When my son is climbing on things (usually things he shouldn't be climbing on), sometimes he falls and hits his head. He might laugh a little. If it's a particularly hard hit, he might stand up and look a little dazed. In rare cases he will start crying, but not very loudly. Sort of a mild cry.

When he is very intent on something he shouldn't be playing with, and I take it away from him or put him in time out, he starts wailing as if I'm mauling the kid or something.

It's incredible, parents are supposed to be biologically wired to respond to cries, because they signal that the child is in danger or in need of something. Yet, the strongest cries (in my experience, at least) don't come out of necessity at all.

The culprit here is 'perceived omnipotence'. When children are first born, they only experience a few emotions. They only want a few things, and they also need those things. Consequently, the only way they can communicate these needs is through crying. So, from a very young age, whenever a child wants anything, they just cry and they get it.

But this doesn't last long. Eventually they start developing more needs and some wants that are not needs. Eventually, they have to learn 'no'. This is particularly difficult for a child to accept, because they have been taught that they have power over everything.

Imagine you think that you have complete control over something. Then, imagine you find that you don't have control at all. Somebody else does. That's what is happening here. They go from (perceived) total control to being controlled. This is the source of their rage.

The interesting thing is that the lesson learned is hardly generalized. Babies have to learn the limits of their control in individual domains. They won't assume they are powerless in other situations just because they have learned they are powerless in one (except in severely chronic powerlessness, it's called learned helplessness, but this isn't the norm and this isn't healthy).

So there are still areas of perceived omnipotence left as toddlers... Throughout childhood... During adolescence...

And *gasp* in adulthood.

And believe me, we take plenty of these perceptions of omnipotence to the grave. As a (fairly) general rule, our perception of new situations are typically those of omnipotence.

I was in a serious long-term relationship. It wasn't as if I believed I controlled her, but I certainly had an unconscious 'knowledge' that I was in control of the state of our relationship. In other words, it wouldn't ever end unless I wanted it to.

Well, as you may already know, relationships don't really work this way. Both individuals have control. I certainly knew this at a superficial level. If you would have asked me, I would have said "of course, either one of us could end the relationship." But that's the wrong question. The right question would have been whether or not I thought that she would ever end it.

But once that question was answered, I had a severe case of a broken perception of omnipotence.

It's a matter of making yourself aware of your own limits of control. I may be particularly bad at this, but in my experiences, most people aren't particularly good at it. But I imagine that we could all gain a great deal of insight, humility and save ourselves from a mental tug-of-war with another individual's perceived omnipotence if we identified some of the more harmful domains in which we feign control.

One small caveat: don't go overboard. Regardless of what you lead yourself to believe, you are responsible for those things over which you do have control.

It's already been said better; I'd say it's very good advice to live by:

"Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."