Out Of Control

Originally published September 2021

Earlier this year, my husband and I made the prayerful but painful decision to leave a small group we really cared about. I’ll spare you the dramatic details, but suffice to say, it was largely a matter of personality conflicts and me encountering the oh-so-tired and not so subliminal message of, “Tone it down, Kaeley. You’re way too much to handle.”

I’m not much into personality quizzes or Enneagrams, and I don’t think they’re an exact science by any means. In my mind, they’re little more than data collection, analysis, and sorting, used to help people learn to be more effective in their interactions. And on that level, I think these tests are fantastic, ESPECIALLY for people like me whose personalities are so chronically misunderstood and misjudged. It’s really helpful to be able to hand people a list and say, “Here. Read this. This is how I think and what motivates me in a nutshell.”

So here’s a life hack for those of you souls who are brave enough to risk relationship with me: I’m an Enneagram 8 or a Myers Briggs ENTP. We’re debaters. We learn what we think by arguing about it. It’s actually fun for us, not scary in the slightest. We are people who physically feel like we’re going to implode if/when forced to remain silent about things that matter to us. We read people and identify patterns in behavior extremely quickly, and we’re usually pretty articulate, quick witted people. We grow bored really easily, and we can be a bit scatterbrained. We’re often way more blunt than most people prefer, and we tend to be pretty fairly assertive and confident.

In men, these qualities are often valued or at least rewarded with some measure of success. (Think Winston Churchill, Dr. Phil, or Donald Trump.) They’re seen as fearless leaders. Women in this camp (think Serena Williams) tend to struggle a bit more to be accepted. We’re seen as domineering, intimidating, and, as I learned in group, “controlling” One guy told me he “just really struggles with overbearing women.” Another told me that listening to the intensity of my speech is like listening to people argue in a restaurant. He can’t even look at my Facebook page because it’s just too overwhelming.

And listen, I get it: None of us are perfect. We all have things we can afford to work on. When I get to the Bible stories about women like Jael, who drove a tent peg through a bad guy’s head, I’m like, “Right on! That’s my kinda gal! Biblical womanhood for the win!” But the passages about having a gentle spirit… Well, that’s just gonna be a work in progress until, oh I don’t know, probably my dying day- my gentleness is decidedly NOT “evident to all.” There are times when I legitimately probably do need to tone the intensity down a bit. There are other times, though, when the people around me need to stop telling me to shrink just because they don’t want to do the work of growing in their own boldness. And discerning between the two is not always easy.

One thing I wish that people knew about us weirdo 8 women is that we’re generally infinitely harder on ourselves than we are on anyone else. We sit and stew on this kind of feedback FOREVER and adjust as needed. Hypocrisy drives us nuts in both ourselves and others. Another thing I wish people understood is that we do not want to control you or your life in the slightest. We’re just really, really protective of our right to control ourselves. I think this distinction matters a whole lot, and I’ve spent the last six months really chewing on it.

I’ll never forget playing basketball in college when our assistant coach would physically work to maneuver me into position and laugh, “Man, Kaeley. You REALLY don’t like to be touched, do you?” He was right, but I remember feeling so exposed by the observation I had worked so hard to bury. When you spend the first 10 years of your life with an emotionally parasitic live-in pedophile, it has a tendency to distort your sense of bodily autonomy to such a degree that EVERYTHING feels invasive, including hugs or strategic maneuvering on the basketball court.

Not to get too depressing here, but my abuser was a grown man who latched onto me for both emotional and sexual stability. It was my job to make sure he was happy and that he felt good about himself. He would cry if I didn’t say “I love you” enough. I would routinely be required to recite lists of things that boosted his ego. If I missed items on the list, we had to stop and start over, and his whole world was in danger of collapsing. I was responsible for his happiness. Any misstep on my part was met with a predictably teary, “Don’t you love me anymore?” It was a perversely heavy burden for a 5-year-old to bear.

To this day, if someone hugs me, I wrestle the following instinctive, unbidden questions: “What are they trying to take from me? How are they going to use this to manipulate me? Why do they need this to feel okay about themselves?”

The resentment is almost instant, and then I immediately chastise myself and wrestle down self-loathing and thoughts like, “You’re a freak of nature, Kaeley. It’s just a hug. They’re normal. You’re clearly damaged.” I realize this post would likely be a heckuva lot more inspiring if I could write declaring my mastery over this, but I haven’t arrived there yet, and my blog is useless if it’s not honest.

These past few months have also illuminated my complete and utter disdain for people I perceive as emotionally parasitic- the people pleasers of the world whose personal sense of self worth is dependent on my validation. These are the types who only post nauseatingly perfect snapshots of their Stepford families on social media and require constant words of affirmation at every turn. “Did you like the brownies I brought to the brunch?” “Did you read the speech I wrote?” “Do you like how I decorated my house?” “Tell me I hung the moon, and if you don’t think I did, find a way to compliment me anyway.” They interpret necessary accountability and confrontation as cruelty instead of an expression of love. Everyone loves them because they feel warm and fluffy in contrast to the 8’s tough love approach, which, I maintain, is the more truly loving approach more often than not, but I digress…

If I’m honest, I have to admit that I struggle with these types of people and their neediness as much as they struggle with my bluntness. I want to smack them in the face and tell them to put on their big kid pants and grow their own spine. Mine’s already taken.

This sounds super harsh, and in many ways it is. That’s why I’m openly naming it and confessing my awareness of my need to work on it. I don’t want to be a cold hearted woman who deprives people of basic human affection just because I’m afraid their neediness is going to suck out my own personal life force. But their neediness and my disdain for it generally have a common root: personal trauma. I’ve just selfishly got a lot more grace for my own manifestation of it, and once again, it boils down to that root word: control. I’ve realized that when people try to force me to validate them at every turn, I feel like I’m stuck in my 5-year-old body reciting lists to a predator in order to keep him from crying. I don’t want that kind of control over anyone else, but more importantly, I really, really don’t want anyone else to have that kind of control over me.

This pregnancy has been a doozy on my control issues, especially as I’ve entered the geriatric category and have developed a litany of medical issues I never experienced with my first two babies. Yesterday I lay in the dentist’s chair with a pair of cheap sunglasses over my eyes as a man I don’t know drilled and grinded and poked and prodded to prep my tooth for a dental crown. In the 45 minutes while the crown was baking in the oven, my mind was filled with “What ifs.” What if the oven breaks, and I have to leave here looking like Loyd Christmas for the next month? What if the novocaine fails per usual? What if the dentist doesn’t actually know what he’s doing? I was entirely at his mercy. I had to trust a complete stranger with my well-being.

Today, for the first time in 38 years, I basically failed my eye exam, indicating that I need glasses. I sat in front of this crazy looking machine as a lady I had never met put drops in my eyes and proceeded to physically poke my eyeballs with this pressurizer machine to make sure I wasn’t developing glaucoma. She laughed as I blinked erratically, desperately trying to protect my eyeballs from the machine. “You’re in your head, aren’t you?” she asked. She had no idea. What if she sneezed? What if I sneezed? Again, the theme: surrender control. Trust an expert.

And don’t get me started on COVID and all the manipulative competing messaging designed to make me comply with the demands of people I don’t know who haven’t earned my trust. “Your baby might die if you don’t get the jab.” “Your baby might die if you do.” “Here’s some more information. If you read it, you have no other choice but to think like me, and if you don’t, I’m going to attack your character or your intelligence, so you choose.” Again with the control.

It’s just a lot of competing noise and it all really boils down to this: My hesitation to trust the people around me is representative of a broader problem; though He’s always been more than faithful, I still, deep down, really struggle to trust God in many ways.

As C.S. Lewis put it, “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”

I got really, really good at living in the gutter and slogging through the painful seasons. I’m good at fighting. It’s the peaceful seasons when things are going well, when I’m actually happy, that are proving to be the challenge for me. I’m finding myself wasting so much time worrying about the next shoe dropping that I’m failing to live peacefully in the abundance He’s provided in the meantime. Ultimately, I know theoretically and academically that everything is much better with God in the driver’s seat of my life. In this season, I think he’s asking me to take my hands off the wheel. Some days are easier than others.