All people are powerful. But some don’t know it yet. Or they confuse being powerful with being controlling or intimidating.
At the core of being a powerful person is self-control: the ability to make choices and follow through with them, to regulate our own emotions and needs and take responsibility for our own life. Self-control means that we actively manage our freedom.
Trauma can make us blind for our own freedom because we confuse helplessness with powerlessness. Abuse has limited our choices, but it has never taken them all away. Our freedom can never fully be taken from us, we are always free to choose, which means that we can never completely be controlled by someone else. They can use force on the body, but the mind is free. They cannot control what we think or how we feel about them. If we chose to forgive someone, they couldn’t stop us. Our attitude is ours and cannot be controlled by anyone but us.
In many ways even our dissociation is an expression of us being powerful. They couldn’t make us stay present. And even in the worst situations where they tried to control how we split, they couldn’t control it perfectly and there are parts who could hide. There is a freedom that belongs to the human soul that cannot be taken away. This is the source of our power. No man can control you. This is a big concept, but once we understand it, our life will be turned upside down.
When we explore our freedom and our choice we will discover that our life is ours to control. We will notice it in the way we phrase our sentence. “I have to do this“ will be exchanged with “I chose to do this because I like the consequences“ and “I can’t stay any longer“ will be replaced by “I choose to leave now because I value my sleep“. We will stop saying “He made me angry“, because we are well aware that this is not possible, he cannot control us and instead admit that “I am angry“, knowing that we could change our feeling if we decided to.
When we face a problem where we are truly helpless we know that we still have the power to do something about it, like ask for help, find therapy or identify a part of the problem we can influence.
Understanding that we are a powerful person is key to overcoming a victim mentality and chronic helplessness. We will start to happen to the world instead of letting it happen to us.
These are some signs of a powerful person.
You
- manage your resources like time, money, energy or attention well
- say “no“ to things you don’t want or that are not good for you
- do self-care
- express your emotions and needs
- take care of your own needs and wishes
- ask for help when you can’t handle something alone
- know your own values
- set boundaries
- confront behavior that is harming your relationships
- don’t use punishment as a relationship tool
- don’t feel the need to rescue other people
- regulate your emotions and let others regulate theirs
- take responsibility for your actions, and mistakes, and learn from them
- say what you will do instead of telling others what they should do
- use vulnerability in communication instead of manipulation, control or intimidation
- share your truth and listen to other people’s truth
- know that other people are powerful too and treat them accordingly
- respect other people’s boundaries, needs, values and choices
- have your own goals in life and pursue them
- are free to love and let others love you
- ….
- ….
Many of these things never had a chance to grow in our life because of neglect, harmful parenting and the effects of abuse. It is not too late to develop maturity in our personality and learn how to do this. It takes time, but it is absolutely worth it. Why? Because it removes the constant anxiety. Being powerful feels good. It feels free.
We are not an island and we are in contact with people every day. Some of them know that they are powerful and some don’t. Relationship patterns could look like this:
‘Powerless’ + ‘powerless’ = controlling
Instead of managing themselves people anxiously try to manage each other.
Powerful + ‘powerless’ = dependent
One is exhausted by always managing the other, who is dependent and often secretly resentful.
Powerful + powerful = free
Both people manage themselves. This is were love can flourish.
When we are just learning to step into our identity as powerful people we need to be careful not to enter drama, when we are approached by ‘powerless’ people. They are just like us, free and powerful and able to take responsibility for their lives. That means that they don’t need to be rescued from their choices and the consequences of their choices. If we fix that for them, we actually take away their chance to learn how to be powerful. They don’t need us to control them (we already learned that this is not possible) and they don’t need us to regulate them.
To step out of an unhealthy dynamic with ‘powerless’ people we cannot demand that they change. We have to change, so that powerless tactics like manipulation, control or intimidation won’t work on us anymore. It means that we have to become good with both assertiveness and boundaries.
It helps to find powerful people and spend time with them. They can demonstrate to us how to communicate and they can keep us accountable as we learn. Making mistakes is not a problem. Because we are responsible for them we can fix them and they become valuable lessons that can guide us to greater security in our social skills.
The pursuit of becoming a powerful person as it is described above has had the greatest impact on my healing from cPTSD. No therapy tool and no memory work has had the same freeing effect. I hope you will consider it as a goal for yourself.
More about why it is important to become a powerful person in growing love
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