When You Stop Asking: Why Me? Understanding Locus of Control
There's a quiet question underneath a lot of the struggles people bring into therapy. It's rarely asked outright, but it shapes almost everything: how we cope, how we recover, how much we blame ourselves, and how much we expect from the world.
The question is this: when something happens in my life, who or what do I believe is in charge of the outcome?
Psychologists call this your locus of control. It's a concept that sounds clinical, but it's actually deeply personal. And once you understand it, you start to see it everywhere. In your relationships, your work, your health, even the way you talk to yourself at the end of a hard day.
What is locus of control?
Locus of control is a term first introduced by psychologist Julian Rotter in the 1950s. It describes where a person believes the power over their life sits: inside themselves, or somewhere out there in the world.
There are two ends of the spectrum:
Internal locus of control: the belief that your choices, effort, and responses meaningfully shape what happens to you.
External locus of control: the belief that what happens to you is mostly determined by outside forces. Luck, fate, other people, circumstance, or systems beyond your reach.
Most of us aren't purely one or the other. We move along the spectrum depending on the situation, our mood, our history, and what's happening around us. But many people have a leaning, a default, and that leaning quietly influences how they respond to almost everything.
Locus of control isn't about whether you can control everything. It's about where you place your sense of agency when things get hard.
How it shows up in real life
Locus of control isn't something you sit down and think about. It lives in the small reactions, the sentences you finish in your own head before you even realise.
A more internal lean might sound like:
"That conversation didn't go well. I want to think about what I'd do differently next time."
"I can't change the workload, but I can change how I structure my week."
"This is hard, but there's usually something I can do, even if it's small."
A more external lean might sound like:
"Nothing I do makes a difference anyway."
"It's just bad luck. It always happens to me."
"They made me feel this way."
Neither of these is wholly right or wholly wrong. Sometimes things genuinely are outside our control. Sometimes other people really do behave badly. The point isn't to swing to one extreme. It's to notice your pattern and ask whether it's helping you or quietly keeping you stuck.
Worth Remembering: A strong internal locus of control isn't the same as taking the blame for everything. Healthy agency includes being able to say: this part was mine to work with, and this part wasn't.
Why this matters for your wellbeing
Research on locus of control has been remarkably consistent over the decades. People with a more internal locus of control tend to experience lower rates of anxiety and depression, better stress recovery, stronger motivation, healthier relationships, and a greater sense of life satisfaction.
This isn't because they have easier lives. It's because they tend to respond to difficulty with a different question. Instead of asking, "Why is this happening to me?", they're more likely to ask, "What's mine to do here?"
That single shift, from being acted upon to being a participant, changes the nervous system's response to stress.
On the other hand, a strongly external locus of control is closely linked with learned helplessness, the experience of feeling that nothing you do matters, so you stop trying. This is one of the most common emotional patterns we see in burnout, chronic stress, trauma recovery, and long periods of life feeling stuck.
Where your locus of control comes from
No one chooses their default. It's shaped by a mix of things, often beginning long before we have the language to describe them:
Early experiences. Children who grow up in environments where their efforts are noticed, where adults respond predictably, and where they're allowed to make small choices tend to develop a stronger internal locus.
Repeated stress or trauma. When the world has been genuinely unpredictable or unsafe, leaning external is often a protective response. It made sense at the time, even if it's less useful now.
Cultural and systemic context. Not everyone has had equal access to outcomes their effort "should have" produced. A healthy internal locus respects this. It doesn't pretend systems aren't real.
Current mental health. Depression in particular narrows our sense of agency. Anxiety can do the opposite, making us feel falsely responsible for everything. Both distort the picture.
So if you find yourself leaning external, that's information, not failure. Your nervous system has been doing what made sense given what it's lived through.
You don't move from external to internal by trying harder. You move by gathering evidence, slowly, that your actions matter.
If you'd like to grow a steadier sense of agency, the work isn't about overhauling your personality. It's about practising small, honest shifts in how you respond. A few places to start:
1. Separate what's yours from what isn't When something hard happens, try sketching out three columns: what's mine to work with, what belongs to someone else, and what's simply life. Most of our distress comes from blurring these together. Taking on what isn't ours, or giving away what is.
2. Look for the next small action When the whole problem feels unsolvable, ask: what is one small step that's available to me in the next 24 hours? Agency lives in the next small thing, not the whole mountain.
3. Notice the language you use Listen for the difference between "I have to" and "I'm choosing to," between "they made me" and "I responded by," between "nothing helps" and "this particular thing didn't help yet." The words we use quietly reinforce or loosen our sense of agency.
4. Keep evidence that your actions matter If your default is external, your brain will dismiss the evidence that contradicts it. Write things down. A short note at the end of the day, one thing I did that made even a small difference, is a quietly powerful practice.
5. Be honest about what you can't control Healthy agency isn't magical thinking. It includes grief, limits, and acceptance. You're not failing when you can't fix something. You're practising the harder skill of staying engaged with your life even when parts of it are outside your reach.
The goal isn't to wake up tomorrow with a different worldview. It's to start collecting tiny pieces of evidence that you are not a passenger in your own life, even when life is hard.==
A note from Sabrina: If you've spent a long time feeling like nothing you do matters, this work is slow. It has to be. That evidence builds. And eventually, the question you carry shifts from "why is this happening to me?" to "what's mine to do with this?" Which is one of the most useful questions a person can learn to ask.
Locus of control is one of those ideas that quietly underlies a great deal of psychological wellbeing. It's not about positivity. It's not about pretending you have power you don't have. It's about practising the steady, grounded belief that your choices count. Even small ones, even on hard days, even when life isn't fair.
That belief is one of the most protective things you can carry into the rest of your life. And like most meaningful things, it's built slowly, in the small moments, by paying attention.
About the Author
Sabrina is a registered psychologist, passionate about helping people build meaningful, emotionally healthy, and resilient lives. Her clinical expertise and genuine warmth bring both competence and compassion to the therapy room and the online space.
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The information provided on this site is for psycho-educational purposes only and is not meant as a substitute for therapy, counselling, or medical care. If you require personal mental health support, please consult a professional. In case of a crisis, contact emergency services immediately.