ScienceDaily: New ways to understand and confront the fear of losing control

“Radomsky suspects that what many people call losses of control are in fact different ways of thinking about past decisions: It may be easier for people to call poor decisions made impulsively as losses of control, although this is an open scientific question.

"People will commonly say, 'I lost my temper' or 'I was drunk and said something that I now regret.' But on careful examination, what people are likely to say is that they wanted to act that way at the time," he explains. "Is that losing control? I think -- at least sometimes -- that is being in control and then later realizing you made a mistake, perhaps by not thinking carefully about the consequences of your actions."

This approach has clinical implications as well, Radomsky notes. With a deeper understanding of what leads to a patient's choices, a therapist can help them make better ones in the future.

"I think that is much more in the scope of our work than trying to help people stay in control, which is likely to cause more problems," he says. "If you are constantly trying to stay in control, odds are you'll find that causes more problems than focusing on other issues."``

Some Insights From This Article

• This question of redefining losing control can be helpful in addressing therapies and self-reflection on how to better ourselves when we feel “out of control”. According to psychologists and other mental health professions alike, one of the most common features of mental health disorders is “feeling out of control”. Coinciding with the word “ego-dystonic” many mental health problems originate because someone seems as if they have no more control over what they do or want to do.

• As an important foundation of cognitive behavioral therapy, one way to tackle these issues is to reframe our mindset and perspective to help us believe that we have control over some aspects of our life and slowly regain a healthier mindset in improving our mental outcomes.

• One way to address this “loss of control” is to truly reflect on the situations that were out of your control. For some people it may be that they felt like they lost control, in reality they were in full control of their actions but did not regard their consequences that later turned out to haunt them. In this reframing it gives more autonomy to the person now that they understand instead of external factors, it may have been internal instead.

What do you think about the articles’ way of defining “loss of control”?

Full article is here!

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