In this episode of Notes From The Couch, we're opening up a conversation about control — specifically, the exhausting habit of trying to manage things that were never ours to control in the first place.

If you've ever found yourself replaying a conversation you can't rewind, trying to fix someone else's mood, or lying awake trying to guarantee an outcome — this one is for you.

Drawing on Stephen Covey's Circle of Control framework from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, this extended version breaks down the difference between what lives inside your control — your choices, your responses, your boundaries, your energy — and everything that doesn't. Other people's behavior. Timing. The past. What someone thinks of you.

We'll look at why most of us default to focusing on the outer circle, why that makes sense, and what it's actually costing us. And we'll talk about what shifts when people start reclaiming the inner one — not as a way of giving up, but as a way of feeling less frantic and more grounded.

This is a framework I come back to constantly — in session and in my own life. I think it'll land for you too.