[animal87]

It has been brought to my attention that i have issues around contol. My therapist thinks that my self harm and liking for high places is about gaining control. But then i wondered about my binge drinking and getting arrested or taken to hospital by the police when i cant cope. Surely these situations remove the control from me completely. Is it possible for someone who strives to be in control to deliberatly relinquish control to someone or something else if they feel they cant control themselves? I think subconciously this is what i have been doing. Has anyone else experienced this all or nothing attitude to control or is it just me?

[Rose76]

The therapist may be barking up a wrong tree. I'm skeptical of therapists thinking that they have some grand theory that explains why you do things. You obviously engage in risky behavior. That could be for a lot of reasons.

Why do you think you harm yourself at times? You may have a desire to be taken care of. Maybe that's a need that was never sufficiently met for you.

[Perna]

If you perceive yourself as sometimes being out of control, trying to gain control would make sense to me. You would end up with a circle of "failure"? I think there are different ways to think of "control". When I get really afraid and feeling helpless, the thing that helps gets me out of that is anger. It seems like fear and anger wouldn't go together but if you think of it as inertia and movement, it makes a weird kind of sense :-) I think your control thing could be like that; you "want" to be in control of yourself but don't know how to make it work, you end of feeling you "can't cope", the opposite of control.