Call and Response - Part Two: What Drives Controlling Behavior?
Updated: 3 days ago
What’s Really Behind Someone’s Need to Control You?
If you've been on the receiving end of someone who is ontrolling , you've probably asked yourself: Why do they do this? What's inside the mind of someone who needs to control another person?
The answer can be more complex—and more unsettling—than we might expect.
The most important thing to understand is this: the need to control is rarely driven by strength. It's driven by fear, shame and a deep-seated sense of insecurity.
The most important thing to understand is this: the need to control is rarely driven by strength. It's driven by fear, shame and a deep-seated sense of insecurity.
Insecurity and Shame
Beneath the need to control, psychology identifies two core drivers:
1. Insecurity. A driving factor for controlling behavior when a person feels unable to tolerate uncertainty, rejection, disagreement, or the possibility of losing influence. Control then becomes a coping strategy.
Common ways it appears
Fear of abandonment: They monitor your whereabouts, friendships, or responsiveness because they fear being left or replaced.
Need for reassurance: They repeatedly ask where you are, who you’re with, or how you feel about them.
Difficulty tolerating independence: Your boundaries, privacy, or separate interests may feel like rejection rather than normal autonomy.
Jealousy and possessiveness: They may treat other relationships as threats and attempt to isolate you.
Punishment when challenged: They may respond to “no” with anger, guilt-tripping, withdrawal, criticism, or accusations.
Micromanaging: They insist that things be done their way because differing opinions or unpredictable outcomes make them feel inadequate or unsafe.
Projection: They may accuse you of dishonesty, disloyalty, or manipulation—sometimes reflecting fears or behaviors they themselves are struggling with.verywellhealth+1
Insecurity can explain controlling behavior without excusing it. When control repeatedly violates boundaries, creates fear, or limits someone’s freedom, it can become emotionally abuse.
A useful distinction is that healthy insecurity is communicated as vulnerability—“I’m feeling afraid and need reassurance”—while controlling insecurity is expressed as a demand—“Prove your loyalty by doing what I want.”
2. Shame. Many controlling people grew up in chaotic, unpredictable environments where they learned that the only way to feel safe was to manage everything around them. They carry a deep, often unconscious shame — a belief that they are fundamentally inadequate. Controlling others becomes a way to compensate for that feeling. If they can make you respond, they feel powerful. If they can make you comply, they feel worthy — at least temporarily.
The Dark Triad: When Control Becomes a Personality Structure
Not all controlling behavior comes from anxiety. Some of it comes from personality structures that treat other people as instruments for personal gain. Psychologists call this the Dark Triad — three personality traits linked to manipulation, exploitation, and control:
Narcissism. The narcissistic controller craves admiration and validation. They see themselves as superior and entitled to special treatment. Call and response serves a specific purpose: it keeps them at the center, ensures a steady supply of admiration, and prevents anyone from challenging their inflated self-concept. When you don't comply, you're not just disagreeing — you're threatening the entire structure of how they see themselves.
Machiavellianism. The Machiavellian controller is strategic, calculated, and emotionally detached. They use manipulation not because they're anxious, but because it works. Their actions are deliberate, planful, and characterized by high self-confidence and low concern for others. They control people because the cost to others doesn't register as a reason to stop.
Psychopathy. The psychopathic controller lacks empathy entirely. They can read people — they know exactly what response they're fishing for — but they don't care about the damage they cause. Control is a game. Your compliance is a score.
Learn How to Break Free and Reclaim Your Autonomy Call and Response - Part Three: How to Break Free and Reclaim Your Autonomy
The Key Difference: Empathy
Here's the critical distinction that separates anxiety-driven control from personality-driven control: empathy.
An anxious person who controls you will often feel guilty about it afterward. They may even apologize. Their control is a maladaptive coping mechanism — harmful, yes, but rooted in their own pain. A person with strong narcissistic or Machiavellian traits typically won't feel guilty, because your experience isn't something they track.
This matters because it changes what's possible. An anxiety-driven controller can, in theory, learn to manage their anxiety and change their behavior. A personality-driven controller rarely changes, because the problem isn't a skill deficit — it's a fundamental difference in how they relate to other human beings.
The Dopamine Trap
There's one more piece of the puzzle. For some controllers, exercising power over another person is literally addictive. Neurologically, exercising power activates the brain's reward centers — the same areas that light up with food, money, and addictive drugs. There's a release of dopamine. It feels good. It gives a rush. And like a drug, it can become self-reinforcing. Each time they successfully control a situation or a person, they get that dopamine hit and want it again, creating a feedback loop where the need to control grows over time.
This is why controlling behavior tends to escalate rather than stabilize. The same level of control that satisfied them yesterday doesn't satisfy them today. They need more — more responses, more compliance, more evidence that they're in charge.
The Harmful Effects of Call and Response Control
Let's be clear about something: this isn't just about frustrating conversations or annoying dynamics. The systematic use of call and response to control another person causes real, measurable harm — to the brain, to the body, and to the psyche.
Damage to the Brain
Research shows that chronic psychological manipulation and coercive control produce measurable changes in brain structure and function. Studies of survivors of long-term emotional abuse show three key neurological effects:
The amygdala becomes hyperactive. This is the brain's fear center. After months or years of walking on eggshells, the brain becomes permanently wired for threat detection. You feel constantly on edge, even in safe situations.
The hippocampus can shrink. This is the brain region responsible for learning and memory. Chronic exposure to elevated cortisol — the stress hormone — corrodes neural pathways in this area. This is why survivors experience brain fog, memory gaps, and difficulty concentrating.
The prefrontal cortex is impaired. This is the brain's decision-making hub. The very tool you need to recognize the manipulation and escape it — your capacity for clear thinking and good judgment — is the part of the brain most damaged by the abuse.
PTSD and Complex PTSD
A meta-analysis of 68 studies found that coercive control exposure is moderately associated with both PTSD and depression. The prolonged and chronic pattern of terror and entrapment suggests these exposures are uniquely linked to complex PTSD (CPTSD) — a condition that arises from prolonged, repeated trauma from which there was no escape.
Unlike standard PTSD, which typically results from a single traumatic event, CPTSD develops from sustained, inescapable abuse. Its symptoms include:
Emotional flashbacks — sudden, intense regressions to the feeling states of the abuse (fear, shame, helplessness) triggered by something minor in the present
Emotional dysregulation — feeling overwhelmed by emotions that seem disproportionate to the current situation
A fragmented sense of self — struggling to know who you are outside of the controlling relationship
Disordered attachment — craving intimacy but being terrified of it, or becoming anxious and clingy, terrified of abandonment.
Erosion of Self-Worth and Identity
Perhaps the most insidious effect of call-and-response control is what it does to your relationship with yourself. When someone has been training your responses for months or years, you stop trusting your own instincts. You question your own perceptions. You second-guess your own feelings.
This is the legacy of gaslighting — the systematic undermining of your reality, memory, and perception. Over time, the controller's voice replaces your own inner voice. You internalize their criticisms. You adopt their framing. The most pervasive lie of emotional abuse is that you are unworthy, and after enough repetition, the brain accepts it as truth (PsychCentral).
Short-term effects include isolation, self-doubt, shame, confusion, low self-esteem, fear when interacting with others, and feelings of powerlessness. Long-term, these can develop into clinical depression, social anxiety, eating disorders, and chronic difficulty forming healthy relationships.
Chronic Stress and Physical Health
The body keeps the score. When you live under constant psychological stress, your nervous system gets stuck in fight-or-flight mode. You become hypervigilant — constantly scanning the environment for threats, reading into micro-expressions, analyzing the tone of voice of everyone around you. This leads to chronic anxiety, where relaxation feels impossible because letting your guard down feels dangerou.
The physical consequences are real: chronic pain, tension headaches, migraines, digestive issues like IBS, autoimmune conditions, and chronic fatigue. The body is essentially holding onto the tension and bracing against a blow that never physically comes.
Dissociation
To survive the unbearable pain of constant criticism and manipulation, many victims learn to "check out." Dissociation is a mental escape hatch where you detach from your thoughts, feelings, or even your body. In the long term, this can result in feeling consistently numb or empty — watching your life on a movie screen rather than living it. This numbness protects you from pain, but it also blocks you from experiencing joy, connection, and vibrancy.
Three Attacks on the Self
Researchers studying coercive control trauma propose that the harm occurs through three interrelated "attacks" on a person's psychological functioning.
An attack on autonomy and independence — you lose the ability to make your own choices
An attack on identity and self-worth — you lose the ability to see yourself as valuable
The construction and maintenance of an environment of terror and helplessness — you lose the ability to feel safe
These three attacks work together. The call-and-response pattern is the delivery mechanism for all three — each response you give chips away at your autonomy, each compliance erodes your identity, and each cycle reinforces the environment of helplessness.
Learn How to Break Free and Reclaim Your Autonomy Call and Response - Part Three: The Harmful Psychological Effects (How to Break Free and Reclaim Your Autonomy)
The Bigger Picture
Call and response is not inherently harmful. It's a fundamental human communication pattern that builds connection, creates community, and makes people feel like they belong to something larger than themselves. That's what makes it so dangerous when weaponized — the very thing that makes it feel good is the same thing that makes it effective as a tool of control.
The controlling person doesn't need to chain you to a wall. They don't need to threaten you. They just need to train you to respond — automatically, without thinking, without questioning — to whatever call they issue. Each response makes the next one easier. Each compliance makes the next compliance feel more natural. Until one day, you realize you've stopped initiating anything at all.
And the harm is real. It changes your brain. It rewires your nervous system. It erodes your identity, your self-trust, and your capacity to feel safe. But here's the most important truth: it is reversible. The brain that was damaged by chronic stress can heal. The nervous system that was stuck in survival mode can recalibrate. The identity that was eroded can be rebuilt — stronger, wiser, and more your own than it was before.
The way out starts with a single act: breaking the rhythm. Refusing the expected response. Reclaiming your right to initiate. And remembering: you don't have to respond just because someone calls.
Learn more about Call and Response - Part Three: The Harmful Psychological Effects (How to Break Free and Reclaim Your Autonomy)
If you’re tired of feeling stuck in the same patterns, and you’re ready to shift what’s actually driving them, I invite you to take the next step.
You can start with a free consultation, where we’ll talk through what you’re experiencing and what’s been holding you back.
Or, if you’re ready to go deeper, you can book a Deep Dive Session—a focused session designed to uncover and shift the beliefs that are limiting your life.
Schedule a free consultation call — no pressure, just an honest conversation about what's actually holding you back.
I wish you much success on your personal development journey.
Tim Gallagher
MA, NLP Practitioner
About Tim
Tim helps people achieve their personal and professional goals and change unwanted beliefs and behavior patterns—for meaningful, lasting change. Book a free consultation.
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