If you are feeling a greater sense of powerlessness these days, you are not alone. The COVID-19 pandemic has had catastrophic impact on the lives of many people that is beyond their control. The looming economic crisis and other local major political issues may also affect you in ways that you have limited power to change. All these can instil a sense of powerlessness in even the most mentally resilient people.
Powerlessness often arises when you are not able to effect control on your external environment or your destiny by making decisions.
“Powerlessness is most likely to be experienced when there is a sharp divide between those wielding power and decision making authority.” — Barnes and Mercer
A powerless person feels that he is the victim who can only passively accept the consequences of the decisions made by a higher external authority. While this can arise in any imperfect democracy, this is especially true in an autocracy whose Government officials are in effect not accountable for their wrongdoing or poor decisions and are hard-handed in stifling dissent. Consequently citizens are compelled to continually suffer from poor policy, without the systemic power to change the status quo.
Besides eroding a person’s sense of autonomy over important aspects of his life, powerlessness can also de-motivate him from seeking solutions to his external problems that caused his powerlessness.
Psychologist Martin Seligman, one of the founding fathers of modern positive psychology, discovered that powerlessness could lead to a condition called “learned helplessness”. A person suffering from learned helplessness has been repeatedly subjected to painful or unpleasant stimuli from which he was unable to escape after repeated attempts, and eventually lost the desire to escape at all, even when he is later given a way out. So powerlessness can have damaging effect on a person’s ability to solve the problems that caused his powerlessness. This can create a vicious cycle of self-reinforcing pessimism.
Powerlessness can also have adverse impact on health. According to research by public health scholar Nina Wallerstein, powerlessness is a “broad-based risk factor for disease”, while empowerment promotes health. So if you are feeling powerless especially for a prolonged period of time, it may be time to learn to solve this problem.
A person who experiences powerlessness tends to focus mainly on his inability to change his external circumstances. This way of thinking omits the power he has over himself. This power over himself is the responsibility of each individual — to define his unique self.
“Man’s main task is to give birth to himself.” — Erich Fromm
You can empower yourself by carrying out your responsibility to find your purpose in life and “giving birth to yourself”.
According to Fromm, powerlessness and the resulting anxiety can be overcome by:
- discovering your own ideas and abilities via creativity
- embracing your individual uniqueness
- developing your ability to love freely without imposing your own traits on other people
Tips on actions you can take to empower yourself:
- Focus more energy on that which is within your control and utilises your strengths
This will help strengthen your power over yourself and your awareness of it. One way is to take some time every day to engage in your hobbies. Hobbies are an excellent creative means of discovering and developing your strengths and helping you define your unique self in a non-judgmental way. (Please see my Medium post “How You Can Achieve Spiritual Growth From The Pandemic”) on how hobbies can be a way to promote spiritual growth.)
2. Interpret meaning in your difficulties
The uniqueness of every individual entails that he has the creative capacity to interpret his external environment in his own way, as artists typically do. If you interpret your relationship with your external problems as meaningful, while understanding and accepting their negative aspects, you will be more able to empower yourself by creating your own purpose in life. It will also make the problems more bearable, which is especially important if they are expected to remain for a long time.
An example of interpreting meaning in one’s external environment is the case of a patient of the Viennese psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. His patient’s wife had died and he suffered as he missed her sorely. Frankl asked him what if the patient had died before his wife. The patient then realised that if he had died before his wife, she would have been the one to suffer the grief, so his suffering ceased to be so by becoming meaningful in sparing his wife of the pain of bereavement.
By reinterpreting meaning in his suffering, the patient managed to reclaim his power over himself and cease to see his experience as merely suffering. You can be similarly creative in interpreting the external circumstances that make you feel powerless.
3. Learn from examples of people who have overcome powerlessness
It is easy to think that your difficult problems are special when you put most of your attention on them. In fact, although every problem is unique in some way, the degree of hardship that arises is not.
There are numerous people who have suffered much more hardship from their problems that seemed beyond their control at the time. Yet, they refused to let their external problems strip them of their inner power, and continued to strive to solve their problems against all odds until they have succeeded.
A classic historical example is the Jews during the Holocaust. Compared to their lives in the concentration camps, social distancing and temporary lockdown with access to daily necessities, the Internet, Netflix and video games today seem much more endurable.
4. Practise meditation
Meditation helps you become aware of the wholeness of the self. One of the common schools of meditation is the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) founded by American psychologist and biologist Jon Kabat-Zinn in the 1990s, which is based on Buddhist meditation. Its has since gained worldwide popularity from its confirmed health benefits.
The key to this form of meditation is mindfulness, which means paying attention to our sensations, feelings, and thoughts as they come and go in the present moment in a non-judgmental way.
I have practised MBSR for several years. My experience of the short-term benefit of MBSR is that it helps you relax and calm down in a stressful situation. In the long run, if you practise regularly, you will be more at peace with your own positive and negative emotions, as you become more aware of the wholeness of your self.
You can learn MBSR by enrolling in a class (or an online class during the pandemic) in your local city. You will also benefit greatly from the mutual sharing of your classmates’ experiences and insights .
5. Show thoughtful care and give help to those in need
Helping others in need, paradoxically, empowers yourself as you are taking action to use your power to create positive energy in your external environment.
“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.” — Barack Obama, former US President
Giving genuine help requires respecting the uniqueness and autonomy of the ones you intend to help—you do not give what you think the other needs, but you show care as equals and offer help based on your knowledge of the other’s actual desires and needs. You give them the freedom to accept or reject your help without feeling hurt or offended. These are acts of loving freely according to Fromm.
Showing such thoughtful care and giving appropriate help will also strengthen your connectedness with others, as you give them the space they need to be themselves. The reinforced connectedness helps build trust and reduce the anxiety that gives rise to powerlessness.
Powerlessness can arise easily from the unprecedented uncertainty about our external environment and our future in the light of the pandemic, the looming economic crisis and other major political issues that affect you. But no external high authority or problem can deprive you of your power over yourself. It is your responsibility to exercise this inner power to find your purpose in life. Your problems are unlikely to remain unsolvable if you are able to take up this fundamental responsibility.
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Previously published on medium
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Photo credit: by Trần Toàn on Unsplash