On Control
By Shea Stevens
Control is a big topic. It’s usually a word that’s used with bad connotations: A person is deemed too controlling; high-control religion; control freak. In this post I will talk about control as both good and bad. Control can also mean the way every human seeks to have a healthy sense of autonomy in their life; they get to control their fate, their choices, their environment, to some extent. Parents are put in control of their child, to a significant extent. Control is worth exploring. I think I will come back here to write even more on control, outside of the therapy space. For now, here are some thoughts:
Control and Therapy
Control also comes up in therapy. Many of us humanistic counselors have the goal of offering the client space and control, or autonomy, within the therapeutic setting. Autonomy is a huge value in humanism. But it can be tricky because therapy is, unavoidably, a joint venture— a relationship between client and counselor. And the counselor may think, feel, or say things that come from a different point of view than the client, they may hold different preferences or beliefs, lived experience, and they may simply disagree with the client sometimes. So, how to navigate this unavoidable and uncomfortable reality?
Many therapists try their best to stay neutral in what they say to avoid making the client feel uncomfortable about their own views. I think our professional ethics tend to encourage us as therapists to be neutral when possible, to hold space for our clients’ own thoughts, feelings, and lived experience. But there are still some times that a client might explicitly ask about their views, or they might screen the therapist because they prefer a therapist with a certain belief or perspective. And that seems valid and important for people to find a therapist who they align with. Can this go too far? I think that’s an interesting question. I think counselors and clients alike should ask themselves how much they expect the other in the therapeutic relationship to agree with them and how much they expect the other person to tell them about what they think on a given topic.
Case conceptualization can be a realm where the therapist’s own views become important. Diagnosis, treatment planning, and social justice are areas of counseling where certain views of the therapist become unavoidable. Maybe a client views a problem in a religious way and their therapist sees it differently; maybe something has been pathologized in the client’s religion but the therapist thinks of it according to normal human development… or the client thinks their relationship dynamic is OK but the counselor sees unhealthy, oppressive patterns. Maybe a client sees their experience through the realm of oppression and trauma but the counselor wants to focus on the client’s own responsibility and their own choices. Tensions like these can come up fairly often in therapy, and maybe instead of jumping to accuse someone of being “wrong,” some clients and therapists might grow from the opportunity to explore what they do in the face of difference, in the face of a situation that does not go exactly the way they predicted or preferred it would.
Tolerating Difference
Client should ultimately feel comfortable with their therapist. They can change therapists if they do not ultimately want that therapy to continue. They should feel safe and respected. But the therapist cannot guarantee that the client will feel completely at ease or that their perspective will go unchallenged in the course of therapy. I think this used to be more of a norm— the expectation that the therapist challenges the client— and nowadays, rightly, there has been a bit of course-correcting to encourage a more sympathetic and gentle style of therapy. But I would like to avoid being extreme on either side of that spectrum. I think a healthy distress tolerance, healthy honoring of difference, and self-trust is required for a client to navigate interpersonal relationships both in and out of therapy. Clients have to trust that they can take care of themselves, they can tolerate some level of distress in life, and not just rely on others to take care of them and keep them safe at all times. Life is not ultimately something we have control over, but we can control some factors, namely our own choices and behavior.
Often if someone has a problem with their therapist having a different opinion, they will relate in a similar way to others in their life. Polarization is something each of us can relate to, and in truth I think every person has to make their own choice of who they want to share space with and who they don’t feel safe with.
But if we seek to control our environment to such an extent that we reject sharing space with others who are different from us I think we will inevitably end up alone. And I think polarization and isolation is the current situation in our American society.