Ref "Born to choose: the origins and value of the need for control"

[Diane]

Born to choose: the origins and value of the need for control

This is the most interesting paper I've seen in a long time!
It truly supports the idea we try (mostly in vain..) to get across - the idea that our job should be to support the brains of our patients (not become so fixated on wobbling their meat or flexing their fascia or jiggling their joints) - this is what therapy is really about - helping patients' brain relearn choice, choosing, selecting, feeling in control again.

[byronselorme]

Isn't this the take home message? Man Dr Suess was awesome

You have brains in your head, You have feet in your
shoes, You can steer yourself in any direction you
choose.
Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel)

[zimney3pt]

Very interesting article indeed.

What a paradox we are in during the clinical encounter. Two nervous systems, each needing control, yet only one can have complete control, so someone has to give up control for the encounter to fully benefit one of those nervous systems.

So maybe it's not suppose to be about me (the PT).

[Diane]

Yup, he was.
He bent young minds toward sanity by using pure whimsey and illustrating it with strange bendy-looking striped characters with whiskers and huge hats.

[Diane]

Originally Posted by zimney3pt

So maybe it's not suppose to be about me (the PT).

Hahahaha!

That, my friend, is it in a nutshell.

[Diane]

One could examine "need to control":

1. from the perspective of inside-out; i.e., internal locus of control as something every biological organism needs in order to function optimally, as this paper does, or;

2. from the perspective of outside-in; i.e., external locus of control, a power "game" that different levels of social organization or groups or individuals play on other levels/groups/individuals (e.g., minorities, women, children, animals, anything constituting "others") from within or without said social group, in order to dominate them.

Social institutions could be viewed as interactive "self"-control of a multi-individual'ed social organism (which projects the illusion of control onto an actual illusion ["they", "the man"] by some sort of mutual consent), but too often it becomes the main means by which a control-freak group attains all sorts of unfair/unjust/undeserved (!) leverage.

Control freakishness (outside-in control-over) is a ubiquitous disease of human primate social troops. Here we are on SomaSimple, arguing against this from a position of absolutely no strength, because we say that control belongs with the patient in the first place: we are constantly being bulldozed by an entire profession which understandably has tried to exert and has even succeeded in exerting all sorts of "control" in order to get as far as it has, and has thereby encouraged illusions thereof in its values and training (operator models).

Argh.
Such an huge rock mountain to have to build tunnels through. We are both, and we are neither. We (individuals here) are temporary verbs inhabiting and trying to change a worldview that would rather see itself as a solid noun. Barrett is so right - we are so dead.

[zimney3pt]

Barrett is so right - we are so dead.

At least our patients get a glimpse of being so alive and not under another's control. That's why it can't be about me.