The illusion of personal control
The illusion of control is at the root of most anxiety disorders: overthinking, worry, obsessional disorder and OCD, perfectionism, panic disorder and control freakery. However, it also has roots in our individualistic culture, centring on the myth of a separate, personal self that is in charge of all that happens. That is one reason why anxiety disorders are so common in Western societies. We are conditioned to believe that our lives are what we make them. That if we take responsibility, learn how to fit in, work hard, do the right things and meet the right people then we will be successful and happy. Or at least not unhappy failures.
Almost as bad is chronic frustration over perceived lack of control. The more we try to exert control the more frustrated we become as our efforts (inevitably) fail. This is one of the most noticeable symptoms of obsessional disorders, in which underlying frustrations add more and more fuel to obsessional thoughts.
Giving up the illusion of personal control will bring you freedom from your basic dread of life, build acceptance for what happens to you, and reduce your anxiety and frustration . Freeing you up to live in the moment, join with the flow, and focus on the things you can influence while adapting to those you can’t.
The obsession with personal control
The effects of the illusion of control can be seen in a variety of problems.
- Worrying about future outcomes
- Obsessional thinking
- Micro-managing tasks (and people)
- Perfectionism
- Negative self-judgments
- Anxious states
- Chronic frustration
- Difficulty in switching off
- Inability to relax
The struggle to remain in control causes a huge drain on the mind-body. The strain created by overthinking, anxiety, frustration and over-work leads to an excess load on the nervous system that gives rise not only to anxiety disorders but also to a variety of stress-related illnesses.
Ultimately the over-controlling person needs to recognise and accept they have far less control over life events than they imagine.
Where is your personal control?
I continue with a bald statement:
You have zero control over anything that happens to you in life.
Let that sink in. Not some control, or a little control. Zero control. Meaning that you have no absolute power of choice, or power to prevent anything that happens, and no power to alter the events that have happened. Nor do you have direct control over your thoughts, your emotions, your body, your brain, or even the actions you take.
External events occur as a result of a multitude of prior, circumstantial events, Your thoughts, emotions and actions take place as a result of decisions computed in your brain. What is left over is influence – your ability to align with events as they happen and make some improvements. However, in many cases you may not have even that. All that will be left to you to do is accept problems as they are and adapt.
Consider this list of life events over which you have no personal control:
- You didn’t choose your family
- You didn’t choose your body (or your genes)
- You didn’t choose the society you were born into
- You didn’t choose the way you were educated
- You didn’t choose your conditioning
- You didn’t choose your habits
- You didn’t choose your personality
- You didn’t choose your mental health problems
You might think that you chose your work, your current partner (if you have one) and the place where you live now. But that, too, is a deception. Jobs, relationships and homes are opportunities that came your way, not free choices. And they largely depend on circumstances, and the decisions of other people. It is true that you have some power of decision over the work and relationships offered to you, but you don’t have any control over those offers.
You might concede the point and argue instead that while we don’t have any personal control over what happens in life, we do have free will. Meaning that we have control over our thoughts, judgments, decisions, choices, communications and behaviours. That we can learn how to be effective through observation, reflection and self-correction. But that is not really true either.
Careful reflection will show you that you don’t have any control over the 6000 thoughts that float through your mind each day; they simply bubble up from a place beyond consciousness and present themselves to you. Meanwhile, your emotions are largely produced in the brain in response to some of those thoughts, and to the behaviour of the people around you.
While you might have the power of choice, you don’t have any control over the choices themselves. Your actions, too, are largely moulded by your conditioned responses: your parents, school and society being the main sources.
Yet psychological research shows that nearly all of us have something called an illusion of control bias first established by psychologists in the 1970s. In which we believe that our actions influence results, even where this cannot be true. Such as when we play games of chance or pick a lottery ticket. Some superstitions are based on this trait: as when we wear a ‘lucky’ shirt to the football game in the hope that our team will win.
The illusion of control and anxiety
The idea that we have personal control over external events is at the root of the most common mental heath problem, which is anxiety. We can add life stress to this category, as I will explain.
All anxiety is grounded in one basic thought: that the thing we don’t want to happen is going to happen – and when it does happen it will be worse than can be imagined. Resulting in failure, stress and potential breakdown.
From this spin-off thoughts manifest as worry, analysis-paralysis, catastrophic judgments, self-blame and hopelessness. It is important to bear in mind that these thoughts are not in your control either; they arise spontaneously in the frontal lobes and are presented to you in consciousness as urgent messages to do something to avert the imagined future. Although they pose as ‘solutions’ to the problem they are in fact part of the problem: the illusion of personal control over events.
Underneath this anxiety over real or imaginary events is a deeper dread: the fear that life is too much for us, and that we aren’t in control of fate. That existential dread really belongs to the ego, something that formed in you when you were around two years old. This fictional self is built on three inter-related ideas. The first is that we are separate beings; the second that there is something badly wrong with us; the third is that we have to spend the rest of existence proving ourselves. It is from this last piece of conditioning that the quest for personal control arises.
Letting go of the illusion
The first step is to accept that you have influence over events rather than control.
For example:
- You can’t control what your partners do, but you can influence your relationship with them
- You can’t control what goes on in your work, but you can accept and adapt to adverse circumstances
- You can’t control your financial problems, but you can work towards improving them
- You can’t control your children’s lives, but you can be the best parent you can
- You can’t control your misfortunes but you can show up as your best available self
At the bottom of all these ideas is a refocus away from personal control over external events, towards a focus on your response to those events.
The second step is to recognise that we are not separate, isolated beings operating in a vacuum. That we are conditioned by, and partly defined by the family, community and society in which we operate. That our thoughts and actions, as well as the results of our actions are influenced by a vast network of external influences. These include: lasting effects from past events; the unknowable impact of future events; the actions (or non-actions) of other people; the rule-bound activities and mistakes of organisations and communities; the nature of the problem itself – the more complex the issue the more likely it is that things won’t go according to the plans applied to them.
The third step is to defuse from three inter-related thoughts:
- Life should be different from the way it actually is
- I can’t stand it when things don’t go the way I want them to
- I should be doing something about it (even when there is little I can do)
Replacing these three with more realistic thoughts:
- What happens in life could’t be any other way given how things are
- I don’t have to like what happens, but I can work with it
- It’s time to focus on things I can influence rather than the things I can’t
To find out more about the way I work with difficult thoughts see this list of services here.