ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kati Morton is widely recognized as a leading mental health advocate and educator. She holds a master’s in clinical psychology and is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She has a passion for education and empowerment and shares helpful insights through her YouTube channel. Kati is the author of two books, Are u ok? and Traumatized. She hopes that by speaking candidly about mental health and encouraging her viewers to reach out to get the support they need, we can remove the stigma associated with getting help.

Also by Kati Morton

Are u ok?: A Guide to Caring for Your Mental Health

Traumatized: Identify, Understand, and Cope with PTSD and Emotional Stress

WHY DO I KEEP DOING THIS?

Unlearn the Habits Keeping You Stuck and Unhappy

KATI MORTON

Copyright © Kati Morton 2025

The right of Kati Morton to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in the US in 2025 by Balance

An imprint of Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group

First published in the UK in 2025 by Headline Press

An imprint of Headline Publishing Group Limited

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

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For anyone who, like me, has been exhausted from trying to hold it all together. Thinking we could keep everything under control if we just worked harder. I see you. I am you.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

THE PEOPLE AND PATIENTS I HAVE DISCUSSED IN THIS BOOK HAVE charitably given their permission. Many of the stories I share are very personal and come from those I know in my private life, as well as from my own life experience. To protect the privacy of those mentioned, all names and identifying details have been changed. The stories shared in this book are done to further illustrate how mental health and especially our urge to control can affect us. This book is meant to empower you to get the help you need and deserve. It is not a replacement for actual mental health treatment. If you are struggling with mental health issues, I urge you to seek professional help as soon as possible.

Introduction

MANY OF US HAVE BEEN TOLD SINCE CHILDHOOD THAT WE NEED to keep it together, be less dramatic, or toughen up. Some of us were told not to cry, to stop making a scene, or that our emotions were too much. As we got older, our upsets were dismissed, labeled as overreactions, or even seen as embarrassing. The message was clear: Falling apart is a failure, and if we just tried harder, we could appear unfazed.

These toxic ideas teach us to stuff our feelings down, ignore our instincts, and worry more about how we’re perceived than how we actually feel. We learn that our emotional reactions should be controlled. But here’s the paradox: While controlling our emotions is seen as a strength, controlling others is condemned. A controlling friend or partner is toxic. Trying to manage someone indirectly is passive-aggressive. The very thing we are trained to do, keep things under control, becomes the thing that harms our relationships, our well-being, and, ultimately, ourselves.

Control is a precarious thing. It keeps us safe and in line, but it can also be the very thing that breaks us.

And I know this firsthand.

I have always needed things to be just right. As a kid, I believed that if I could be perfect, if I could anticipate what people needed, say the right things, and avoid mistakes, then everything would be okay. If I could control my environment, I could prevent problems before they happened. I didn’t see this as control at the time. I thought I was being responsible, prepared, a good friend. But looking back, I realize that this constant need to manage everything wasn’t just about doing my best, it was about trying to feel safe.

In 2023, I hit a breaking point. I had spent the year working relentlessly, convinced that if I just did more, I would finally feel accomplished. But no matter how much I did, it never felt like enough. I ignored my exhaustion, dismissed my own needs, and kept pushing forward. Taking a break felt like failure. Slowing down felt unsafe. So I kept going. Until one day, I realized I wasn’t just burned out, I was resenting the very things I had once loved.

I snapped at my husband over something small. I felt irritated that my dog needed a walk. I was exhausted but refused to rest. And worst of all? I was annoyed with myself for feeling this way.

“Get it together, Kati,” I told myself.

I knew I needed a break just to think straight, but I couldn’t let myself take one. Every time I even considered stepping away, guilt kicked in. The fear of falling behind, of failing because of time off, made rest feel counterproductive. So I kept going. And going.

Until I finally sat down and started journaling about it.

That’s when I saw the pattern.

It wasn’t just about working too much or struggling to take breaks. It was something deeper, something I had been blind to for years. I wasn’t just exhausted; I was trapped in an endless cycle of trying to control everything around me. My to-do lists, my emotions, my relationships—I was holding on so tightly that I didn’t even realize how much I was suffocating myself.

And I was frustrated to find myself here again. Hadn’t I already worked through all of this? I had been in therapy since I was fifteen, done the self-reflection, put in the work. When would I finally get over this feeling of not being enough? When would I stop running myself into the ground just to prove something, to myself, to others? And yet here I was, stuck in the same exhausting cycle.

Why did I keep doing this?

I had spent years believing that if I could just stay on top of everything, anticipate every problem, and work harder than everyone else, I would finally feel at peace. But instead, I felt more anxious, more disconnected, and more on edge than ever before. I was constantly managing, fixing, and adjusting, trying to orchestrate my world in a way that would prevent failure, rejection, or disappointment. And yet despite all of my efforts, those feelings still found me.

It wasn’t just about control, it was about safety. Somewhere along the way, I had learned that control was my shield, my way of keeping chaos at bay. If I could manage everything perfectly, I could avoid pain. But the more I tried to control, the more out of control I felt. The harder I gripped, the more everything slipped through my fingers.

This realization wasn’t just a professional one, it was deeply personal. As a therapist, I had spent years helping others untangle their struggles with anxiety, perfectionism, and self-sabotage. I had seen firsthand how control showed up in their lives, just as it had in mine. The need to be the best. The fear of making a mistake. The exhausting cycle of overworking, overapologizing, and overfunctioning, all in the hope that it would somehow make us feel enough.

And now, here I was, caught in the same trap.

That’s why this book exists. Because I know I’m not the only one. I see it in my patients, my friends, and my online community. So many of us push ourselves to the brink, believing that if we just manage things better, try harder, and never let anything slip, we’ll finally feel okay. But the truth is, control isn’t saving us, it’s breaking us.

That’s what we’re going to unpack in these pages. Why we keep doing this to ourselves, where it comes from, and, most importantly, how to finally let go in a way that doesn’t feel like free-falling. Because there is another way, a way that allows us to feel safe, supported, and whole without needing to control every single detail of our lives.

I’m not here to tell you to simply “let go and trust the process.” I know how terrifying that sounds. I know how impossible it feels when every instinct is telling you to hold on tighter. But I also know that there is freedom in learning to loosen our grip. There is peace in realizing that we don’t have to carry everything alone.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in this cycle, you’re not alone. And the good news? You don’t have to stay here.

Let’s dive in.

Chapter 1

CONTROL AND OUR UPBRINGING

How Our Family Dynamics Set the Tone

THE URGE TO CONTROL IS EVERYWHERE, AND MOST OF US CAN track it back to the way we were raised. If our parents struggled with addiction, it likely felt like everything was out of control, so we did our best to keep it all together, thinking that if they saw how hard we were working they would stop. If our dad traveled a lot for work, we might think that if we were perfect at school and in sports he would want to be home more often, and if our mom overate when things got stressful, we might think that was the best way to cope with our feelings. Almost no one grows up without experiencing some examples of attempted control. So much of our life is unpredictable and uncomfortable, and of course we want to do what we can to make it feel better.

And that’s the first piece that is important to recognize. Wanting to control things is normal. Our nervous systems are wired to seek out any threat to our physical or emotional safety, and when something is unknown or unpredictable it can feel dangerous. Therefore, our brain and body get ready to take action, whether that action is to fight back or run away from the potential threat. Taking action is our way of reasserting our control over the situation.

When we are young, we don’t have many options or resources to help us take action, so we often can’t run away or arm ourselves in a way that feels better. Instead, we use what we have—our bodies—and we control that. This is what can lead to trying to be perfect, manipulating others into doing what we need, or even controlling what we eat. That’s why our upbringing can have such an impact on how we engage with the world. It creates the blueprint for our relationships and our ways of coping with the unknown.

THE BLUEPRINT

If we grew up in a home where the love was inconsistent, or we were harmed for having needs and taking up space, it is going to be hard for us to know who to go to when we need comfort. This is because our parents help us create a blueprint for relationships and we accept it as fact because we don’t know any other way. So if they were inconsistent or abusive, we will find other people who mimic those traits. Not because we like it or think our childhood was amazing, but because it’s comfortable. We know what to expect, and, frankly, we think it’s what we deserve. This is why we feel like we keep finding ourselves in the same relationship over and over, or at least feeling the same way when it ends.

I will always remember when my therapist pointed out the fact that all my ex-boyfriends seemed to put me second. She called my attention to this when my current boyfriend expected me to always come over to his apartment, and he hadn’t even been to mine. I was frustrated, and complained to her that I was stressed about the amount of money I was spending on gas. That was the issue I came into my session with, my financial stress. She quickly realized that this problem I was having didn’t have anything to do with money, but the fact that I had picked another boyfriend who didn’t believe in balance or compromise. It was his way or the highway.

She recalled a few ex-boyfriends from the past and how they all seemed to not make time for me or not even make an effort to be with me. I felt like the wind was knocked right out of my sails. She was right. I kept thinking that relationships take work, and if I just tried harder, it would all come together. It took some time, and I had to overcome a lot of resistance, but I was able to realize that I was picking unavailable men. Men that I couldn’t count on to show up for me, who would make plans only to cancel them at the last minute, and not pick up when I called. Without realizing it, I was picking men who kept leaving me hanging, expecting more, not knowing if or when they would show up for me. I was dating men who gave me the same feeling my dad did. It matched my blueprint.

I know it’s cliché to pin an issue on a parent, but sometimes it fits. I don’t do this to blame, but rather to understand. If we don’t first know where this unhealthy pattern is coming from, we can’t change it. Knowing that I was attracted to men who weren’t available or consistent helped me realize that my picker wasn’t properly calibrated. In fact, it was still stuck in the ’90s and in need of an overhaul.

INTERNALIZING THE BLUEPRINT

I see this a lot in my patients and online community as well. Our parents weren’t able to be there for us in a consistent way, and because we are children and don’t understand the reasons behind it, we assume it’s our fault. We internalize their unpredictability and assume that if we just did things better, were perfect, or were more like them, they would see us and show up for us. It’s incredibly vital to a child’s development to feel seen, heard, and understood. Without this, we can struggle to develop a solid foundation of trust in others and in ourselves.

Ruby, a member of my community, shared how when she was growing up both of her parents were high achievers, working away from home a lot, and placing a lot of emphasis on how well she did in school and sports. She hated when they would go away, but if she got good grades or won an award (i.e., controlled her conditions), when they got home they would all go out to dinner to celebrate. This was one of the few times when she got their undivided attention. I know we have given the word “attention” a bad reputation, but it’s something we all need. Doing things for attention explains most of our behaviors as humans. We need other people around us, we need connection, and there isn’t anything wrong with seeking it out.

Those dinners out were, and still are, some of Ruby’s favorite memories because she felt seen, heard, and important. However, this changed the way she engaged with life going forward. She told me that she struggles with perfectionism, is a workaholic, and hasn’t had a romantic relationship that lasted more than six months. She attributes these issues to the fact that she has always tied her self-worth to her work, and if she’s not getting a promotion or being recognized for her efforts, then she feels like a failure. She works harder and harder and doesn’t leave time for herself or her relationships. When she starts dating someone, if they are too available or give her too much attention, it scares her off. She’s not used to regular attention or someone doting after her; she prefers to earn that kind of care. She’s on a control superhighway.

As a result, the relationships she has been in are dismissive, unavailable, and difficult to connect with. She told me that her last boyfriend would disappear for weeks at a time because of his work, and after months of their being together, he still wouldn’t call her his girlfriend. She thought she was in love and wanted to be exclusive . . . He broke up with her shortly thereafter.

I am not saying that we always pick people who remind us of our parents, but we do tend to be more attracted to people who are familiar and comfortable. That leaves less room for unpredictable behavior and can also mean they’re only able to offer us the type of love we are used to getting.

Another member of my community, Tara, shared how she thought her family was perfect growing up. They went on family vacations and her mom stayed home with her and her three siblings while her dad worked in the city. She can’t even remember a time when her parents fought and was blindsided when they told them they were getting a divorce. Tara was eleven years old.

This change meant that they had to sell the house she had grown up in and move into a smaller condo where she shared a room with her sister. Her dad was supposed to take them every weekend but would often just not show, later saying that something came up at work. Tara was so disappointed in her dad and how he had changed that she vowed to never put her children through something like that. She admitted that she only dates men who she feels need her and who constantly shower her with attention. She thought this would prevent her childhood experience from happening again.

Unfortunately, all this did was cause her to be in codependent relationships. She was fulfilled because she felt needed and that gave her a sense of security, and the men she dated required her support to keep them going. At first, she thought that was normal and things were exactly as they should be. It wasn’t until years later and after she was married that she realized it wasn’t healthy. She started to feel resentful of her husband for not being a self-starter, not earning as much money, and not helping out around the house. Sure, she had done all of those things for years, but wasn’t he supposed to be her partner? Her friends’ marriages didn’t look like this. How did she end up here?

EXTERNAL FIXES

When we look out into the world hoping others will heal our wounds, we give all of our power away. We are at the mercy of other people and their desires, and this can make us feel helpless and hopeless. I hear this a lot in my community as well, like this comment from Taylor:

“If my mom would just apologize to me for all of the pain she caused, then I could move on. She needs to admit what she did and make amends. Then I will be able to heal.”

By making our healing contingent upon someone else’s actions, we are placing our happiness in their hands. I am not saying that others won’t ever offer us the words we need, but they can’t do that every time we need them to, and they aren’t always going to know just what we need. The reason we keep trying to find someone who will give us all that we need is because it’s human nature to look to others to soothe us. In fact, our nervous system is wired for that. Dr. Stephen Porges’s research on polyvagal theory explains why connection is so vital to our psychological health. It’s the reason that we are calmed as babies when our mother feeds us or rubs our back, why we feel so much better after talking with a close friend about an issue we are dealing with. Connection with others is soothing to us, and so it’s natural that we would seek it out as a way of feeling better about ourselves.

The problem isn’t in the connections or in our need for others, it’s in our inability to do it alone and in our efforts to control people and situations. Much of our ability to soothe ourselves comes from watching our parents do it themselves, and unfortunately, they don’t always know how to. In the same way we pass down family recipes and genetic traits, we also share our ways of coping with the world. Emotional regulation skills aren’t something that’s taught in school, and our older generations probably haven’t even heard of that term, which makes it impossible for them to teach it to us. It’s more likely that we watched our parents stuff down their emotions, drink to cope, or fly into a rage when things didn’t go their way.

They never showed us what to do when we were struggling or offered us ideas of how to process through the difficult moments. All we know is that it feels better when other people comfort us, and so we go looking for someone to make it all better. While that can feel good from time to time, there can also be times when this strategy hurts us and we are left feeling worse. People let us down, have their own lives to tend to, and cannot be available when we need them. This can reinforce the belief that we aren’t good enough, not worthy of love.

RECALIBRATION

Breaking out of an unhealthy pattern sounds so simple. I don’t like the way I am thinking or acting, so I am going to think and act in a different way. Ta-da! But it’s much more complicated. These patterns aren’t new. We have usually been acting in these ways for most of our life, and we don’t always know another way of behaving. It would be like asking someone sneezing to stop halfway through. It feels physically impossible. Which is why I prefer to figure out where these patterns are coming from, what story they are connected to, and where I see these types of behaviors most.

Figuring out the origin sounds simple enough, but it really takes honesty and challenging some beliefs we’ve had about our upbringing. So often I will hear from my community that they love their parents and had the best childhood, so they don’t think that has anything to do with how they are acting. It’s not that we are trying to blame our upbringing for everything going wrong in our life, but it does help to look back on the relationship dynamics we grew up with and see if any of that is feeding into our issues now. Meaning that we could have had a great relationship with our mom, but if we honestly consider the relationship, we realize that neither of us were ever comfortable with conflict. All of our memories are happy and great because it wasn’t okay for it to be any other way. This could explain why having a fight with a friend causes us to pull away or assume the relationship is over. We never learned how to disagree and then come together again.

We need to remember that doing this kind of personal research and assessment isn’t so that we have someone to blame, it’s so we can stop acting in ways that upset us. Just like we can tell ourselves unhelpful stories about who we are and what we want, we can also have fabricated positive stories that everything was great and our family was perfect. It’s important for us to see our past without any filters or defensiveness. Just like Justin from my community shared:

“I always thought my family was good—not perfect, but good enough. I had an okay childhood and my parents did their best. It wasn’t until my first marriage was falling apart that I realized I didn’t know how to fight without completely losing my shit. I would call her names, scream at her, and say things I wish I could take back. When we tried family therapy to work through this, I realized the impact it was having on my kids, and suddenly it hit me. I was doing what my parents did. Someone was always yelling in my home, and I often felt like I had to scream to be heard at all. This type of communication was all I knew. I just wish I had realized this wasn’t healthy years before I did. Maybe then I could have saved my marriage.”

It can be hard for us to look back and see things clearly and without bias. It’s human nature to want to protect those we love. Not to mention that when we look back, we are looking at a situation with everything we know now, not what we were aware of back then. Which means that things we may think are obvious now weren’t so obvious when we were a child.

PAST STORIES

Once we know where these thoughts and behaviors are coming from, we can work to figure out the story we told ourselves about it. Taking Justin’s example, we can see that he believed he had to scream to be heard and may have told himself that it was the only way to get attention or love. The story could be that relationships require force, and that’s not only how we get the love and attention we need but also how we show it to others. I know that may sound strange to those of us who didn’t grow up in that environment, but we all have stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our surroundings. The trick is identifying them.

One way I have worked on this was to take one of my most bothersome thoughts, like my belief that I have to earn love by being perfect, and be curious (not judgmental) about it. A trick we use in therapy to get us moving in the right direction is to use what is known as “downward arrow technique.” In short, it helps us identify why we act and feel the way we do. In this case it would work like this:

If the thought is, “I have to work hard to get love and attention.”

Then the first question is, “What does having to work hard for love and attention say about you?”

Answer: “That I am not worthy of love and attention without working hard.”

Question: “If that were true, what would that mean?”

Answer: “That just being myself isn’t enough.”

Question: “If that were true, what would that mean?”

Answer: “That I am not enough.”

Obviously, that’s a shortened version, and it can take us some time to come up with those answers, but the goal is to figure out that core belief—in my case, that I am not enough. That final answer is the story I’ve been telling myself all these years and the reason my control presents in competitive, perfectionistic, and people-pleasing ways. This story is what motivates the behaviors bothering me and the people I am in relationships with. Knowing this helps me better understand and even feel some compassion for myself. I don’t believe that I am enough, and I have spent most of my life trying to prove that I am.

BABY STEPS

Next, we need to figure out what relationships or situations trigger this response in the smallest way. I know you may be surprised that I am starting with the least triggering, but it’s easier to start with something small and work our way up. In my case this small thing could be that I don’t like how much I apologize when things don’t quite go as planned. I say “sorry” for things that didn’t have anything to do with me, for being in someone’s way, and even for taking up space in a shared environment. It’s annoying and I hate it.

Just because this is small or sounds simple doesn’t mean it’s easy. Years ago, my therapist asked me to try not to say “sorry” when I couldn’t explain what I was sorry for. Let’s just say I failed week after week for months. While a behavior like apologizing too much may be easy to notice, the real challenge is doing the homework to change that behavior. Other common behaviors I have worked on with patients are things like asking for clarification rather than making assumptions, to stop constantly seeking validation, and to stop replaying past conversations. You will be surprised how many of your bothersome habits are born out of a core belief of not being enough and present in ways to control yourself and others.

The thing to remember is that even though we don’t like some of the things we think or do, that doesn’t mean we need to shame and blame ourselves for doing it. We didn’t always get to choose the experiences we were subjected to or the people we had as role models. We took what we saw and learned from it, and that’s all we are trying to do now. The fact that you are even reading this book and wanting to change is a huge step. We can’t move forward if we keep getting in our own way, continuing to tell ourselves how unworthy we are, and then using whatever control tactics we learned worked as a child. We can learn from our past, respect it for what it was, and choose to do it differently tomorrow.

“WHY DO I KEEP DOING THIS?” EXERCISE—
QUESTIONS TO START THAT INTERNAL RESEARCH:

What was your relationship with your father like? How do you feel about it as you reflect back?

What was your relationship with your mother like? How do you feel about it as you reflect back?

What types of patterns do you see in your relationships? Certain types of people? Did they all end for similar reasons? Do you keep looking for the same things?

How do you react when you don’t feel accepted? Has that changed as you’ve gotten older?

Do you think love is something that has to be earned? Why or why not? Did you learn that yourself or did someone else teach it to you?

What are your beliefs about needing and getting attention? Where do you think those beliefs came from?