Heroes Not Zombies

We all cope in different ways. In this series we’re looking at ways of coping in parts 3, 4 and 5. In part 3 we looked at the activist way of coping.

Now let’s consider control as a strategy. The world can be a very scary place. For many people the events that occur in their lives face them with overwhelming uncertainty and doubt. If we feel the world is scary and dangerous and random, one way to cope with this reality is to shrink daily life into containable, controllable pieces. People do this to try and reduce the uncertainty and randomness in their experience. They do this by introducing routines, habits and rituals. They do this by either trying to control their physical environment – cleaning and ordering – and/or by trying to control the people in their lives. Watch the following three clips to see what this is like if we take it too far!

I’ll consider the third strategy – withdrawal – in final part – Part 5.