Control, for the most part, is an illusion.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we are powerless to affect change in our lives. Not at all. What I’m saying is that most of what we mistake for direct control is merely influence. While having influence over events and outcomes can be powerful, having a persistent belief that we are always in control leads to the need to always be in control. A need that when examined at any length will fall apart like wet tissue. And when critical, life-affirming needs aren’t met, in walks Anxiety and it’s jackass cousin, Depression.

At some point in life I developed a fear of flying. I have no idea why. I wasn’t in a plane crash, I didn’t have a bad flight at any point. I’d been on quite a few plane rides with no problems. I’d even been along on a mid-air refueling mission with the Air Force. So, why in the world did I start getting anxious about flying? How did the panic attacks and heart palpitations even become a thing?

The answer was in control, or rather, the lack of it. My “Type A”, hands-on, only-I-can-do-this-correctly personality had struck again. My fear of flying was actually a side effect of a larger issue: A need to control any and every detail of my life. Being a passenger in an airplane was just a representation of the awful fear that I wouldn’t be in control. It’s not like I can fly the plane myself, after all. Captain Tom Bunn, a psychologist and airline pilot, explores these issues in depth in his SOAR program, which has helped thousands of people tackle their fear of flying. For me, his book shone a light on what my fear was really about.

Lack of control manifests differently for people. I had a coworker who would have panic attacks before a date, which was ruining his love life. I knew a girl once who was afraid of driving on freeway overpasses for fear of the whole thing collapsing or her car crashing over the barrier. Their fears, like mine, had roots in the same place. It wasn’t dating that made my coworker anxious. He wanted to date. It was the lack of control, not being able to manage someone else’s opinion or impressions. Overpasses and bridges were just a symptom of the girl’s lack of control over the stability of the structure and flow of traffic.

I can’t truthfully speak to anyone’s experience but my own. From my point of view, it seems that as a whole, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Our culture prizes the triumph of the individual above all else. The person who forges their own destiny is the embodiment of the American Dream. But how realistic is this vision?

Remember the serenity prayer? That old chestnut has been a favorite of twelve step programs since their inception. When you talk to people who have worked those steps, they’ll usually tell you that they’ve found that what they can actually change is usually pretty small compared to what they can’t. That’s the crux of the matter. We are told from birth that our role in life is to get out and change the world around us. Make it into our own vision and chase success. But when reality creeps in, showing us that our control is actually pretty limited, we feel powerless, adrift, frightened.

When I take a look around me, I see more people than ever being held hostage by anxiety and depression. I wonder how much of that can be attributed to this lack of control in our daily lives? Certainly not all of it. But some, surely. For me, this was definitely the case. Like so many of us, I had been raised with the values of individualism, told that I should be able to shape the life that I wanted, down to the last detail, if I was only good enough and strong enough to make it happen. But this wasn’t true then, and it’s certainly not true now.

My fear of flying (and anxiety in general) didn’t start receding because I learned more about airplanes and safety. Although it did help. It started improving when I realized that it’s okay to not always be in control. That, in fact, I’m usually not in control. I can influence events to an extent, but, at other times, I need to let go of the idea that somehow I should be able to change things that are obviously out of my control. It’s not always easy. But it is worth it.