Control as Safety (the Predictability Principle)

It appears that almost all people operating outside of psychological safety exhibit a regulatory drive to either control or be controlled—the mind’s mechanism for attempting to restore safety by increasing predictability in light of perceived danger. This “control drive” appears to derive from the autonomic nervous system’s attempts to restore felt-safety and, although at times maladaptive, seemingly (re-)creates power dynamics across scales ranging from interpersonal relations to geopolitics. This framework may explain behaviours not fully captured by existing theories.