Today we’re going to talk about the control fallacy, another cognitive distortion. The Fallacy of Control is where you assume an inaccurate amount of control in a situation or in life. You either believe you can control everything or believe you can control nothing.
When you believe you control everything, you are assuming responsibility for both the pain and happiness of everyone around you. If a friend is in a bad mood 😒, you may wonder what you did to make them feel that way. If your workplace receives a good review or award, you may feel like it’s all your doing.
When you believe you control nothing, you see yourself as a helpless bystander to your situation. You may feel like there’s nothing you can do to make your life better, to improve your happiness, or to change your situation. 😞 This feeling is a big contributor to “stuckness” and resistance to change- if we don’t believe we have any control in our lives, what would we get out of changing?
What we should strive for instead is to more accurately identify the amount of control we have in any given situation or in life’s circumstances. Regardless of how high or low functioning we are, we never have NO CONTROL or FULL CONTROL of our lives.
Where do you land between these two fallacies?
When we experience self-acceptance, we're able to find unconditional love 💕 for all of who we are. Self esteem is different, self acceptance means we accept not just the positive aspects of our life or personality, but also the negative and the neutral. Self-acceptance means we recognize our weaknesses and limitations, but this awareness in no way interferes with our ability to fully accept ourselves.
Self-acceptance isn’t a task that is ever complete. As an ENFJ myself (a Meyers-Briggs personality type that’s made up of the characteristics of extroversion, neuroticism/intuition, feeling, and judging) I certainly struggle with judging myself and my actions.
Am I working hard enough? Will I accomplish all I want to? Am I being true to myself? Authentic enough? Am I practicing what I preach? Am I lazy? Am I weird? Why’d you say that? Why didn’t you say this? 😂 these are regular thoughts for humans.
Being engaged in a process of self-acceptance means when we hear these thoughts we listen to them without judgement. We accept ourself for having negative thoughts about ourself and challenge the messages our brain is giving us.
Any negative thoughts you experience that cause you to struggle to accept yourself? 🌼
Two more cognitive fallacies for your Thursday! 📚
-Catastrophizing- you might inflate the meaning of certain events and create a catastrophe or crisis that doesn’t exist. For example, you’re worried you will fail an exam. ✏️ You jump to the conclusion that failing an exam would be the worst thing to happen, that failing the exam, would mean you would never get the job you want, the life you want, etc. The reality is that many people who have failed an exam before get the jobs they want, succeed in life... myself included. 😅
-Personalization- This is where you believe that everything others do or say is some kind of direct, personal reaction to you. A person engaging in personalization may see themselves as the cause of some external event that they were not responsible for. For example, if a friend gets a ticket for speeding on the way to see you 🚔, you might feel as though your friend getting the ticket was your fault- although it was your friend’s choice to speed.
Anyone experience these two? I can think of lots of examples from my own life- I think I am especially guilty of catastrophizing!!
