Being in control of your life can be difficult sometimes, especially when it appears that you are losing everything you have worked for. Maybe your business, profession, or academics is/are falling at a pace you cannot control, or your marriage is on the verge of collapse, or even, you think you have made horrible mistakes and poor choices lately that you cannot recover from. Don’t worry, there is still a way out.
It’s normal to panic or to lose your sense of control and composure when you experience difficult times. Panic might drain you of your energy and set you in sheer helplessness. Your judgment may become grossly skewed and your head might not feel too clear. This is the time you might need to get motivated by someone else who understands your need to regain control.
Being able to regain control when you feel helpless is central to your progress from this point on. It’s quite easy to be stuck in helplessness. However, when you feel that you can’t help yourself regain control of your life, be open to being helped by someone else.
We don’t all get stuck at the same time. And when you seem to have lost control of things, there is always someone with a clear head to steer you back on track. While I may not be without my own problems too, I hope I am that person for you today.
6 Ways to Regain Control When You Feel Helpless
It can be very difficult to bounce back up when you feel unhappy or hopeless. A little more help will be extremely important. Your recent actions and probably, mistakes, might make you feel helpless about your life. These tips below should help you regain control of your life when you feel helpless.
1. Talk to someone you trust
When you feel helpless about your experiences or choices, talking to someone who listens would help. Talking to someone, especially someone you trust, can help relieve you of the feeling of disappointment and helplessness. Even if they don’t say much to help, you will feel relieved simply by sharing how you feel with someone who is ready to listen.
Talking to someone about how you feel can help as discussed but you need to ensure two things. First, the person is mature enough to listen to you without making you feel worse about your actions, experiences, and choices. Second, the person must be someone you trust to keep what you say and not use it against you at any time.
2. Focus on the good side
Life feels more beautiful when we focus more on the good side of life. We often focus too much on the disappointments and forget the numerous blessings we have encountered. At this point of feeling helpless and hopeless, sit back and think about the good things that have happened to you recently and remotely.
Feeling helpless means you have considered the odds to be against you. More like saying you feel the whole world falling over you. But this is mainly because you are not considering the good sides as well. Think about those lovely moments you’ve had, think about your loved ones and those who care deeply about you, and think about your life itself. Are those things not blessings indeed?
3. Get back your joy
To regain control of your life, you need your happiness back. We do the things we do, not because we don’t sometimes feel tired or hopeless, but because we allow our happiness to become our constant motivation. This means you must guard your happiness jealously at all times.
If you feel out of control with your life for any reasons, some of which are aforementioned in this post, it probably points to the fact that you might have let go of your happiness. That little spark that burns in your heart, and reminds you that life is still worth living, is called inner happiness or joy. It is not based merely on your experiences. It is based on how you have decided to respond to life’s challenges and circumstances.
4. Think about the way forward
A wise woman once told me (the wise woman is my mother), “Son, don’t cry over spilt milk”. She was not the originator of this proverb but the way she always said it made it feel so special. Whenever I regret my actions bitterly, she always has a way of reminding me that it’s time to quit worrying.
It is normal to worry about your mistakes and awful experiences but what is more important is, knowing when exactly to move on, which is, as soon as possible. If you are having problems thinking ahead and not back to the problems, you might need to find someone like my mum who would remind you not to cry over spilt milk.
5. Get some rest
Like I was taught in school, neurosis is any abnormal behaviour or perception that takes its root from a recent stressful experience. In other words, extreme stress can negatively affect your ability to cope with life and the challenges it throws at you. This manifests as a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness about life.
Actions as simple as getting a good rest and sleep can help recharge your coping batteries, and give you more control over your life.
6. See a therapist
What do you do when you don’t have anyone to confide in close to you? See a therapist. It’s that simple. A therapist is a professional who specializes in listening to your emotional or psychological problems and providing specialized help.
No two individuals experience the exact same problems, even if there might be some similarities. Also, you can be guaranteed that your personal information divulged to a therapist will remain confidential, as well as your identity. So, if all the above fails or is not available, it will be important to see a therapist if you truly want to regain control of your life.
How to Avoid Losing Control of Your Life
Why don’t we talk about how to avoid losing control of your life for a moment? It is possible to avoid getting to the point of helplessness and total loss of control over your life. And the secrets to achieving this are not far-fetched.
Know when to rest
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. In this case, I’d say, “All work and no rest makes Jack a helpless boy”. One primary reason why you sometimes lose control of your life and begin expressing neurotic behaviors like anxiety, apprehension, depression, etc., is that you do not get adequate rest when you need to.
The natural cycle of night and day, sleep and wake, was established to give room for rest and sleep, and even if you need to cut down on sleep for any reason, you need to ensure that you get optimal rest and sleep as much as possible.
Don’t take in too much without letting out
Several shells hit us on a daily basis. Life is full of challenges and issues, and if you keep taking in without letting out some steam, you might soon get saturated by life’s problems. You need to let out steam regularly, and by this, you should spend more time with people that puts you at ease. Engage in leisure activities that take away tension from you. This not only recharges your energy level but also enhances your social life and interaction with other people.
Diffuse emotions quickly
Emotions are like explosives. Once you light them up, they always find a way to explode thereafter. But that is in the mechanical sense of it.
In the real world, even though emotions have the tendency to blow up once they are activated, you can still diffuse them even if you don’t act on them. What this means is that you don’t necessarily have to act on all your emotions, and you obviously won’t die of suffocation if you don’t. To stay in control of your life, always learn to let go of emotions you didn’t act upon.
For example, someone stepped on your toe and didn’t apologize. You were supposed to raise your voice and rain “necessary” insults on them but instead, you controlled yourself not to do so because your girlfriend or boyfriend was present.
It is natural to harbour the feelings in your heart or ruminate on them for a much longer time. One day, all these emotions will accumulate and make you take actions you don’t intend if you don’t diffuse or detonate them promptly.
Forgive yourself
You are not without wrongs, but no one is guiltless. We have all done things we regret doing but remember, “Don’t cry over spilt milk” when you can’t undo what is already done. What is the point of forgiving others when you can’t forgive yourself?
Getting back control of your life and preventing feeling helpless and hopeless about life also entails that you forgive yourself, even for the slightest mistake you made less than a minute ago. It’s self-healing and refreshing to admit that everyone is prone to make mistakes but these alone do not determine what we eventually become. Your decision to move on or not is what does.
Don’t bite what you cannot chew
Lastly on how to avoid losing control of your life and becoming helpless, “don’t bite what you cannot chew”. A similar saying is, “Don’t bite more than you can chew”. This talks about doing things bits by bits instead of rushing to accomplish everything all at once. On the other hand, “Don’t bite what you cannot chew” means, don’t have a little taste of something you don’t want to fully indulge in.
For example, if you don’t want to become an alcoholic, don’t habitually take small sips from the glass cup. It’s straightforward, but how does it apply to regaining control of your life and avoiding the associated feeling of helplessness?
Helplessness is a sign of loss of control or loss of sight of a solution to the problems. This loss of control is a reflection of several components of your life and reality. In other words, when you get to the point of feeling helpless, it is oftentimes a sign that you have lost control of your life in more than one area of your life. These areas could include your profession, self-confidence, interpersonal relationships, marriage, and so on.
Some of these losses of control often begin with little things like addictions and undesirable habits like alcoholism, smoking, or sex. Once you lose your self-control in any of these little areas, it has a tendency to spill over into other areas of your life as well. In this regard, you must avoid biting what you cannot chew. Stay totally clear from the slightest trace of a habit that is capable of enslaving you by taking away your control.
Subtle Signs that You are Not in Control?
I will not bother to explain these signs but I hope they are as self-explanatory as possible. Not being in control is pathologic and it can grossly affect every area of your life. Here are some signs that you have lost control of some aspects of your life.
- You are easily provoked to anger.
- You cannot control your spending.
- You are easily manipulated, pressurized, enticed, or persuaded against your will.
- You have several undesirable addictions.
- You are anxious about life and always anticipate a negative outcome to things.
Conclusion
To regain control of your life when you feel helpless, you should be aware of these salient ways to go about it. It is also important to understand clearly what it means to lose control. The feeling of helplessness means that your coping mechanisms have become saturated and you cannot do anything else by yourself.
There are some subtle signs to pay attention to particularly if you feel that you are not in control of your life lately.
Finally, prevention, they say, is better than cure. This post also provided a descriptive list of things you can do to avoid losing control of your life. Forgiving yourself is an important way to avoid the entanglements of helplessness, amongst other things. And again, if you are feeling helpless, you can come out of it with the little help offered here in this post.
