly coaching, real life practice, and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to Karin Nelsoncoaching.com. That's www.k-ar-in-n-e-l-soncoaching.com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating wherever you listen to podcasts. And for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married, make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.

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Karin Nelson

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