What Odysseus Can Teach Us About Trauma and the Need for Control

Like a lot of people this year, I saw The Odyssey — and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

On the surface, it's an adventure story: a soldier trying to get home after decades of war. But underneath, it's something else entirely. It's a story about a man who has been through unimaginable loss, and who responds to that loss by trying to control everything around him — the sea, his crew, even the gods themselves.

That's not just an ancient myth. It's a pattern I see every day in the therapy room.

Trauma and Control Are Best Friends

Odysseus survives a war that changes him permanently. And what does he do with that experience? He starts believing that if he just plans carefully enough, fights hard enough, and refuses to yield, he can prevent anything bad from happening to him or the people he loves ever again.

This is one of the most common — and most misunderstood — responses to trauma. When something painful happens that we had no power to stop, the mind draws a very logical, very human conclusion: if I had just had more control, this wouldn't have happened. And so the nervous system makes a promise to itself: never again will I be caught off guard.

The need for control isn't a character flaw. It's a survival response. It's the mind trying to do its job.

How This Shows Up After Trauma

Trauma doesn't just live in memory — it lives in the body and in daily behavior. Some of the most common ways the need for control shows up include:

• Hypervigilance — the brain stays on high alert, constantly scanning for threats, so nothing can surprise you again.

• Rigid rules — an intense need to manage every detail, plan, or person around you, because uncertainty itself starts to feel dangerous.

• Avoiding vulnerability — opening up or depending on others feels unsafe, especially if trust was broken in the past.

• Difficulty relaxing — the body struggles to feel safe even when there is, in this moment, no real danger present.

None of these are irrational. They're adaptive responses to a nervous system that learned, at some point, that letting your guard down came at a cost.

What Healing Actually Looks Like

The goal of trauma recovery isn't to eliminate the need for control — it's to help the nervous system learn that control isn't the only path to safety. A few pieces of that process:

Restoring choice. Recovery often starts small — rebuilding a sense of agency through low-stakes decisions and safe spaces where your choices genuinely matter.

Accepting the past. Healing grows out of a hard but important truth: you were powerless during the original trauma, but you have real agency now, in the present.

Regulating the nervous system. Practices like slow breathing, movement, and grounding aren't just relaxation techniques — they're a way of teaching your body, on a physiological level, that you are safe right now.

Odysseus Never Really Got to Put the Armor Down

Part of what makes The Odyssey so resonant is that Odysseus doesn't get a clean resolution. He comes home, but he's still fighting — still controlling, still bracing. That's often what untreated trauma looks like: the war ends, but the nervous system never got the memo.

Therapy can be that memo. It's a place to slowly, safely practice letting go of the vigilance that once kept you alive — and to find out what it feels like to trust that you're allowed to put the armor down.

If this resonates with you, you don't have to navigate it alone.

Nourishing Hope therapy, Cara Capasso-Murray LPC 201-923-635