Why High-Achieving Professionals Struggle with Control
Many high-achieving professionals struggle with control because it feels essential for managing uncertainty and staying successful. Whether you work in law, finance, healthcare, or consulting, the urge to control every detail often becomes a survival strategy. However, when control becomes your default mode, it can drain your energy, increase anxiety, and keep you constantly on edge, often without you fully realising why.
This article explores why high-achieving professionals struggle with control, especially those with a history of relational strain, and how anxiety and perfectionism become intertwined with this need.
What Control Really Means for High-Achieving Professionals
To understand why high-achieving professionals struggle with control, we first need to define what control means psychologically. Control is an effort to manage uncertainty, both in the external world and inside your mind. For many professionals, control looks like:
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Meticulously planning and organizing every detail
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Replaying conversations to avoid mistakes
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Micromanaging projects and outcomes
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Guarding emotions closely
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Avoiding downtime or unstructured time
Control often feels necessary for emotional safety, the belief that if you manage everything, you can avoid discomfort or failure. This coping style typically develops early in life, especially for those who grew up in emotionally unpredictable environments. It’s important to recognise that what feels like strength and efficiency on the surface can actually mask a deep need for safety and certainty.
Why Relational Strain Makes You Struggle with Control
A key reason why high-achieving professionals struggle with control is their history of relational strain or emotional neglect. Relational trauma isn’t always obvious abuse; it can be subtle patterns like:
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Being the responsible child or “the fixer”
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Having your feelings dismissed or minimised
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Learning that love and approval had to be earned through achievement
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Adapting to others’ moods to avoid conflict
These early experiences teach you that vulnerability is unsafe and that control is necessary to protect yourself. This background helps explain why high achievers appear confident on the surface but feel anxious and tense inside. Without recognising this connection, it’s easy to feel frustrated by your inability to relax or trust that things will be okay without your intervention.
The Persistent Anxiety Behind the Need for Control
Understanding why high-achieving professionals struggle with control also means recognising the type of anxiety involved. It’s often a quiet, low-level anxiety that stays in the background. It shows up as:
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Tension during downtime
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Constant mental to-do lists
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Unease when the schedule is empty
This anxiety drives two main types of control behaviour:
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Pre-emptive Control: Planning obsessively and trying to prevent any mistakes or surprises.
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Reactive Control: Responding to discomfort by fixing problems quickly or taking on more responsibility.
Together, these patterns trap professionals in a cycle where anxiety leads to control, control temporarily relieves anxiety, but anxiety inevitably returns, demanding even more control.
This constant internal pressure can lead to exhaustion, irritability, and difficulty focusing, all while maintaining the appearance of success. It’s a challenging cycle because the very efforts to manage anxiety only reinforce it over time.
Perfectionism and Control: Why High-Achieving Professionals Struggle to Let Go
Perfectionism often goes hand in hand with control. Yet, understanding why high-achieving professionals struggle with control requires distinguishing the two. While control is about managing uncertainty, perfectionism involves the belief that mistakes mean failure or rejection, deeply tied to self-worth.
Perfectionism protects against vulnerability and fear of rejection. The inner voice often says:
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“If I do everything perfectly, I won’t be criticised.”
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“If I do more, I’ll prove my value.”
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“If I never show weakness, I won’t get hurt.”
This mindset intensifies control efforts and fuels chronic stress that looks like ambition but is actually driven by fear.
For many, perfectionism is mistaken for ambition but it often serves as a protective mechanism developed early in life to guard against emotional pain. This link between perfectionism and control amplifies anxiety, as both drive you to avoid uncertainty and potential failure at all costs.
How EMDR Therapy Supports Professionals Struggling with Control
EMDR helps process early emotional experiences that shape your nervous system’s response to uncertainty and vulnerability. Rather than asking you to simply “let go” of control, EMDR targets the root causes driving this behaviour.
EMDR therapy helps you:
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Feel safer internally without constant control
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Respond to uncertainty with less anxiety
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Separate your worth from your performance
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Develop flexible, adaptive coping skills
By addressing the emotional memories behind control, EMDR offers a way to break the exhausting cycle and live with more calm and balance, without sacrificing your ambition.
This therapy is especially effective for busy professionals because it works without requiring lengthy verbal processing. Instead, it helps reprocess difficult memories and reduces the automatic nervous system reactions that fuel over-control.
Ready to Explore Next Steps?
If you’re a high-achieving professional dealing with over-functioning, stress, or burnout, EMDR therapy can offer a structured, practical way to change your patterns, without losing your edge.
👉 Learn more about EMDR therapy
👉 Book a free 15-minute telephone call to ask questions and see if it’s a good fit.
👉 Or, book your first consultation and get started.
About the Author
Dr. Pauline Chiarizia is a Counselling Psychologist specialising in trauma and eating disorders. She offers online talk therapy and EMDR for individuals who are ready to explore themselves more deeply, break free from unhelpful patterns, and address challenges like anxiety, low self-esteem, and burnout.
Dr. Chiarizia helps high-achieving professionals and others develop resilience, strengthen self-trust, and build the confidence to navigate life’s challenges, personally and professionally. Her approach empowers clients to cope with adversity while also being fully present for moments of joy, love, and connection.
She offers therapy online, based in London, and is available to clients across the UK, EU, and US.