I mean, I see what you're getting at but no, haha, I don't agree. She didn't 'will' her condition away, it wasn't about world-view or having a positive outlook on life, it was about physical illness caused by some weird digestive shit. I agree that the drugs didn't help, and in that case you do what you have to do (been there myself, googling, experimenting with my own solutions when the doctors and the pills kept not improving anything), but I don't think this has anything to do with 'control'. Just because something is not in your control doesn't mean you have to lie down and be a fatalist victim, I mean, why should you? On the contrary it can be a liberating experience since you don't have to feel guilty about not 'controlling' your life the proper way.
Well, no, I wasn't trying to say that she "willed" it away. What is "willpower" anyway?
You say though, that it has nothing to do with "control" but really, she did take over responsibility for her own health, took to influencing her own outcome rather than passively handing it off to a doctor, or anyone else. So, indeed, if you don't like the word "control" don't use it, but she certainly did exercise influence on her outcome. That's the point. If you don't like the notion of "locus of control" call it whatever you like, the outcome is still the same. Rather than be passive and think of things as just happening to her, she took action and changed behaviors and got better results for it. Maybe people do not do that.
I guess though, we can ask, if one is "not control their life in the proper way" by their own metric, and feel "guilty," again by their own metric, should they?
But are you sure of that? And what of everybody in between, who need that joint therapy?
I never precluded that such a thing could not happen. In fact, just the opposite. I already said that sometimes drugs can and likely do help people get out of positive feedback loops. But I do think (note: think, not know) that drugs alone will likely not "cure" a number of common psychological maladies, such as general anxiety and depression.
I just don't agree here. I don't think anybody actually wants to be a fat fuck. They might rationalize it (because they're in control of their lives after all, aren't they?), but I don't think anybody genuinely wants to be stuck in these unhealthy behavioral loops.
No, of course they do not want to be in a state such as obecity. But they are also not, generally, open to modifying their behavior. So, of course they do not want the disastrous consequences of overeating and eating unhealthy, but they do still want to do those things for a variety of reasons. Take your above example, lets say that Mikhaila Peterson said, "Look, I don't want to keep losing joints, but I won't give up eating carbs. It's just not something I can do." It's not that she wants to loose the joints, be in pain, just that her perceived value in continuing her behavior (eating what she wants) is greater than the perceived negative value of the pain.
Honestly, I see this in action all the time. Likely that skews my perception of it. But I know people with diabetes that have literally said, "I'd rather die than not eat sugar" and I even know someone who did. I know people who smoke, knowing full well the damage it does to them, and still will not modify their behavior. Now, we can absolve them of any compliance in their own undoing, and to some degree that might be true, but I'm not willing to buy the idea that they could not stop if they actually wanted.
So, no, I don't buy the idea that the majority of people who are suffering something like general anxiety or depression, are biologically determined to be so. Even if they are biologically predisposed to it, there is almost certainly, in my mind, something they could do, psychologically, to ameliorate it.
No, I don't have empirical data. No, I don't know it to be a certainty. No, I am not saying that it must be all psychological. But there is no real evidence that something like anxiety is 100% biological either. My point is that, in my opinion, the way you frame the problem is going to determine what could even
possibly work.
So, there is some confluence between biology and psychology. If there were not, either drugs or therapy would work 100%. But neither does, so there is some relative values between. My point is, that in my opinion, our "empirical worldview" too often makes people believe that the only possible effective one would be drugs and wrongly so.