Suck Back Your Power
We all need to feel as if we can predict and control our lives. So when something unpredictable or uncontrollable occurs, such as the threat of joblessness or stock market loses, we can feel powerless. Then the mere state of feeling powerless can trigger all the so-called “negative” affects (shame, distress, fear, anger, disgust, dissmell). And we can freak out.
Our society, and in fact all societies, mandate that we suppress, or at the very least, don’t show many of those “negative” emotional states. But what happens to the emotional energy when we suppress our emotions? The suppression causes a kind of emotional and physiological back-up. That back-up we call “stress.”
What can we do?
The first step is to acknowledge your real feelings. Don’t hide in the generality of “I’m stressed out.” One way to recognize the state of experienced powerlessness is when you are feeling intense rage. You can say to yourself, or another person, “I feel so helpless and I’m furious at feeling that way!”
The next step is to observe the situation and determine in what ways you can take your power back. We do have power over how we react to any of life’s scary events and states.
One way to regain power is to realize the things over which we do not have power. You can’t make someone hire you. You cannot make someone love you. You cannot make the Dow Jones Industrial Average go up. Focusing on the areas in which you do have power is restorative.
To take back your power involves setting realistic expectations. If you are looking for a job, know that it most likely will not happen overnight. It may take months. Don’t demand something impossible of yourself.
Another way to regain your inner power is to make sure you separate yourself and disengage from any belief (if you have it) that these life events mean that YOU are inadequate. Even if someone else is so threatened that they are blaming you, you can over time, learn that YOU are not your job or your earning capacity. You can learn not to take inside and believe the evaluations, criticisms and rejections from others.
I don’t dismiss the pain, even anguish, that you may go through on the way to developing the skill of detaching your self- worth from external circumstances. But developing that ability may be an enourmous gift that later you will say was well worth the initial “stress.”
