 This episode was prerecorded as part of a live continuing education webinar. On-demand CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register at allceus.com slash counselor toolbox. I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation, Walking the Middle Path, Looking at Locusts of Control and Attributions. We're going to start out by defining Locusts of Control, which really looks at the concept of empowerment, which is something we really want to do for a lot of our clients and powerlessness. Powerlessness, yeah. So we can help them figure out what the middle path is, because trying to control everything can be just as damaging as thinking you can't control anything. We'll explore how both an extreme internal or external of Locusts of Control can increase stress, anxiety, anger, or depression. Learn how basic fears and past trauma may contribute to an extreme Locusts of Control, external or internal. Then we'll move on to attributions and explore how extreme attributions can create stress, anxiety, anger, or depression. Notice the word extreme keeps coming up, which is why we're talking about the middle path, and we'll identify some group and individual activities that can help clients walk the middle path in terms of attributions and Locusts of Control. So Locusts of Control, just a quick review, indicates how much power a person thinks they have to alter their situation or life course. Attributions, on the other hand, indicate more or less what a person views as causing the situation, whether it's an internal attribution or a global attribution. It's me as a person, not a skill I have, but me as a whole person or the world or the group, like all Americans or all this or all that, versus a skill or trait or a specific person or persons. Then it moves on to look at whether it's due to internal external influences. Does this happen because of something inherent to me, or is it due to external influences, such as the economy or the weather or something like that? And finally, the last attribution is whether it's changeable or unchangeable. And looking at certain things, if it's something that's about me and inherent because of me, it may not be changeable. So we need to look at, you know, what can we do to address that in clients who have certain situations or conditions that they may have to figure out how to live with and come to an acceptance of. So Locusts of Control, internal is empowerment and external can be powerlessness. With an internal Locusts of Control, people think I'm fully in charge of my destiny and everything that happens. Whereas an external Locusts of Control, and we're talking extremes, my destiny lies fully in the hands of fate. So thinking about clients that have come in to come into your treatment center, come into your office, and the problems they present with and the words they use to describe these problems. In some cases, you know, we will see that people have too internal of a Locusts of Control. They think they can change things like other people, which they can't. They think they can fix a relationship all on their own. No, unfortunately, you know, relationships are kind of a two-way street. They may think that they can adjust their depression all on their own. And there are certain things that they can do to improve their depression, but they may also need other factors to help. They may need medication. They may need help from a counselor. It may not be something they can just do on their own. External Locusts of Control, and a lot of our clients tend to have more of an internal Locusts or if they present with depression, often it seems like they have more of an external Locusts of Control because they're just, they're done. They have this sense of learned helplessness that the world is going to just beat me up and there's nothing I can do about it. So you can see where these two extremes can really cause anxiety, stress, a feeling of threat. And what we want people to look at, and probably getting ahead of myself, is what parts of this situation can you control? You know, what parts of the situation can you change? And what parts of this situation are just the way they are. If you've got somebody who has, for example, chronic fatigue syndrome, there may not be, they may not be able to get cured from that. So what we're going to have to do is say, all right, well, that's beyond your control, but there are a lot of other factors, such as how you eat, how you manage your stress, whether you're getting quality sleep, taking your meds, et cetera, that you do have control over. So we want to encourage people to separate or differentiate what they can and cannot control. So what types of statements might clients make who have an overly external locus of control? Thinking about clients that you've worked with who have this sense of just overwhelming hopelessness and helplessness, the types of statements that they might make, this is never going to get better. Nothing I do ever works. They can talk about relationships in terms of, you know, it doesn't matter what I do in these situations, it just happens. It's fate, it's destiny, it's from their higher power. When we talk about clients with an overly internal locus of control, they tend to be our go-getters. They're the ones who think, you know, if I just figure out the right tool to use, if I just figure out what to do next, then I can fix it, I can make it better, I can make it go away, or I can improve my life for whatever it is. And there are a lot of things they can do to improve their life. But for example, if they have some sort of a chronic illness, like high blood pressure or diabetes, they may not be able to make that go away completely. So if they're trying to do all the right things, they're trying to follow the doctor's recommendations, you know, they are your A number one compliant patient, and it's not getting better, or it's not going away completely because they had hoped it would go away completely. Then you might have a client who presents with a sense of frustration and, you know, irritability and anger and hopelessness because, well, I did all the right things. Why isn't this going away? Why do I still have to take insulin shots? Why do I have to still take blood pressure medication? So we want to encourage clients to kind of accept the good with the bad and create statements. Although some things are out of my control, recognizing that they can't control everything, I have the ability to control many things in my life, and I encourage clients to identify, you know, with a specific situation. If you just say, tell me all the things in your life that are controllable, you could be there for a week. So what I want them to do is in this situation, with your depression, with your anxiety, with your relationship, what parts of that can you control? What parts of that are within your control? And your reactions to things, when things happen with your health or your relationship or whatever the presenting issue is, when things like that happen, what are your reactions now and are there alternative reactions that would be more helpful that you can control? And then we start talking about radical acceptance and distress tolerance and recognizing that feelings happen and what you're feeling right now is fine. That is a perfectly normal emotion, whatever it is. But you can look to improve the next moment. You can't change right now. You're angry right now. Okay. What can you do to improve the next moment and start helping them differentiate between avoiding feelings versus accepting them or fighting with them versus accepting them and saying, okay, this is where I'm at right now. What's the next step? Think about if you're on a hiking trail and I have no sense of direction. So I'll get to a crossroads on a hiking trail. And that's kind of where they are when they're feeling that emotion. They're at that crossroads and they can decide whether they want to dwell and feed on that emotion or they want to take the different path and improve the next moment. So their reality is going to change. Every moment, every step is a change in their reality. So one activity you can do with clients and I do this one with depression. It starts out easiest if you give them something that's pretty much everybody can relate to. Depression is the result of disempowerment, feeling hopeless and helpless and exhaustion from trying to control the uncontrollable. A lot of times we'll have clients who have anxiety disorders who also present with depression and it could be a neurotransmitter thing. They could have always coexisted but a lot of times you'll find out the anxiety predated the depression at a certain point. They just, they were worried so much they got exhausted and they're just, they're giving up. They're just like, there's nothing I can do. The world just keeps beating me up. So we want to look at kind of what's causing the depression and then make it more specific. We talk in a lot of different approaches except it's a commitment therapy specifically about being contextual. So what caused you to be depressed this week? So we're looking at what can you control right now? If we look over the course of the person's life it's not going to be super helpful most likely because what we're dealing with is the right now and improving the next moment. So asking them what things were out of your control this week and a lot of clients, a lot of people, they may not even be clients have difficulty accepting things that were out of their control. They don't like saying I couldn't fix this. So, but we want to add that, you know what things are there and a lot of times they will move on and when we go what things were within your control and they'll identify a lot of things that really weren't in their control or they'll have all these other stressors out here they don't know which category to put them in. So then we can start talking about, you know except what you can control and then figure out how to deal with the rest. And sometimes they can as one of you points out use the things that were in control to exacerbate self-blame. So my reactions to this situation were in my control but I still freaked out on my boss or on my spouse or whatever and then they feel guilty about it. And so we want to talk about awareness and learning from that situation that you know the way you've always or have responded frequently in the past that's how you're used to responding. This is a whole new way of acting and reacting and learning and it's not you're not always going to be able to use those tools from jump. We'll talk about them in counseling today and I don't expect you to use them a hundred percent of the time tomorrow. It's going to take a while before you learn the new behavior. So then we'll go back and look at if you had these tools and you chose not to use them or you didn't use them. Why not? What got in the way? And that's when we can start brainstorming about putting in discriminative stimuli to remind people to use a use a technique we can look at. Well maybe we skipped a step here and we forgot to teach you to practice the pause or teach you to stress tolerance skills. So we can look at why didn't that work and it's an investigative or investigatory approach to help the client kind of look at it instead of beating themselves up and go shoulda coulda woulda My question is but you didn't. So I'm wondering why you know and a lot of times it does come down to the simple fact of it's just not a tool they're used to using yet. So we can look at you know maybe practicing it maybe using some guided imagery on their own and imagining using that tool a little bit more frequently. I have my clients when when I do give them new tools to keep a journal of how they used them each day and I expect them to use them at least once a day and if they don't then I want them to at the end of the day look back and go well I could have used that tool here wherever here is so if I had used it this is what it would look like so then they can retrospectively apply the tool to start getting used to seeing how it it works and developing a confidence in themselves. Remember last week we talked about the difference between knowledge and abilities. Develop that confidence in their set in themselves that they have the ability to take that knowledge and use it and have a good outcome. You can also use this with some if somebody has Lyme disease or chronic fatigue I mean these are physical symptoms that may be causing depression and relationship issues and frustration and hopelessness and blah blah blah. Okay. So what's out of your control? If you've got Lyme disease you may not be able to get rid of it. It may be one of those that you've already been on four courses in antibiotics and they're like well you just got to live with it. Okay. Well that's out of your control and that's a whole issue you've probably got to grieve and deal with what things were in your control and you know coming down here I was in Virginia for a while where Lyme disease is a lot more prominent. There are a lot of healthcare things if you think of preventing vulnerabilities good nutrition getting adequate sleep that help people prevent flare-ups of the Lyme disease symptoms. So those things are in their control and you know sometimes they'll start getting cocky they'll start feeling good and they'll start neglecting their healthcare and then you know the Lyme disease flares up again so we want to look back to alright how can we prevent these relapses and keep you motivated to keep doing to be keep being treatment compliant. So how can traumatic experiences create an extreme locus control locus of control and you know think about if you're killed and your house burned down that's a pretty traumatic experience it doesn't even have to be a rape or a robbery or something. When there's a traumatic experience especially in children but even thinking in adults how can that make someone's locus of control become more polar for a lot of clients the traumas shake up the way they perceive the world and the way they perceive the world it's not safe anymore. So okay whatever this whatever it was that happened made the world unsafe how am I going to deal with it? I'm either going to you know if we're looking at dysfunctional ways of approaching it one aspect would be to say I'm never going to be safe again and the world is just a scary threatening awful horrible place. The other one the other end of the spectrum says I will never be a victim again come hell or high water I'm going to do whatever it takes and I will control everything in my life. So people's reactions and then there's obviously the middle ground where most people fall and they realize there were in a specific situation there were some problems that they can address in order to be safer in the future but there were also external factors that were beyond their control so that's the middle ground but what we're looking at is the polls the external says nothing I can do will change anything and a lot of times the helplessness of the trauma gets generalized and it's people just start feeling well if this happened this bad thing happened to me then they start seeing bad things and they start perceiving and focusing on the bad things that happened to them and it becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy because all they're seeing is the bad stuff so we want to help them look at what are some exceptions to when you've been able to do things that have helped you when you've been able to do things that have improved your life internally internal locus of control the person may say it was my fault I must control everything to prevent bad things from happening and you know if it whatever it was was partly that person's fault you know maybe they left the stove on which caused the fire that burned down the house okay well that was partly their fault however do you need to control everything and there were other things that you know failed the the smoke alarms and the fire suppression systems and whatever else so we want to encourage people to look at what can you control to prevent this from happening and do you need to control everything all all the time everywhere and because the trauma was so severe sometimes people feel the need to control everything because they don't want to experience trauma anywhere ever again and my stepfathers like that I can see little idiosyncrasies and he's a lot better than than he used to be but I can see idiosyncrasies in his behavior where he needs control and he needs order in order to feel calm so the middle path with trauma is accepting the fact that they can't change what happened but I can take steps to protect myself in the future so if it was a fire survivor you know what can you do to protect yourself from fire what caused that fire what are the common fire suppression things that you need to have in your house yada yada if there was if the person was raped looking at how can they feel safe again in their home environment in their car when they're walking through parking garages whatever so they don't feel like they're vulnerable all the time to attack so again encouraging people just to take proper safety steps to hopefully prevent the trauma to prevent exposure to that same trauma or a similar trauma ever again one thing you can do with trauma survivors is ask them how does your past trauma affect how you react to failure and setbacks today if somebody was was victimized or experienced a trauma experiences severe loss they may carry that into what they're doing in in daily life today so one thing you can ask them if they look at you like you've got three heads when you ask them this you can prompt them by going you know does it rekindle that sense of helplessness where you can't seem to change anything in your life or on the other hand and you can use depending on the client you can choose which question to ask does it create a burning determination to control everything or to never fail or never let a setback get you down and again both of these can be kind of extreme to the dysfunctional sense so we want to help them see when you have a failure or setback yes you may for a moment have a sense of helplessness and I don't know how to fix this but also looking at you can't change that failure but you can use that energy and that burning determination if you will to figure out to learn from it and to figure out which setbacks are worth trying to deal with another question is how your past trauma impacts the way you live your life and relationships today and again a lot of times clients will look at you quizzically when you ask them this question because nobody's ever really asked them to reflect on how their trauma is impacting them today so they haven't thought about it so you may need to prompt them and ask them if they become overprotective and controlling or disengaged and overly permissive so the overprotective and controlling is that internal locus of control I'm going to keep you safe I'm going to make sure that I can control everything going around or disengaged and overly permissive is the person who's like well I can't control anything that happens to you so good luck have fun and if you show back up later great you know both when thinking of parenting for example both extremes are going to have some particularly deleterious consequences for the child so looking at why they may be overprotective and controlling or disengaged and overly permissive and and seeing if it has to do with their trauma and their sense of helplessness in that situation or not another question you can ask them is if they're constantly on the lookout for others to hurt them so if they're if their trauma in the past was due to another person whether it was a crime victim or failure of a system to respond the way it should after they were victimized does this impact how you perceive others goodness and willingness to help so encouraging them to look at how that trauma is impacting them today how much responsibility and how much control they think they have over their current situation and whether they're projecting stuff from the past so basic fears we've talked about these rejection and isolation external and internal locus of control we're looking at somebody may say I'm rejected because I'm unlovable and we're going to talk about this in attributions in a few minutes if somebody thinks they're unlovable as a whole person then it may connotate into everything that they do when we talk about failure if somebody thinks they fail because they're stupid that's an internal kind of global sort of thing so how are we going to address that if somebody has an external perception of what happened they may say I failed because the team equipment the team that I was working on or the equipment that I was working with didn't function properly so we want to look at where are they attributing attributions where are they attributing this failure or or rejection coming from is it because of them or because of someone or something else and loss of control and the unknown life and happiness is a crapshoot that's one of those external locus of controls no matter what I do it's just I show up and whatever happens happens for me that would be a scary place to live because I couldn't plan and I'm a planner other people who have less problem with this so the other thing we want to look at is is it causing our client distress how they're looking at things the opposite is it's vital to my survival that I know what's going on at all times I have to control everything that internal locus of control I'm going to keep everything kind of right in my nice little boxes so we want to have people you know look at the middle where you can have a both and and I don't want people to say I'm rejected because I'm unlovable and other people are jealous or stupid but I want them to look and say you know there are certain lovable things about me however not everybody's going to like me life can be unpredictable but you know I have a certain amount of control over certain things in my life and I have the ability to handle unpredictability when it comes my way so fears activity and and we're going to build on these for each category below identify three examples when you've experienced them so ask the clients to identify three times they've experienced rejection failure or loss of control and loss of control I find it easiest for them to do this on notebook paper it's a little bit harder to do on the white board because it can get kind of overwhelming then for each example so maybe under rejection they have I didn't get a job that I had applied for okay that's one example now what are three reasons you may not have gotten the job is it because you suck okay if you want to put that down fine what are two other reasons maybe somebody else who is more qualified applied maybe someone else who is a better fit for the team applied and it wasn't because of you it wasn't because you were unqualified or couldn't do the job it was that you weren't the right fit for what they were looking for so encouraging people to start taking alternate perspectives and recognize that I can be skilled and I can be good at my job but I may not get every job so that's that both and I can be good at a job but I may not get every position I apply for examine the reasons people give for their the fact that they were rejected they failed or they were out of control and look for extreme locus of control so if under rejection like I said the first one was I suck well that's kind of an extreme look at what might have happened that's global that's negative that's internal and it implies there's nothing you can do about it so what's another way you might look at it you know what is it about you that might have caused you not to get the job that's more specific than sucking it's important to and we're going to continue to repeat this activity as we go through attributions in order to help people really come to an understanding of their self-talk and how they perceive things because once they start understanding what they perceive is controllable and uncontrollable a lot of times their symptoms will start to abate a little bit so encourage them to walk the middle path how can you both be rejected and accepted and heck you can make an entire group out of just that one question so encouraging people to talk about how you can blend both of these starting with not everybody is going to like you the way the world works you're not going to be like by 100% of the people 100% of the time so how can you both be rejected and accepted well you know some people are going to like me and some people aren't what else can you add to that so encourage them to brainstorm maybe some people may reject certain ideals or certain beliefs I have but they accept me as a person okay we can go with that one too encouraging them to look at this we can look at examples of how they've been rejected you know in group you know ask people to give you an example of how they've been rejected and then talk about alright let's apply this how can you both have been rejected in that situation and accepted and sometimes it comes down to you may have been rejected you know for example for that job but you can accept yourself and know that you are good at what you do and this just wasn't meant to be for whatever reason how can you both fail and succeed and one of the ones I want to hear come out of this discussion is that they look at failure as a learning opportunity but you know that sometimes takes a lot of socratic questioning but asking them how can you both fail and succeed how can you both be in control and out of control and again what I'm looking for here when I ask this question to a group is the fact that everything in life has certain aspects that are within my control and certain aspects that are out of my control so you know focusing on those things that are within my control is what's going to be most important to helping me achieve happiness so now let's move on to attributions we're going to kind of add it's kind of like layers so people hopefully are coming more towards this middle ground accepting the fact that sometimes things are out of your control there's an external locus of control you just know you can't change the weather you can't change which direction the hurricane hurricane is going and that's just the way it's going to be I've lived in Florida for most of my life and when hurricanes would come you know it's kind of like blizzards up in the north you kind of pray for a hurricane day when you're a kid but when you get to be a grown up it's like oh I hope it turns but no matter how much praying you do the weather's going to be was going that so you got to figure out what you can address and what you can't so no attributions on the other hand are kind of where it comes from global says it applies to generally everything every every time and to general can cause failure to differentiate and explore intervening factors and can result in superstitious thinking so you know one example one of my kids friends went out to eat and he had french fries and he got a stomach ache and because of that one instance his mother has determined and he'd had french fries and stuff before and hadn't bothered him but because of that instance she determined that he now had an allergy to french fries and it wasn't an anaphylactic thing he just had a bellyache but she generalized that one instance into all potatoes are going to make you sick so you can't have them anymore relationships every relationship I have ends in heartache so that means romantic relationships you know family relationships all relationships are just more trouble than they're worth failure I fail at everything I do hardship I'll never get ahead panic attacks again generalizing globally every time I get in a car I'm going to have a panic attack well if you tell yourself that's probably what's going to happen my daughter's dog getting older has cataracts she's starting to get even more neurotic than she has been and the other other week she was just inconsolable shaking running around the house quaking and it caused my daughter a great amount of distress because online it says of a dog acts oddly it means there's something terribly wrong and she's in pain so it's important to have people look and not generalize you know in that particular instance you know we walked backwards and said what's different about today that is making her freak the freak out and happens the neighbor was mowing his yard and his mower makes a different high-pitched squeal or something that drives her baddy anybody else can mow not a problem he mows she just loses her little puppy mind but when in the moment we kind of overgeneralized and didn't start to think about what was different so it became very anxiety provoking so globally you know you start worrying that there might be something wrong with the dog instead of what's going on in this particular context that's making her freak out as a side note it's important to remember that the person's current attributional style is protective it's served them until now so for example every relationship ends in heartache well you know if they've had a couple bad relationships or a bunch and poorly then if they say this then they're not gonna get their hopes up they're not gonna get let down and it gives them an excuse if you will or a justification to keep that wall up to protective it's survival I fail at everything I do that's the same thing I mean most of these that I have here basically protect people from getting hurt emotionally or hurting their self-esteem so it's important to recognize that it's serving a function and we don't want to just say well don't look at it that way anymore we want to help them figure out okay how was this protecting you what's and what are some exceptions to what's going on you know have you had some good relationships friends yada yada and when things do go badly when you fail when a relationship ends how can you handle it because we need to help them figure out a way to be safe in taking down those walls specific it applies to this circumstance only so you kind of get lost in the weeds it may be too specific to prevent generalization and generally generally relates to repeating a pattern of behavior most of us have probably had a client who or a friend who's presented with my relationship with Tom failed because of his neediness lying and anger outbursts and then three months later my relationship with John failed because of his neediness lying and anger outbursts my relationship with Sam you see where this is going and those of us on the outside are looking at it going do you not see a pattern here but the person doesn't they're attributing the bad relationship to that one person not to the characteristics that are present in the relationship or maybe something they're bringing to it too but it's important for us to kind of help them start drawing connections between things that may seem unrelated to them at the moment I quit my job because my boss was too demanding and then you look at the person's resume and they don't seem to last anywhere more than six months and they've always got a similar sort of rationale and and you may look at it and find that there's a particular type of work that they just don't like doing and they keep getting into jobs that require that type of work so again helping them look kind of globally let's look at all these jobs that you had over the past two years what was it that you liked about them what are some common threads that you liked and what are some common threads that you didn't like that may have led to you quitting my son when he was little I remember we went to my grandmother's house and he was about 20 months old and he knew he wasn't supposed to touch electronics but he wasn't sure in specific situations exactly what was going on he was pretty sure that you weren't ever globally you weren't ever supposed to touch a television but this was a new situation so he was like okay in this situation is it okay to touch the TV so he walks up to the television he looks at me touches the TV looks back at me he says time out I said yep time out and he toddled his little happy self back and to the where we had the chair and he sat down and took his time out for a minute and a half and was and it was cool but that was his way of kind of generalizing drawing connections and that's something that we want our clients to do so they recognize that you know when you mean danger or me may mean something you don't want to go near but being aware of what those are and sometimes people's personality can also impact their attributions whether they tend to be more broad strokes and and look at the meta concepts or tend to be more specifics and this is really the sensing versus intuitive dimension in terms of how they perceive things so sometimes again it's helpful to get them back towards the middle so they're not too far off in dreamland or too far down in the weeds so yeah that's a good point that temperament and personality will affect how people perceive the world attributions have a client identify a current problem identify whether the problem is stated in global or specific terms so I'm depressed I'm useless obviously with global for the global statements identify exceptions when you know I'm depressed all the time okay what are some examples over the past week when you've had even a few moments you haven't been depressed or in the past when you haven't been depressed what's been different so helping them see that there is hope and for specific statements identify there are other instances and explore what can be learned and look for patterns like I talked about they truly are losing jobs or quitting jobs and they just can't seem to find the right fit then we might want to look at what's creating the wrong fit and globalize that a little bit more so they can see what's what might work better for them be aware of the fundamental attribution error a lot of times we assume that if we kick the vending machine not recommending it it's because we had a bad day so that's an external attribution something else out there caused it but if someone else kicks the vending machine they are an angry angry person that's an internal attribution now most of us as clinicians would assume the other person had a bad day but for the sake of this example if you're walking along the sidewalk and you trip you assume you attribute it to a crack in the sidewalk that you stumbled on if you see somebody else trip you might assume that they're clumsy inherently clumsy which is an internal attribution so just kind of be aware and give them credit for external influences like a bad day or crack in the sidewalk internal locus of control says the situation is due to something about me discounting influences of other variables so hardship happens whatever the hardship for the client is if I were better at something or you know if I were X this wouldn't have happened so we want to look at okay let's just imagine you were X you know you were better at this is this really going to be the be all and all resolution to your problem and how likely is it that you could be that right now relationships I am unable to maintain a relationship so they're taking the responsibility for it instead of looking at you know what other people are bringing or not bringing into the relationship they're saying I'm not able to maintain it well what's the other person doing failure if they say I'm a failure well that's pretty global and and internal we want to look at in what situations in what contexts are you what are you successful at and make it a little bit more specific and when they say you know I failed at X Y Z okay you know so what can you learn from it and what were the external influences you know did you have the tools that you needed did you have the allotted time maybe you were up all night because your baby was colicky so you didn't get a good night sleep and you weren't prepared you know there are a lot of other things that may have factored into why you failed at this task does it mean you're a failure or does it mean that on Tuesday the 22nd of January you failed at something and I am weak and incapable is another internal locus of control that I hear from a lot of people with anxiety they don't feel like they can handle anything that comes their way so looking at times that they've succeeded so encouraging them to find those exceptions external locus of control people often blame other people and other things and refuse to take responsibility so again with hardship the world is against me you know with the internal they said if I were XYZ then this wouldn't have happened the hardship in the external locus of control says the world's against me and there's nothing I can do to change it is just the way it is you know they feel very helpless and powerless in relationships other people make me feel bad and this is one that I always hone in on because I want clients to understand they do have the responsibility or the ability to affect how they react and the initial feeling is a natural feeling but then what they do with that feeling whether they choose to hold on to it and nurture it and continue to feel bad or let it go is the balls in their court the equipment was faulty or nobody on the team did their part I did mine nobody did their part is another external locus of control and in anxiety bad things are going to happen to me and all of this all of these statements can be true at certain times but they're also we want to look at these statements may be true but let's look at both and bad things are going to happen to you yes and you have the ability to pull on resources and your skills and strengths in order to deal with them using the prior activity the one that we ask them to identify the current problem ask the client what he or she contributes to the situation what parts of this did you bring to it and what other factors contributed to it and and looking again pretty broadly did they have enough sleep were they sick did they get to work late and they were they were harried what else was going on that may have contributed to this unpleasant situation stable or changeable it will always be as it is now so in hardship people may come in saying things are just never going to get better I just I don't know what to do I will always be a failure I will never be normal those are things that if they come in and they're saying that they have very little hope I mean they're in our office they got a little bit of hope but they have very little so we want to build that up and say okay some of these things may not get better if you've got Lyme disease or chronic fatigue syndrome you know you may not be able to get rid of it completely but what do you what is changeable what can you do to improve your situation and improve the next moment in hardship this can be turned around or you know maybe this isn't even worth my effort failure I can learn from my mistakes and succeed in relationships encouraging people to look at what they can do now they they can't fix an entire relationship on their own but what can they do in the relationship to improve it and you know they can bring what they can bring to the table and if the other person doesn't reciprocate then we've got to look at you know where the where the responsibility lies and recognizing that you know anxiety can be treated you may need to be on medications for a while or you may need to change your lifestyle somewhat in order to feel better but it can be treated so never being normal is probably extreme you're you're going to have to live your life a little bit differently than maybe Jane down the road so again building on that prior activity you've looked at what you brought to it what external factors contributed to it then ask the client what aspects of the situation are stable you know not changeable so if it's a physical health condition you know that might not ever be changeable or maybe somebody passed away and they're grieving that loss how can the client deal with the fact that that's not changeable how can they come to an acceptance that that's not going to be they want the way they want it to be which aspects of the situation are changeable and how can the client address those so looking at you know what can they do in order to help themselves move forward towards what they define as a rich in meaningful life now they've identified hopefully a bunch of things they could do to address the situation and start feeling better so we want to say of the things that are you can address which ones are you most motivated to change right now just because something can be changed doesn't mean it has to be you may look at it and go you know what I've got 17 priorities and this one is number 17 ain't gonna happen right now so encourage them to look at time management prioritizing and goal setting locus of control can be thought of as how powerful or powerless a person feels in life accepting that there will always be things over which we're powerless is really important at helping people reduce stress and it sounds kind of counter intuitive but if they're trying to change the unchangeable then they're using all that energy focused on something that's futile and where when they could be using their energy focused on all this other stuff that they can affect change with sometimes it might help to have them draw a pie chart and identify the things that are unchangeable and the things that are changeable and have them look at you know where they really want to be spending their energy and how much energy they're spending on things that are unchangeable learning how to deal with powerlessness often involves focusing on what we're able to control including our reactions and I always feel like I'm I have to tread lightly here because again I want people to remember that aren't instantaneous emotional feeling is perfectly normal and you're not going to be able to not feel things your body's just wired to tell you this is a happy thing or there's a threat fight or flee but it's what you do with those emotions whether you feed them and nurture them and let make them grow or you let them go global attributions often result in over generalization of distress so feeling helpless in one aspect of somebody's life maybe they're have they have a bad marriage they maybe feel helpless to change anything in their life so encouraging them to look at what parts of your life do you have the ability to affect change in what parts of your life are you feeling are you feeling happy in because my guess is distress is not everywhere there are some good things somewhere you're just stuck in this shroud right now stable attributions prevent generalization and learning from experiences so the stable attributions tell you this is the way it's always going to be so you might as well just not try to figure out how to change have changeable and unchangeable parts and our combination of both what we bring to the table as well as the environment and other factors so it's not just you it's not just the world it's a combination of everything in that one moment that is causing the situation so it gives them a more realistic appraisal of what they can expect somebody had a comment what's normal and definitely recognizing with our clients we want them to find what is normal and helpful and happy and comfortable for them and and we want to be sensitive to what works for them it's important to help clients figure out where they want to be in terms of the domain of attributions and and and and locus of control and look at how it affects them so you might even have them do the coin toss activity so if it lands they do a coin toss in the morning that lands on heads they need to have an internal locus of control they need to try to control everything all day long um or even for a couple of hours all day long could be exhausting and if it lands on tails they need to have an external locus of control so they need to just life's going to happen and go with the flow and see how it impacts their mood and their stress levels and how they sleep and everything else are there any questions already everybody well I will talk to you or at you on next Thursday if you have any questions always feel free to email me and I will see you on Thursday if you enjoy this podcast please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on YouTube you can attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes by subscribing at allceus.com slash counselor toolbox this episode has been brought to you in part by allceus.com providing 24 seven multimedia continuing education and pre certification training to counselors therapists and nurses since 2006 use coupon code counselor toolbox to get a 20% discount off your order this month