2. How our trained-in powerlessness becomes our life
Oh my goodness Bud, Aunt JD here, wanting to connect with you around something so important it can change the course of your life. You are such a precious being with all the ways you experience and express your Essence qualities like tenaciousness, and industriousness, and ingenuity. I know, I know, you’re not always in these Essence qualities and that’s what we’re exploring today: Powerlessness Fears. The only thing that knocks us out of our warm, collaborative, productive, and powerful Essence qualities. We better get to the question of the day so we can get right into it.
Today’s Question:
How do we sabotage our own lives like we see so many others doing?
Recently, a friend told me a story about when she was trying to park her car while going out to a restaurant. She was driving and her partner was in the passenger seat. All the parallel parking spaces were occupied as they approached their location. Suddenly her partner erupted saying, slow down that guy in going to his car and we can take his place. It was right in front of the restaurant. My friend told him that she wasn’t going to slow down and make the traffic behind her wait. Apparently, according to her, he lost his mind about this saying he was going to drive whenever they were together in the future. He couldn’t believe she wasn’t wanting to get the perfect spot. She couldn’t believe that he would want to hold up so much traffic putting too much pressure on her in the moment.
Who’s side do you immediately identify with? Notice how easy it is to go into who’s right or who’s wrong about the situation. Why do our minds need to know who’s right? Because none of us want to be the powerless wrong one. This seemingly small and inconsequential conflict reveals so much more than our first glance at it.
These kinds of every day interactions can reveal deep fears that are familiar and patterned into both partners. We all miss the opportunity to identify these fears for ourselves and others when we jump to the who’s right or who’s wrong game. There are powerlessness fears driving both partner’s reactions and it is these powerlessness fears that sabotage our lives.
Powerlessness fears cause us to make choices and behave in ways that are not our authenticity. It is us acting out our fears. My friend was acting out her fear of taking up her rightful space in this world. Her partner was acting out his fear that those he loves are weak and won’t stand up for his rights and take good care of him. How do I know? By their reactions. Neither one of them responded from their Essence qualities, they automatically reacted into fear and defensive strategies.
What would their Essence have done in this situation? Her Essence quality of assertiveness would have emerged and literally taken up the space that she is worthy of taking up in this world. His Essence quality of compassionate understanding could have transformed the connection between the two of them instead of his trying to be right and making her wrong. Maybe not fast enough to save the parking space that time, but fast enough to save the evening and their future from being a grumbly mess.
He could have validated his fear that no one will stand up for him in the way he wants and then he could have remembered to validate her fear. He could validate that she was taught to be unworthy of taking up her rightful space in this world and sweetly remind that she was worthy. She could have validated herself first to calm and soothe the part of her that was trained she will be attacked if she asserts her power. Then, she would be in a settled and centered place inside to be able to remember to validate his worthiness to have someone stand up for him by making clear and clean choices in the moment. This would have connected them more deeply than before revealing to them that conflict is a time to self-reflect about one’s own fears instead of acting out one’s fears by trying to be right and not be wrong.
Powerlessness is that feeling inside that we are all trying not to feel. We’re all trying not to feel it because no one taught us it can be transformed. We were only taught that it’s an excruciating feeling of ourselves collapsing inside. It’s a heaviness of hopelessness. It’s an emptiness of helplessness. When it hits and takes us hostage, we feel incapable, like a failure, not good enough, unloved, like we don’t matter, like we’re invisible or that we have nothing to offer. It is a whole defensive system of trying to avoid these feelings inside that was passed down to us through our FOOs (families of origin). And, it is this system of trying to avoid feeling these feelings inside that causes us to sabotage ourselves in life.
Based on my work with clients over the last 25 years, I’ve noticed that people can either feel their powerlessness and have a tendency to get stuck in it or they completely deny their powerlessness and end up acting it out for all to see through their Narsi (narcissistic) or avoidant defensive strategies. Be curious with me now, why would I need to prove I’m superior if I felt good about myself already? Powerlessness is the part of us that was never taught the truth about us. It’s the part of us that has no idea how to feel good about ourselves.
This powerlessness comes form unmet emotional needs in childhood. The need for validation of our feelings, our value, our lovability. It’s the part of us that was not validated for our Essence qualities inside, but instead was made wrong by our caretaker’s own defensives strategies. All defensive strategies are trying to be right or trying not to be wrong. So when they are trying to be right, they make others wrong. These feelings of wrongness, when conveyed from parent to child, is what imprints a powerlessness in our Unconscious Procedural Manual.
Our parent’s were not usually intentionally wanting us to feel like the wrong one.
Without mindful awareness they wouldn’t be able to tell that they even slipped into defensive strategies. Our defensive strategies run in our Unconscious Procedural Manual so we are not aware of them until we get curious about them. Since defensive strategies are not curious because they are too busy trying to be right, they don’t know the harm that they do. They sabotage our relationships by destroying the intimacy and love that is there.
It is our defensives strategies that sabotage our lives. Oh they solve one big problem for us. They keep us, momentarily at least, from feeling powerlessness by making others or life wrong. But once the problem is out there, we then need to try to manage and control the “out there’s” instead of focusing on transforming our “in here’s.” Trying to manage the “out there’s” is what causes us to royally screw ourselves and our life.
We can’t really control anything “out there” and even trying-to, prevents us from transforming what we can control “in here.” Trying to control things we can’t ends up with us putting most of our precious time and energy into trying to keep other people and life from making us feel bad about ourselves. This is each of us getting stuck in reacting to life instead of creating the life we want to live.
Sweet Bud, be curious about conflict instead of trying to be right. Be compassionate to be powerful instead of trying not to be wrong so you don’t feel powerless. Your Essence transforms your current experience and your life. Your powerlessness and defensive strategies try to prove your worthy without knowing how to actually feel worthy from the inside out. So they sabotage you. I’ve got a challenge for you Bud. Make a list of all the Essence qualities you can think of. The ones you know you’re good at and the ones you’re not so good at. Hint: Essence qualities are our core values. They are how you want to act and where you want to make choices from all the time.
Right now, you might be stuck wanting to be your ideal self, the self you always want to be but don’t always know how to get there. Realizing you can transform your ideal self into your authentic self by learning to trust your Essence qualities instead of your being right defensive strategies during conflict, challenges, and stress gives you some insight on why it’s so hard to be your authentic self at some times and easy at other times.
Let’s explore more about how to be authentic on the next go round my friend. For now, Aunt JD signing off with love in my eyes for you as you show up in all your authenticity and how you’re becoming aware of your non-authenticity.
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