Developing an Internal Locus of Control - a key to better health

If you think about all the things that go wrong in the lives of individuals, relationships, families, school or society as a whole, they are either defined by, or caused by people generating more emotion than is necessary or helpful, and what they do because of that, or to deal with it. An important factor in determining the frequency, intensity and duration of any emotion they generate is their Locus of Control.

Most people have an External Locus of Control. They believe that what others say and do, and what happens makes them feel the way they do. It makes how they feel depend on events and people they can't control and feeling better depend on those events and people changing for the better, and they may not. People can feel like a victim of their circumstances, with no hope of feeling better. That's never a good thing. They end up feeling worse than necessary or helpful, for longer than needed, which in turn can give purpose to smoking, drinking, using drugs, overeating and a host of other unhealthy things people do to try to make themselves feel better, and these can contribute to a host of health problems. Most importantly, they miss many opportunities to feel better.

Anything someone else says or does, or that happens, is just an EVENT..People call events all kinds of things: problems, accidents, troubles, mistakes, successes, failures, challenges, opportunities, etc. What they call it doesn't change what happens. It just makes it easier or harder to deal with. It's really what we THINK about events that determines how we feel, not what happens. The formula for feelings is

EVENT + THOUGHTS = FEELING.

It's like the algebraic formula we all learn, a + b = c, where a is a constant and b is a variable. If a stays the same, and you change b, c changes. Likewise, if an event is a constant, and you change how you think about it, your feeling will change, perhaps for the better, perhaps for the worse. Even at something like a funeral, there are times when people cry intensely, times when they laugh, and other times when they are simply comforted. The event remains the same; someone has passed. However, what changes from moment to moment is what they are thinking. As time goes by, most get past the loss of a loved one because they think about it less, or in a way that comforts them, or at least allow them to get past it. Some continue to think the same way they did at the time of the loss, and struggle emotionally.

Long ago, Dr. Albert Ellis developed the ABC Theory of Emotions, where A = Activating Event, B = Beliefs about yourself, others, life and the event, and C = Consequence, or what you feel and might do as a consequence of what you believe about those things and the event.

We all have a host of Cognitive Choices we make all the time, usually without being aware of it, that determine how we feel. For example,

1) How we choose to look at things
2) What meaning we attach to what happens
3) What we focus on about what happened
4) What we compare things to
5) What we expect of ourselves, others and life in the first place
6) What we imagine will happen next
7) How much importance we attach to what does happen

We have a choice because there's always more than one way to look at anything, more than one thing something that happens could mean, more than one thing we could focus on, many things we could compare what happens, ourselves, and our life to, more than one thing we could imagine happening next, and many degrees of importance we could attach to what does happen. Once we pick one possibility to the exclusion of others, we've technically made a choice.

The way we make such choices is the product of much prior practice and rehearsal, and is therefore automatic and can go unnoticed. However, these choices are not cast in stone. We can learn to make them differently.

Reminding ourselves of what our Cogntive Choices are can be very empowering. We can and should develop a whole new of talking. For example:

1) It's my choice how I look at things
2) It's my choice what meaning I attach to what happens
3) It's my choice what I focus on
4) It's my choice what I compare things to
5) It's my choice what I expect of myself, others and life
6) It's my choice what I imagine will happen next
7) It's my choice how much importance I want to attach to what happens

Logically, if how we feel is the product of how we think or look at things, and we have a choice how we want to do that, then it is also true that:

It's my choice how I want to feel

When people first hear that, they often take it the wrong way. They often misinterpret what someone who says it means. I know I did when someone first said it to me. They often wrongly perceive that the other person is saying "It's your fault you feel the way you do" or saying "There's something wrong with you for feeling the way you do". Or, they might think someone is excusing the behavior of others who wronged them, or discounting the importance of an event in their lives, i.e. the loss of a loved one

But that's not what it means. Anything people feel, or think to cause it, or say and do because of what they think or feel is perfectly understandable. That doesn't mean it will be healthy, or acceptable to others. It just means that no one will ever be the first or last person in human history to think or feel, or behave in some way. They've got a lot of company. It's part of being human. We are all what Dr. Ellis used to call Fallible Human Beings, who at times think, feel, say and do things that make our lives worse instead of better. It's nothing to be ashamed of. However, there are often emotional consequences for the way we choose to think, and if we want to get/feel better, there is only one real way. Change the way we think. Looking at what we think, feel, say or do as being perfectly understandable is what Dr. Ellis called having Unconditional Self-Acceptance (USA). Believing the same thing about what others think, feel, say and do is called Unconditional Other Acceptance (UOA). Having either makes it easier to look at what we and others think, feel, say and do, and make any needed changes. Without it, shame often blocks helpful change.

There are some other ways to talk that might help:

1) No one uspsets me, I upset myself
2) I'm responsible for how I feel, not others

3) They're not responsible for how I feel, I am
4) It's my job to make me feel better, not theirs

5) It's not their job to make me feel better, it's mine)
6) It's just an event)

When children misspeak in semantically and grammatically incorrect or imprecise ways, adults are often quick to correct them. However, people misspeak about the origin or cause of their feelings all the time, and no one usually says anything.

Here are some important questions that can and should be asked. Consider the emotional and behavioral consequences of answering them the wrong way.

1) Do others make us mad, or do we make ourselves mad?
2) Can others hurt our feelings? Can we hurt theirs?
3) Do jobs, kids, and jobs stress us out? Or do we stress ourselves out?

4) Does stress come from outside us, or inside?
5) Does pressure, including "peer pressure" come from inside or outside someone?

6) Can one person really put pressure on another?
7) Do or can others make us feel guilty, or do we do that to ourselves?
8) Can we make others proud of us? Or is that a choice they alone can make?
9) Can we make someone else feel better about themselves?

10)Can they do the same for us?
11)Can we, and do we really make each other happy?

12)Do teachers bore students, or do students bore themselves?

13)If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, where is boredom? Anger? Loneliness?
14)Do girls/women turn guys/men on? Or do the guys/men turn themselves on?
15)Do girls/women tease guys/men? Or do guys/men tease themselves?
16)Can we make someone else feel good sexually? Can they make us?

There are many negative emotional and behavioral consequences for answering these questions the "wrong" way. For example, could many breakups/divorces occur because people go in expecting someone else to make them happy, and at some point later, they're not, and blame the other person for it. Do we want our daughters to not only think they can, abut should make their boyfriends happy by doing whatever they want? The short answer to all of these questions is that anything someone else says or does or that happens is just an event. It's our choice how we want to look at what they say and do, and what happens. That's true even for question 16. We all know there are lots of nerve endings in certain parts of male and female bodies that let us know something is happening there. However, the brain still has to decide whether that's a good or bad thing. The brain is the biggest, or at least the most important sex organ in the body. Sorry guys for bursting your bubbles.

As far as question 11 goes, over a century and a half ago, Abraham Lincoln said: "A man's about as happy as he makes up his mind to be". He was right, and that goes for a woman as well. We each have a host of cognitive choices to make that really determine how we feel, that we along can make.

There is a difference between temporarily feeling better, and getting better. There are many ways to temporarily feel better. Some are healthy. Many are not. However, these are all like using OTC medications for the symptoms of a cold. They temporarily make your symptoms go away, but when they wear off, your symptoms return because the cause of your symptoms, a virus, is still there. Remember the formula for feelings?

EVENT + THOUGHTS = FEELINGS

Be they healthy (yoga, biofeedback, muscle relaxation, exercise) or unhealthy (smoking, drinking, using drugs, overeating), what these things do is give you a temporary break from the events of your life and the thoughts you usually have about them. However, when you stop doing those things, the events are often waiting for you, or recur, and you start to think the automatic irrational beliefs that go with them, and return to feeling the way you did before.

Venting is something people are often encouraged to do, and it can help people temporarily feel better. However, it's like blowing your nose when you have a cold. You can temporarily breathe better, but soon plug back up because the cause of your congestion, a virus is still there. Likewise, when you vent, you temporarily feel better, but once you stop, the feelings will often return because the events are still present or recur, and you go back to thinking about them the same ways. You could spend years on a couch going through such cycles.

Most people believe that "letting it out" when you're angry is better for your health than keeping it in. However, research shows that once you get mad, there is really no difference health-wise between those who let it out or keep it in. The only people who fare better health-wise are people who don't get mad in the first place. There's an ancient proverb that says, "A man who angers himself should dig two graves. One for himself and one for the enemy he seeks to destroy".

Whenever we talk about emotions, we want to look at the Frequency, Intensity and Durantion (FID) of them. Getting better means reducing the overall frequency, intensity and duration of emotions like anger, anxiety, depression, shame, guilt, loneliness, etc. The only way to really do that is the change the way we think. It's called cognitive restructuring.

It's also important to learn to not take unnecessary responsibility for how others make themselves feel. Otherwise, people not only feel unnecessary guilt and shame, but doing so can be used against them. When people take unnecessary responsibility for how others make themselves feel (i.e. a young girl thinks she made her boyfriend mad by simply not wanting to have sex), they are not in the best cognitive and emotional place or free to make the healthiest choice for themselves. Other people can disturb themselves as little or as much as they want to. We are responsible for what we say and do, but not how THEY choose to look at things. We could be trying to be nice, and they take it the wrong way and get really upset about nothing, or simply about something they imagine that never really happened and never will. Likewise, we could say or do something with the intent of seeing them feel bad, and they take it as a joke.

The way to avoid taking unnecessary responsibility for how others make themselves feel is to simply change the pronouns in the statements above. For example:

1) It's their choice how they look at things
2) It's their choice what meaning they attach to what happens
3) It's their choice what they focus on
4) It's their choice what they compare things to
5) It's their choice what they expect of themselves, others and life
6) It's their choice what they imagine will happen next
7) It's their choice how much importance they want to attach to what happened
8) It's their choice how they want to feel
9) No one upsets them, they upset myself
10)They're responsible for how I feel, not me (I'm not responsible for how they feel, they are)
11)It's their job to make themselves feel better, not mine (It's not my job to make them feel better, it's theirs)
12)What I say and do, and what happens, is just an EVENT for them

Developing an Internal Locus of Control means:

1) Learning the real cause of our feelings
2) Learning what our cognitive choices are
3) Learning to use that new information to our advantage
4) Learning to not take unnecessary responsibility for how others make themselves feel

It also involves:

5) Learning and remembering what we do and don't have control over
6) Focusing on and working with what we do have control over instead of what we don't

We don't and can't control what others think, feel, say or do, and everything that happens. We only control, or at least with practice, can learn to control with what WE think, feel, say and do in response. Most people spend too much time, energy and effort trying to control things they can't, like what OTHERS think, feel, say and do. They spend too little time, energy and effort trying to control the things they do have total control over, like what THEY think, feel, say and do. This only causes their lives to feel more out of control. The best way to get a greater sense of control over our own lives is to start focusing on and working with what we have control over; what WE think, feel, say and do, and let others take care of themselves.

When I taught my students to have an internal locus of control, the selling points would always be:

1) Having real power and control over how we feel
2) To stop giving away the power and control over our emotional destiny that you we do have
3) As much as is humanly possible, feeling the way we want to feel
4) The best way to get even is to live well