{"id":23836,"date":"2026-07-28T00:00:54","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T06:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unk.com\/blog\/?p=23836"},"modified":"2026-07-28T07:26:03","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T13:26:03","slug":"how-to-help-your-clients-feel-more-in-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unk.com\/blog\/how-to-help-your-clients-feel-more-in-control\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Help Your Clients Feel More in Control"},"content":{"rendered":"

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”<\/em><\/p>\n

– from the Serenity Prayer<\/p>\n

Other than trying to tell God what to do and thereby trying to exert too much control, I think these lines from the Serenity Prayer tell us something important. I guess it was more of a plea than a directive!<\/p>\n

Apparently during the Covid pandemic, Americans bought many more guns than usual. Clearly they couldn’t shoot the virus, and presumably they didn’t believe they could.<\/p>\n

Maybe some really believed society was breaking down, and with it law and order. But I suspect at least part of why this happened was due to the central human need for a sense of doing something.<\/p>\n

To feel like you’re doing something is, at least, something! Same with toilet paper. We weren’t going to stand arm in arm fighting that plague armed only with rolls and sheets of the bathroom… but at least it was doing something.<\/p>\n

Feeling helpless leads to feeling hopeless, and feeling hopeless makes us depressed<\/a> and afraid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But of course, feeling unable to influence or control events or ourselves isn’t necessarily the same as genuinely not having agency or influence over our own life. I’ve written about learned helplessness here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How much control someone feels they have can be characterized as their ‘locus of control’, which means the extent to which they believe they, as opposed to external factors, control outcomes in their life.<\/p>\n

You can download a free locus of control worksheet to use with your clients here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So first off, it’s important to get a sense of just how much control your client feels they have or should have. People who overemphasize how much of their own and other people’s lives they should be controlling tend to feel guilty<\/a> a lot of the time and steal too much of the ‘blame pie<\/a>‘.<\/p>\n

Control: More or less<\/h3>\n

When people feel reasonably able to control, or at least positively influence, events, they avoid both unrealistic opposite extremes of feeling either that they have to control everything and everyone, as with the control freak<\/a>, or, at the other extreme, that they can control nothing, as with very low self-esteem<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When the need for control becomes a greed for control or when we are desperate to feel some autonomy in life, humanity can be taken down all kinds of dark and dangerous paths<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Feeling in control, particularly feeling in control of ourselves when externally things are out of control, is central to good mental health.<\/p>\n\n

Research from the University of Cambridge shows that individuals who feel a sense of control over their lives and have a clear sense of purpose and meaning tend to be less prone to anxiety disorders, even during very challenging periods.1<\/sup> A sense of control has also been shown to have positive effects on physical, behavioural, and psychosocial health.2<\/sup><\/p>\n

Your clients, like everyone else, have the fundamental need<\/a> for a sense of control and autonomy. So how might we help them develop that quickly in order to strengthen their mental health?<\/div>\n

One: Distinguish between what can and can’t be controlled<\/h3>\n

Clients often suffer not just because of what’s happening, but because they are trying, unsuccessfully, to control the uncontrollable.<\/p>\n

They may try to:<\/p>\n