Control Fallacies: Internal Control and the Need to “Fix” Everything

The expe­ri­ence of anx­i­ety is an increas­ing­ly com­mon one in the mod­ern world. The demands placed on indi­vid­u­als today are far dif­fer­ent than they were just a few gen­er­a­tions ago, and as a result, anx­i­ety has become some­thing that many peo­ple have to face. Some­times, anx­i­ety means feel­ing rest­less or wor­ried, and some­times it can even mean phys­i­cal symp­toms such as an accel­er­at­ed heart­beat and fast breath­ing. What­ev­er the case, it’s impor­tant for all peo­ple to have tools and treat­ments avail­able to deal suc­cess­ful­ly with this con­di­tion.

Things You Can and Can’t Control

One of the issues that com­mon­ly pops up with anx­i­ety is an over­whelm­ing urge to “fix” every­thing. One of the sources of this is a belief that “If I can con­trol every­thing around me, I will be okay.” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this faulty belief is linked with hav­ing a “inter­nal con­trol fal­la­cy,” where you believe that you have more con­trol over a sit­u­a­tion than you think you do. What tends to hap­pen with this fal­la­cy is that indi­vid­u­als tend to believe they are to blame (per­son­al­iza­tion, anoth­er fal­la­cy) for every­thing that happens—moods peo­ple have, sit­u­a­tions that don’t pan out, or events that don’t hap­pen. For exam­ple, some­one may say, “Why aren’t you hap­py? Don’t you like what I did for you?” or “That work project didn’t pan out like it should have. I real­ly ought to have got­ten involved soon­er.”

What tends to end up hap­pen­ing is that some­one with this belief sys­tem tends to feel chron­ic unhap­pi­ness, reg­u­lar­ly inval­i­dat­ed, fre­quent­ly resent­ful, and con­sis­tent­ly anx­ious. These feel­ings may lead the per­son to anoth­er fal­la­cy — the exter­nal con­trol fal­la­cy, where they end up believ­ing that every­thing in their life is because of some­one else, and they are pow­er­less to change it. In a world that sim­ply can’t be con­trolled by any one per­son, these thoughts are upset­ting and can ampli­fy the symp­toms of anx­i­ety. Let’s take a clos­er look at this issue and how it might be approached.

Understanding the Compulsion to Fix Things

At the heart of this mat­ter is like­ly a fear of uncer­tain­ty in life. It’s a fact of life on earth that we can’t real­ly know what the future will bring—and so much of that future is entire­ly out of our con­trol. In an effort to get away from uncom­fort­able feel­ings of anx­i­ety, some peo­ple attempt to fix every­thing or take respon­si­bil­i­ty for every­thing that is going on in and around their lives.

Pre­dictably, these attempts fall short. Need­ing to fix every­thing is an impos­si­ble objec­tive and one that will only lead to frus­tra­tion and dis­ap­point­ment, often for both the fix­er and the per­son sus­pect­ed of need­ing to be fixed. Iron­i­cal­ly, peo­ple who seek to fix things as a way to get rid of anx­i­ety usu­al­ly only end up more anx­ious as a result of their efforts.

Going in a Different Direction

As appeal­ing as it might feel, seek­ing to fix every­thing in life is a strat­e­gy that is doomed to fail­ure. So, what can be done instead? There are many ways to approach this prob­lem, but here are a few start­ing points:

• Focus on self-com­pas­sion. When feel­ing anx­ious, it’s impor­tant to be as nice to your­self as pos­si­ble. Treat your­self with the kind­ness and under­stand­ing that you like­ly direct toward most oth­er peo­ple in your life. This step alone can go a long way toward relax­ing your mind and feel­ing at peace with what­ev­er hap­pens around you.

• Embrace imper­fec­tion. There are no per­fect peo­ple, and this is not a per­fect world. You won’t have all the answers for every­thing that comes up in your life and that’s true for every oth­er per­son in the world. In many ways, embrac­ing the imper­fec­tions of life is free­ing and is the oppo­site of try­ing to fix every prob­lem.

• Explore mind­ful­ness. The prac­tice of mind­ful­ness has incred­i­ble pow­er in its many forms. From deep breath­ing exer­cis­es to med­i­ta­tion and more, build­ing a mind­ful­ness prac­tice as a reg­u­lar part of dai­ly life can make a big dif­fer­ence.

• Set bound­aries. Put down that ham­mer. Per­haps in your efforts to help or alle­vi­ate dis­tress or change the sit­u­a­tion, you’ve cre­at­ed some expec­ta­tions for your­self or oth­ers on how much you can help, which may fur­ther exac­er­bate your anx­i­ety. As part of mind­ful­ness, con­sid­er what you can step back from. Also, slooooow down. Take a pause before com­mit­ting to some­thing. Take a breath before you respond to some­one. A few extra sec­onds is okay.

• Get­ting ther­a­py for anx­i­ety is an impor­tant piece of the recov­ery puz­zle. Through pro­fes­sion­al anx­i­ety ther­a­py, it is pos­si­ble to get a han­dle on this con­di­tion, under­stand where it is com­ing from, and cre­ate some strate­gies to move for­ward in a pos­i­tive man­ner.

Best online therapy for anxiety

Get­ting help for anx­i­ety is an impor­tant first step to cre­at­ing change in your life. The road might not always be a smooth one, but con­sis­tent ther­a­py for anx­i­ety has shown impres­sive poten­tial to help peo­ple get away from their symp­toms and live a more enjoy­able life.

Reach out today to start on your path to man­age your anx­i­ety