A highly internalized locus of control may look like:
- “Everything that happens to me is within my control.”
- If you are late to work you may blame yourself and how you should have woken up earlier, skipped breakfast etc.
- Positive traits can be: Internally motivated, don’t wait around for things to happen to them, self-reliant
- Negative traits can be: Hyper-independent, don’t trust others, lack empathy (“If I did it, so can they!” “If you’re poor you just don’t work hard enough.” etc), struggle to move on from things even if they are out of their control, blame them selves for everything
Parenting can contribute to you being on this extreme. This could look like: continually blaming you for not being better and not doing better and how everything is your fault from being bullied to failing tests and how you must have done something wrong for this to happen to you.
This can cause the child to have a very negative view of themselves and because everything is (from their perspective) within their control, they will begin to feel very negatively about themselves when anything goes wrong.
This is the complete opposite of a 🍃 highly externalised locus of control.
Sources: