“I feel powerless.” I hear statements like this often. Any experience of trauma or loss—loss of job, intimacy, relationship, health—can evoke feelings of powerlessness. Similarly, the sense of being trapped in an unsatisfying career or unsatisfying relationship, being the parent to a “rebellious” child, an unwanted medical diagnosis can stir up powerlessness. Powerlessness is often a symptom of depression; powerlessness also induces anxiety.
Indeed, the experience of helplessness and powerlessness is one that most of us avoid at all costs. It is a deeply disorienting and disturbing experience. Depressive symptoms arise: tunnel vision, narrowing of interests and activities, lowered self-esteem, lowered energy. The experience of powerlessness also evokes strong feelings of shame, and shame can engender identification with the powerlessness and reinforces negative beliefs about self-efficacy: “I AM powerless; I AM incompetent; I AM inadequate.” The experience of powerlessness can become paralyzing and traumatic.
Powerlessness is often a response to factors that appear to be—and sometimes are—outside our control. And too often, the experience of powerlessness produces a regression where power is completely given over to external forces.
Emotional reasoning is one of the hallmarks of that regression. We typically tell ourselves stories about powerlessness, and the stories often reflect our misperceptions and dysfunctional beliefs about ourselves and where our power lies. And often the stories we tell about our present circumstances resonate with older stories of powerlessness that originate in early family experiences. Often, that early childhood story is repeated throughout adulthood, with variations that reflect the current situation.
Herein lays one of the keys to moving out of powerlessness: focusing on the facts of the here-and-now situation. This means detaching from the feelings and looking at the facts of the situation—including an acknowledgment of the real, fact-based limitations of self-efficacy. It means changing one’s relationship to the situation. It often means widening one’s focus to see the larger picture and one’s place in it—which may also mean asking for help in order to see the situation a bit more objectively. It means letting go of, and even changing, the story. It sometimes means taking risks and making decisions that take us out of our comfort zone. It means living with uncertainty. Paradoxically, there is power in ambiguity: the power to make new, different decisions.
Moving out of powerlessness takes time because meaningful change toward empowerment is a complex, multi-layered process. Therapy is about empowering people make decisions that alleviate anxiety and depression, and create freedom; therapy is about helping people create and own power. Engaging in a fact-based examination of the circumstances, engaging in some short-term problem-solving, exploring patterns of thinking and feelings, exploring the beliefs that fuel the feelings and thoughts of powerlessness, exploring the meaning of power and powerlessness, and experimenting with new thoughts and activities can help. Of course, looking at the roots of shame and powerlessness is also critical to long-lasting, meaningful change.
The work continues…