The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

The Anxious Attitude. These types anticipate all kinds of
obstacles and difficulties in any situation they face. With people, they
often expect some sort of criticism or even betrayal. All of this
stimulates unusual amounts of anxiety before the fact. What they really

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fear is losing control of the situation. Their solution is to limit what can
possibly happen, to narrow the world they deal with. This means
limiting where they go and what they’ll attempt. In a relationship, they
will subtly dominate the domestic rituals and habits; they will seem
brittle and demand extra careful attention. This will dissuade people
from criticizing them. Everything must be on their terms. At work they
will be ferocious perfectionists and micromanagers, eventually
sabotaging themselves by trying to keep on top of too many things.
Once outside their comfort zone—the home or the relationship they
dominate—they become unusually fretful.
Sometimes they can disguise their need for control as a form of love
and concern. When Franklin Roosevelt came down with polio in 1921,
at the age of thirty-nine, his mother, Sara, did all she could to restrict
his life and keep him to one room in the house. He would have to give
up his political career and surrender to her care. Franklin’s wife,
Eleanor, knew him better. What he wanted and needed was to slowly
get back to something resembling his old life. It became a battle
between the mother and the daughter-in-law that Eleanor eventually
won. The mother was able to disguise her anxious attitude and need to
dominate her son through her apparent love, transforming him into a
helpless invalid.
Another disguise, similar to such love, is to seek to please and cajole
people in order to disarm any possible unpredictable and unfriendly
action. (See chapter 4, Toxic Types, The Pleaser.)
If you notice such tendencies in yourself, the best antidote is to pour
your energies into work. Focusing your attention outward into a
project of some sort will have a calming effect. As long as you rein in
your perfectionistic tendencies, you can channel your need to control
into something productive. With people, try to slowly open yourself to
their habits and pace of doing things, instead of the opposite. This can
show you that you have nothing to fear by loosening control.
Deliberately place yourself in the circumstances you most dread,
discovering that your fears are grossly exaggerated. You are slowly
introducing a bit of chaos into your overly ordered life.
In dealing with those with this attitude, try to not feel infected with
their anxiety, and instead try to provide the soothing influence they so
lacked in their earliest years. If you radiate calmness, your manner will
have greater effect than your words.

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