In his book The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success, author Jon Tyson gives a list of ways we control people.

All of us long to control our own lives. It is one of our primary coping mechanisms to fend off heartache and pain. And control is not a bad thing in itself We should take control over abusive, coercive, and hurtful things. But when we become obsessed with managing our existence to the point that we stop trusting God or depending on him, we enter the dangerous territory of seeking to become God ourselves. Our culture is riddled with control mechanisms that facilitate this idolatry.

Things We Use to Control Others

1. Some use money as an umbrella of control. Money creates space, comfort, and distance between the challenges and annoy­ances of life. It creates an illusory blanket of security around our place and position in the world.
2. Others use power to control. They work toward positions of influence and authority so that they create a safe distance between themselves and threats to the ego or emotions.
3. Others use sexuality to control people, knowing that beauty or desire can be a mesmerizing, even coercive force that keeps others addicted to us.
4. Some use words to control, ver­bally adjusting others’ self-perception and identity to keep them in line.
5. Some use guilt and shame, some obligation. The list of tools we deploy to manage the people and outcomes of our lives is al­most endless.

The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success by Jon Tyson. Multnomah, 2018.