Damocles On The Couch

Let’s face it, control (or a lack thereof) is a huge issue in people’s lives these days. Life is moving so fast that it seems that we require the Vulcan death-grip just to hang on. Many people who make their way to my office arrive for the first session looking as if they are returning from the front lines of some major battle, and in many ways they are. They are trying to meet deadlines, care for children, care for elderly parents, pay the bills, mow the grass, cook meals, do the laundry, answer emails, attend the church meeting, return the call to their friend who called last week, and if possible send a text to their spouse to see if they can find 15 minutes of quality time sometime next week. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, for most of us it does. The world is a demanding place, and how you approach those demands can make all the difference in determining if you are one of the survivors, or if you are a casualty of life. Because of the frequency of this problem, there is a subject that I almost always cover during my first session with a new client. The concept I present to them does not lessen the demands they face, but it does help them to have a puncher’s chance at surviving the rat race they find themselves in. The theory is known as “Locus of Control”, or in English, where is the control located. The original architect of this theory was Julian B. Rotter, who described individual differences in people who attribute the reasons that things happen in their life as being caused by either internal sources (their own behavior) or external sources (other’s behavior). You see all of us have an internal and an external locus of control. Internal locus of control includes all of the things in this world that we can control, and without oversimplifying things, there are only three things that are under our control. We can control our thoughts, our feelings, and our behavior. Now that may not sound like much, but believe me, on most days managing those three things in a healthy way is a full-time job in itself. Everything else falls into the category of external locus of control. This limitless list may include things such as the traffic jam you find yourself in coming home from work, the tantrum your two year old chooses to throw in the checkout isle at the grocery store, or your mechanic who says that the work needed on your car is “a little more extensive” than was first thought. Again, the people who I see in counseling all have problems such as these, but they also have some that are more grueling with which to deal. They have a cancer that was just diagnosed, a spouse of twenty-plus years who “loves them, but is not sure if they are in-love with them”, a boss who thanks them for fifteen years of dedicated service but their position is being down-sized, or a child who has been through several treatment programs but continues to use drugs. Yes, the world does happen. When it comes to the matter of internal locus of control (our thoughts, our feelings, and our behavior), one of these elements, our thoughts, takes precedence over the other two. The reason for this is simple. Our thoughts always precede our behavior. Now many of us have heard people say that they acted impulsively or the “didn’t even think before they acted”, but this just isn’t true. Now they may not have gone through a very thorough thought process or their thinking may have been hurried or flawed, but they did “think” before they “acted”. When it comes to the relationship between thoughts and feelings, it is very similar to that between thoughts and behavior. Feelings exist as trailers to thought. Therefore how you think about things will determine what emotion is present. This is a particularly challenging problem for people who have the tendency of personalizing matters. If they think that others are directing their actions specifically at them, they are predisposed to hurts and slights that are not really meant to be there. Since the relationship between thoughts and feelings is so important, and can make all the difference in a person’s emotional well-being, I want to offer an example of how our thoughts about a particular incident can effectively change our emotional response based on how we think about it. Imagine that you are at work and you are walking down the hallway. Approaching you is a coworker that we’ll call Bob. As Bob approaches you, you offer a greeting, “Good morning, Bob” to which Bob does not respond. We start thinking to ourselves, “Well, that pretty good. What is his problem? What a jerk.” So now we are miffed with Bob for a good part of the day until we learn later that Bob actually has a sick child at home. He was not being rude to us at all; he is just preoccupied with his concern for his child. Now the emotion that we experience is compassion rather than anger. Nothing changed in regards to the initial incident with passing Bob in the hallway, other than how we think about it, and we have a completely different emotional experience.