The Illusion of Control

I just finished the book, The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss by Mary-Frances O’Connor, which I’d highly recommend to anyone who’s experienced loss in their life. There are many fascinating takeaways from this book, but there’s one nearing the end that I want to share. This takeaway can be applied in many life circumstances.

The idea is that we live our lives under the illusion that we have more control than we do.

Recently, my anxious dog had a particularly hard time at the groomer. We were told by the groomer that he didn’t think it would be fair for her to be groomed in the future without being medicated because of how traumatizing it was for her this time around. This left my partner and I feeling guilty and sad for putting her in such a stressful situation. Later that evening, my partner started to list off what he “should” have done before dropping her off that morning to “set her up for success”. I could see in his mind that he was convincing himself that he could have changed the outcome if only he had done xy or z.

O’Connor explains that what my partner was doing is called counterfactual thinking; our tendency to create possible alternatives to life events that have already occurred.

A common example when it comes to a sudden loss might be “If I took him to the hospital earlier, he wouldn’t have died”. It’s the thousands of “what if’s” that play in our minds. “If I had walked instead of taken my bike, I wouldn’t have been hit”, “If I had told her I loved her more, she wouldn’t have left”, “If I had sent my child to a different school, they wouldn’t have been bullied”, and on and on. The number of counterfactuals is infinite.

The reality is that counterfactual thinking is illogical and not helpful to us. O’Connor suggests that by focusing on the limitless number of alternatives to reality, our brain is numbed or distracted from the actual painful reality; that our loved one is never coming back, that the relationship is over, that our child is being bullied.

Even though counterfactual thinking typically leads to feelings of guilt or shame, our brain still seems to prefer this over the heartbreaking reality that we have no control. The guilt or shame may be challenging, but it gives us the illusion that we had some control over the situation, which feels safer.

“Believing that we had some sort of control, even though we failed to use it, means the world is not completely unpredictable - It feels better for us to have bad outcomes in a predictable world in which we failed, than to have bad outcomes for no discernible reason” - O’Connor

So much of life asks us to live in the space between what we actually can control and what we can’t. Learning to tolerate uncertainty doesn’t mean we stop caring or preparing; it means we stop fighting reality. We can meet the unknown with compassion, reminding ourselves, “I can’t control everything, but I can choose how I show up in it.”

When uncertainty feels overwhelming, a few things can help ground us:

• Noticing the urge to fix or predict. Simply noticing and labeling “I’m trying to control what can’t be controlled” creates distance from it.

• Asking what is within my control? Often, that’s your effort, your care, or how you speak to yourself (how you respond).

• Practicing radical acceptance. You don’t have to like reality to stop fighting or resisting it.

It’s not likely we will become comfortable with uncertainty overnight. The goal is to build trust in ourselves over time. We can handle what life brings, both the joyful and the painful aspects we do not control.