How Trust Begins Where Control Ends
- Brainz Magazine
- Nov 13
- 6 min read
Updated: Nov 14
In her article Control is a False God, Kim Benjamin offers a different perspective on control. Blending faith-based wisdom, ten years of supporting women in relational healing, and Human Design as an awareness tool, she invites readers to take a fresh look at control and fear.
What if needing certainty was really a signal from your nervous system needing to feel safe? Certainty gives us a feeling of safety. If we are certain about where we are going, we might even say we are in control, right? So certainty gives us control, until it doesn’t. Until it becomes the very thing keeping us stuck in patterns, in relationships, in mental loops where certainty replaces clarity and survival replaces sensation.
I am not spotlighting control freaks here. You may not identify with the unconscious drive to control because it shows up subtly, more like this:
Re-reading an email five times before sending. Not for grammar. For approval. Approval seeking is a natural by-product of nervous system regulation.
It quiets the nervous system because it signals that you’re safe in the tribe, that you won’t be rejected or exiled. It’s subversive control, a way of trying to shape how others see us, not for ego, but for security.
Maybe those shadow habits, perfectionism, self-doubt, are just the mind’s way of soothing the nervous system? Rather than being something to shame ourselves over, maybe it’s just a “pause” moment.
Human Design can reveal how the mind holds on, pressuring us to act in familiar, not safe, patterns, and it can support you to examine where and what to let go. It reveals when to pause and what to ponder.
The biology behind control
The need for certainty (also known as control) feels emotional because, well, it is. But it’s also biological. Control isn’t just a preference, it’s a programmed survival instinct. Our reptilian brain’s function is survival. Certainty equals security. And security equals survival.
If we can be certain about something, we can avoid bad choices, horrendous mistakes, and humiliating moments, and even avoid choosing the “wrong” partner, job, or city to live in, or whether to have children or not. If we can just “know,” we will survive. Not only survive, maybe even flourish. Who doesn’t want that? That drive for certainty is simply another word for control.
We want to control anything that might lead us down the wrong path. Control offers the illusion of safety, but it’s a substitute for trust and faith.
This is where Human Design opens the door to understanding not only what’s underneath our push for certainty, but how it shows up differently in each of us, and how we can manage our unique approach to certainty and control to actually live in truth. Because the truth is, nothing is certain. Or perhaps, better said this way, the only certainty is change.
The Ajna Center: The mind’s myth of certainty
The Ajna Center in Human Design governs mental processing, analysis, beliefs, and what we hold to be true. It is where we store thoughts that, if repeated often enough, become the beliefs we live by, beliefs we will fight to defend. And here’s the kicker, most of our beliefs were developed before we were old enough to reason. They were passed on to us by anyone who cared for, or had influence over us, as children.
So there you go. Most of our beliefs, which include our fears, biases, prejudices, and strongly held values, aren’t even ours. Yet, these same beliefs become the guides for our decisions. But that is not how we were designed to live. The mind is where doubt, insight, and logic live, but not direction.
How we move through the process of conceptualization and analysis differs as well, depending on whether your Ajna (mind) has steady, reliable energy (defined) or fluid, inconsistent energy (undefined).
A defined Ajna creates a mental framework for understanding. It has a fixed way of analyzing and organizing information. It is associated with intellectual consistency and mental sharpness. If you have a defined Ajna, you process information with ease. You live in the security of certainty. You value logic over emotion. It is societally preferred and rewarded.
Possessing this energy makes certainty your wheelhouse. You have intrinsic intellect. It means you can trust that when you have that flash of insight, you are statistically right 95% of the time. It allows you to move quickly, decide with clarity, and take action faster.
You have confidence in your opinions, and you are not easily swayed. What a gift, right? It is. There are very few downsides to having a defined Ajna, unless it becomes a snag where you find yourself in arguments, not over the issue at hand, but over certainty. Remember, certainty is really control for the sake of security. Certainty is not always truth.
With the intellectual benefit of this certainty, however, it feels like truth. This can often make it difficult to let the opinions of others in. You aren’t trying to tell them what to do, you’re trying to tell them what will work.
With an undefined Ajna, you have more fluidity and adaptability. This gives you a broader intelligence. You don’t possess the same inherent intellect, but you have a higher capacity to understand truths, meanings, and the relationships between different concepts.
For you, uncertainty is the norm. It’s natural to allow the opinions of others in. So natural, in fact, that you spiral into self-doubt. This uncertainty can become paralyzing. Fear of being rejected, ridiculed, or shamed pressures you to know something you may not know. And no one wants to be ejected from the tribe. So you may even make things up or pretend to be certain when you aren’t, just to stay safe.
The funny thing is that we label people with strong opinions as more controlling. But are they? Have you ever been with someone who doubted their own opinions so much they would spend hours rewriting an email and then ask you to read over it to see if it made sense? Did you feel somewhat controlled by their self-doubt?
Control isn’t always dominance. Sometimes it’s anxiety in disguise, a constant need for “see me,” “like me,” “approve of me,” so I can stay in the tribe. It’s the nervous system’s attempt to manage the unknown.
Either way, control is an energy. And your Human Design reveals how that energy is shaped, how it moves, and what blocks or prevents correct usage of it. Remember, we all want the same things in life, the security of being loved, accepted, valued for what we contribute, and success in our chosen vocation.
So, how do we know?
Here’s how you can tell if you are confusing certainty with security and unconsciously chasing control:
You find yourself justifying choices before anyone challenges you.
You freeze or bulldoze when you fear being wrong.
You mistake certainty for confidence, exhausting yourself trying to “know” the next right move.
You feel defensive when someone questions your decisions.
Any and all of these things are signs telling you that your Ajna (mind) is running the show. Most of us live on autopilot, and the Ajna loves that. If it worked, that would be awesome.
But this isn’t how we were created to live. Your mind was never designed to make decisions. That’s your Ajna trying to do a job it was never meant to do.
The solution: Awareness
Your mind seeks certainty. Certainty convinces us that we have power over our lives, that we will survive. But that certainty is really about control, and control is not a guarantee of outcome. The unconscious pull to control is often just unprocessed fear.
Awareness disarms the fear, not with affirmation, but with precision. Process the fear. Allow fear to be what it is, an alarm system. It’s just trying to wake us up. You don’t throw your alarm clock out the window for waking you up. Don’t avoid the fear. Just wake up.
Learn more about how you view control. Discover which fear lurks under the need to feel certain. Ask yourself if you unconsciously rely on your mind to make decisions. Notice how much of your life you run on autopilot.
And then ask:
What do I believe would change if I had control?
What am I afraid to see?
What’s the worst possible outcome if I were to see fear as a built-in alarm system and, rather than shutting it off, noticed what it was trying to tell me?
Become aware
As someone who spent years trying to earn safety through control, I know the temptation well. But truth doesn’t come from certainty. It comes from knowing what you can control and what you can’t. Hint, the only thing we can control is our response to what happens in life.
Meaning, the key to security is surrender to the process of life, and understanding as much as we can about how we experience it. This is not passive resignation, it’s sacred trust.
In Ephesians 3:20, we’re told God can do “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.” That doesn’t happen in control. It happens in release.
Read more from Kimberly Benjamin
Kimberly Benjamin, Emotional Intelligence Coach for Women
Kim Benjamin is a transformational coach and author who supports high-achieving women to reconnect with themselves and their relationships using Human Design and faith-based wisdom.
