The Heavy Grip: When Your Need for Control Starts Hurting You | The Healing Practice

The Healing Practice: Anxiety, resilience & emotional wellness · Sep 17, 2026 · 11m

In this episode of The Healing Practice, host Holly King explores the exhausting cycle of over-control and how the need to manage every outcome often masks deep-seated fear rather than competence. Many of us, particularly women socialized to caretake, mistake physical tension and hyper-vigilance for strength, wearing our anxiety like a badge of honor. This episode offers a compassionate look at why we grip so tightly—whether it’s checking locks repeatedly, rehearsing conversations, or trying to fix everyone else’s emotions—and reveals that this rigidity is actually a defense mechanism against…