I think its scaling the affected vertices when all I want it to do is rotate, but I’ve tried locking its ability to scale the vertices and it was still doing this. Its not at all how I want it to act. I’ve tried messing around with it and I just can’t seem to get it to act right, so I’ve come to you guys for answers. Any help would be greatly appreciated. 
Here’s what its doing:
make sure bone envelopes is deselected
That doesn’t seem to be it, it does the same thing whether bone envelopes is enabled or disabled. I’ve also messed with enabling and disabling vertex groups and any combination of the two and I still can’t get it to act correctly, or even act different than this. Thanks for the answer, but it seems I still have to press on.
post the blend
The entire mesh is assigned 100% to the main controller (and some places are also assigned to arms,jaw, etc)-- reweight appropriately
That makes sense, if it wasn’t obvious enough, I’ve just started messing with the more advanced rigging techniques and I haven’t quite figured it all out. Thanks for the help
