What We Cannot Control (And Why That Matters More Than We Think)
On hard times, impermanence, and the case for self-compassion
There is a particular kind of suffering that comes not from the difficult thing itself, but from the story we tell about why it happened. The relationship that ended because of something we did or did not do. The job that was lost because we were not good enough. The health crisis that arrived because we did not take better care of ourselves. The financial hardship that we should have seen coming, should have prevented, should have managed better.
Sometimes those stories are accurate. But very often they are not. And the habit of reaching for personal blame when things go wrong, of treating external misfortune as internal failure, is one of the quieter ways we make hard things harder than they need to be.
The things that happen to us
Life contains genuine difficulty. Not the kind that can be reframed into a lesson or repurposed into growth, though sometimes that happens too. The kind that simply arrives: the loss of someone we love, a serious illness, a relationship that breaks apart, financial hardship, unemployment, the slow erosion of something we built or hoped for. Events in the world that feel too large and too indifferent to make sense of. The accumulation of smaller difficulties that, taken together, press down in ways that are hard to explain to people who are not inside them.
These things are real. They deserve to be named as hard rather than immediately softened. One of the less helpful habits of contemporary culture is the speed with which difficulty gets reframed: the silver lining offered before the cloud has even finished arriving, the invitation to find the lesson before the experience has been properly felt. Researcher and author Brené Brown has written and spoken extensively about this impulse, describing it as one of the most common ways we inadvertently fail the people around us when they are struggling. In her work on empathy, she notes that responses like “at least…” or “look on the bright side” are rarely experienced as comforting by the person receiving them. They tend instead to communicate, however unintentionally, that the other person’s pain is something to be moved past rather than acknowledged (Brown, 2010). There is a time for perspective. It is rarely the moment things fall apart.
What is worth saying clearly, before anything else, is that a great deal of what knocks us over has very little to do with what we did or who we are. Life is genuinely unpredictable. External circumstances, economic conditions, other people’s choices, chance, illness, the timing of things we had no hand in, these shape our lives in ways that no amount of good decisions or positive thinking reliably prevents. Knowing this does not take the pain away. But it can take away the added burden of self-blame, and that is not a small thing.
The cost of blaming ourselves for what we cannot control
Psychologists have long been interested in what is called locus of control. Locus of control refers to the degree to which people believe that outcomes in their lives are determined by their own behaviour and choices (internal locus) versus external forces beyond their control (external locus) (Rotter, 1966). A sense of internal control is generally associated with better wellbeing, greater persistence, and more effective coping. But this relationship is complicated.
When bad things happen, people with a strongly internal locus of control are more likely to ask what they did wrong, what they could have done differently, what personal failing explains the outcome. In circumstances where the cause genuinely is within their control, this reflection is useful. In circumstances where it is not, it produces something closer to self-punishment dressed up as self-improvement.
Research on attributional style, the habitual way we explain events to ourselves, shows that explaining negative events in terms that are personal (it is about me), pervasive (it affects everything), and permanent (it will always be this way) is one of the strongest predictors of depressive symptoms (Abramson, Seligman & Teasdale, 1978). The internal attribution is only one part of this, but it is a meaningful one. Treating external misfortune as personal failure does not just feel bad. It has measurable consequences for mood, motivation, and the capacity to recover.
None of this means that self-reflection is wrong, or that we have no agency in our lives. We do, and how we respond to what happens to us matters. But there is a difference between thoughtful reflection on what we might do differently and the reflexive attribution of all difficulty to personal inadequacy. The first is useful. The second is a form of suffering added on top of suffering that was already there.
On impermanence
One of the oldest and most consistently supported observations about human experience is also one of the hardest to internalise: nothing stays the same. Circumstances change. Emotional states shift. What feels permanent in the middle of difficulty rarely is. What feels permanent in the middle of good fortune rarely is either.
Buddhist philosophy has articulated this most systematically, under the concept of impermanence, the recognition that all conditioned phenomena are transient, and that much of human suffering arises not from difficulty itself but from our resistance to the fact that things change. Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön, in her widely read book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, describes this resistance as a kind of groundlessness: the frightening but ultimately clarifying experience of having nothing solid to hold onto (Chödrön, 1997). She argues, compellingly, that the impulse to flee from that groundlessness, to reach for certainty, distraction, or premature resolution, is precisely what prolongs suffering. Learning to stay with the uncertainty, to be present in the difficult space rather than escaping it, is not passive resignation. It is a form of courage that opens something that rushing past does not.
This is not the same as saying that nothing matters, or that loss is not real. Loss is very real. The pain of it is real. What the concept of impermanence offers is not a way of minimising that pain but a different relationship with it. There is the experience itself, and then there is the layer of suffering we add on top of it: the insistence that things should be different, the terror that they will always be this way, the resistance to what is actually happening. It is often this second layer, the fighting against the reality of the experience rather than the experience itself, that is the most exhausting part of a difficult time. Impermanence does not dissolve the first layer. But it can loosen the second.
Contemporary psychology has arrived at similar conclusions through a different route. Research on hedonic adaptation, the tendency for people to return toward a relatively stable baseline of wellbeing after both positive and negative events, consistently finds that humans are poor predictors of how long emotional states will persist (Gilbert et al., 1998). We overestimate how devastated we will be, and how long that devastation will last. We also overestimate how happy we will be, and for how long. The mind, under the pressure of a current state, projects that state into the future with more certainty than is warranted.
This is worth understanding, not because it invalidates what we feel in the present (it does not), but because the sense that a current difficulty is permanent can itself become a source of suffering that compounds the original one. The thought that things will always be this way, that the situation will never change, that there is no way through, is rarely accurate. And recognising that, even imperfectly, even when it does not feel true, can be one small foothold in territory that otherwise offers none.
The gap between knowing and feeling
This is where it is important to be honest about the limits of understanding.
Knowing that things are impermanent does not make them feel impermanent. Knowing that you are not to blame for something does not make the self-critical voice go quiet. Knowing that your emotional state will shift does not make the current one easier to inhabit. Insight is genuinely useful, and psychology would not invest so much in it if it were not. But insight is not the same as relief, and treating it as though it should be is another way of adding expectation on top of experience.
There is a kind of intellectual bypassing that can look like wisdom but functions more like avoidance: reaching quickly for the philosophical frame, the larger perspective, the evidence that things will improve, as a way of not having to be where we actually are. The discomfort of the present moment is real, and it deserves to be felt rather than immediately rationalised away.
What this means in practice is that the work of getting through hard times is not primarily a cognitive task. It is not solved by finding the right frame or thinking the right thoughts. It involves something that sits closer to the body and the emotional experience than to the intellect: the capacity to be present with what is actually happening, to let it be what it is rather than immediately working to change or explain it, and to hold that experience with some degree of kindness rather than additional judgement.
When the people around us fall short
There is something that many people experience during genuinely difficult times but rarely say out loud: the people they most counted on did not show up in the way they needed.
This is more common than the cultural script around friendship and family tends to acknowledge. When something hard happens, the people around us bring their own fears, discomforts, and limitations to the encounter. Some respond with advice when what is needed is presence. Some minimise, consciously or not, because the alternative is to sit with a level of pain they find difficult to tolerate. Some disappear gradually, the calls becoming less frequent, the check-ins trailing off, not out of cruelty but out of a kind of helplessness about what to say or do. Some offer the kind of comfort that is really reassurance for themselves: reassurance that things will be fine, that it is not as bad as it seems, that there is a silver lining, because believing otherwise is too uncomfortable.
None of this makes these people bad. It makes them human. But it can leave the person going through something genuinely hard feeling not only bereft of the support they hoped for, but somehow more alone than before they reached out, which is its own particular kind of pain.
It can also leave people feeling that there is something wrong with them for needing more than they are getting. That their grief or fear or distress is too much, too heavy, too persistent. The implicit message absorbed from interactions like these, even when no one intended to send it, is often: you should be managing this better by now.
What psychology and clinical experience both suggest is that in these moments, the relationship that matters most is the one you have with yourself. Not because other people do not matter, they do, and genuine connection remains one of the most important protective factors for mental health, but because the quality of your own internal response to your experience is the thing you carry everywhere, through every conversation and every quiet moment, in a way that no external relationship can replicate.
Being your own best friend, in the sense that Kristin Neff’s self-compassion research describes, means extending to yourself the patience, the non-judgement, and the genuine care that you might hope for from someone else but cannot always count on receiving. It means noticing when you are in pain without immediately telling yourself you should not be. It means speaking to yourself, in the privacy of your own mind, with at least some of the kindness you would offer to someone you love who was going through the same thing.
This is not a consolation prize for the absence of good support. It is a genuine and distinct resource, one that external relationships cannot fully substitute for even when they are at their best. The capacity to be on your own side, especially when things are hard, is one of the more important things a person can develop.
Self-compassion as a genuine resource
The research on self-compassion has grown considerably over the past two decades, much of it developed by psychologist Kristin Neff, and what it consistently shows is that self-compassion is not self-indulgence, not weakness, and not an obstacle to growth or accountability. It is a measurable psychological resource that predicts better outcomes across a wide range of circumstances (Neff, 2003).
Neff’s model describes self-compassion as having three components. The first is self-kindness: treating yourself with the same care and understanding you would extend to a good friend who was going through something difficult, rather than harsh self-criticism. The second is common humanity: recognising that suffering, failure, and difficulty are part of the shared human experience rather than evidence of personal inadequacy. The third is mindfulness: holding painful thoughts and feelings in balanced awareness rather than suppressing them or becoming overwhelmed by them.
What is striking about this framework is how directly it addresses the patterns that make hard times harder. The self-critical story (I should have done better, I caused this, I am not enough) is met by self-kindness. The sense of isolation (no one else struggles like this, something is uniquely wrong with me) is met by common humanity. The tendency to either push away difficult feelings or be consumed by them is met by mindful awareness and non-judgment.
Research has found that self-compassion is associated with lower rates of anxiety and depression, greater emotional resilience, better recovery from setbacks, and more sustainable motivation than self-esteem alone (Neff & Germer, 2013). Crucially, it does not appear to reduce accountability or ambition. People who practise self-compassion are not less likely to try to improve; they are more likely to do so, because they are not operating from a place of shame.
What this looks like in practice
Self-compassion is less a technique than an orientation, and it develops gradually rather than arriving all at once. Some of what it involves:
Noticing the self-critical voice without necessarily believing it. When difficult things happen and the internal commentary begins, it is possible to observe that commentary rather than accepting it as fact. Thoughts like I should have known better or this is my fault are not evidence. They are habitual responses to discomfort, and they can be observed as such.
Allowing the feelings that are actually present. This sounds simple and is consistently harder than it sounds. Grief, fear, anger, disappointment, shame: these are not problems to be solved but experiences to be had. Allowing them to be present, without immediately trying to fix or suppress them, is one of the more important things a person can do in a difficult period.
Staying connected. Difficulty tends to produce isolation, partly because we feel we have nothing good to offer, and partly because we do not want to be seen in a diminished state. But connection with others is one of the most reliable supports for getting through hard times, and the evidence consistently supports this. Not connection that requires us to perform being fine, but genuine connection that allows us to be honest about where we are. And when the people around you cannot quite give you what you need, staying connected to yourself, with patience and without judgement, matters just as much.
Being patient with the timeline. There is social pressure to recover from difficult things on a schedule, to be visibly improving, to have found the lesson and moved on. That pressure is rarely helpful and sometimes actively harmful. Things take as long as they take. Being kind to yourself about the pace of your own recovery is not giving up. It is allowing the process to actually happen at a natural and appropriate pace.
A final thought
Hard things are hard. That is not a failure of perspective or resilience. It is an accurate response to genuinely difficult circumstances, many of which are outside your control and were always going to be.
The people around you will sometimes fall short of what you need, not because they do not care, but because being present with someone else’s pain is genuinely difficult, and most of us were never taught how to do it well. That gap, between what you need and what others can give, is one of the more painful experiences of a hard time. But it is also one of the clearest invitations to develop something that no one can take away: the capacity to be on your own side.
What we can work on, and what psychology has good evidence for, is our relationship with the hard things. Whether we compound them with self-blame. Whether we allow ourselves to feel what is real. Whether we extend to ourselves even a fraction of the kindness we would offer to someone we love. Whether we can hold even a small amount of openness to the possibility that things will shift, even when they do not feel like they will.
None of this makes the difficulty disappear. But it changes what we do inside it. And over time, that matters.
If this post has resonated with you, Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart is worth reading. It is one of the most honest and compassionate books written about how to be present with difficulty rather than fleeing from it. Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection is also worth your time, particularly for its treatment of how we respond, and how we wish others would respond, when things are genuinely hard.
If you are going through a difficult period and would like support in finding your way through it, the team at Excel Psychology is here to help. We offer individual therapy for adults at our Spring Hill, Brisbane clinic and via Telehealth Australia-wide. No referral is required.
References
Abramson, L. Y., Seligman, M. E. P., & Teasdale, J. D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87(1), 49–74.
Brown, B. (2010). The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. Hazelden Publishing.
Chödrön, P. (1997). When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Shambhala Publications.
Gilbert, D. T., Pinel, E. C., Wilson, T. D., Blumberg, S. J., & Wheatley, T. P. (1998). Immune neglect: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(3), 617–638.
Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualisation of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85–101.
Neff, K. D., & Germer, C. K. (2013). A pilot study and randomised controlled trial of the mindful self-compassion program. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 69(1), 28–44.
Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalised expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1–28.
