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How to Empower Yourself When You Feel Powerless and Helpless
Lately, you’ve been feeling powerless and helpless. Maybe you’ve experienced a devastating loss. Maybe you’re going through a difficult situation, and you feel stuck. Maybe there’s always been an undercurrent of I just can’t do this. I can’t change my circumstances. This is just how it is (and maybe always will be).
Thankfully, just because you feel powerless and helpless doesn’t mean you actually are. This happens because when we get scared, we get tunnel vision, said New York City psychologist Lauren Appio, Ph.D. And it becomes “hard for us to take a step back and review our options because in this state of mind, we don’t feel we have any.”
Or, if we start considering options, we zero in on the potential threats, she said. We fear we’ll make the wrong decision, and feel deep regret.
Sometimes, people feel powerless and helpless because they’ve been regularly invalidated or treated as incompetent—and “it can be incredibly challenging to know how much power and influence you actually have in your life.”
While therapy is one of the best ways to work through these kinds of issues, especially if they’ve been going on for years, there are also actionable, relatively small steps you can take. Below, therapists shared their expert tips.
Identify your strengths and skills. Everyone has different natural talents and abilities they’ve honed throughout the years. To discover your’s, Appio suggested examining the times you’ve felt empowered and effectively took action: How did I feel in my body when I felt empowered? What thoughts crossed my mind? What actions did I take? What supports did I have? What worked well? Once you know what your specific abilities and talents are, you can use them to help with your current situation, she said.
Practice creative visualization. Our thinking creates our feelings, so in order to change our feelings, we need to change our thinking first, said Christy Monson, MFT, a retired psychotherapist and author of the book Finding Peace in Times of Tragedy.
Creative visualization—which is simply “daydreaming with a purpose”—helps to create a calm, healing inner world, and to connect to your inner wisdom, she said. For instance, a woman who’d lost her husband felt helpless and was having a hard time focusing on daily tasks. Every day she started visualizing herself discussing her feelings and the tasks she needed to do that day with her late husband. As Monson noted, they’d been married long enough so she knew how he’d respond. She was “able to continue life with him by her side in this visualization process.”
To practice this technique on your own, Monson suggested the below to connect to your inner child:
- Sit quietly and comfortably. Notice your hands and feet, and the chair you’re sitting in. Observe the light around you.
- Inhale through your nose slowly, counting your breath, and exhale slowly.
- Close your eyes, and picture a flight of stairs.
- Climb the stairs, and count each step until you get to 10. Pay attention to the stairs’ details (which can look however you’d like).
- Picture a beautiful space at the top of the stairs (which might be anything from a mountain to the beach to a park).
- Look around this beautiful place, and find the little girl or boy you were and get acquainted with him or her. What does she want? How can you protect him?
- Fill this scene with anything you’d like, and use all your senses to fully experience it. Savor the light around you, and “feel her [or him] healing in this place.”
- After caring for your inner child, care for yourself.
- Find your inner wise mentor, if you’d like, and discuss your concerns.
- When you’re finished, use the stairs to return.
- Give thanks for the beautiful place and the wonderful person you are.
Address your thoughts. Another way to work with your thoughts is to pay close attention to how they lead to feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness. For instance, maybe you start magnifying the negative, and not even thinking about the positive aspects of a situation. Maybe you start thinking catastrophic thoughts: What if I fail? What if everything goes wrong? What if it’s a complete disaster (like it always is)?
California-based psychotherapist Stefany D. Fuentes, LMFT, regularly has her clients review a list of cognitive distortions and identify whether each one sits hot, warm, or cold. Then she asks clients to challenge each distortion by exploring these questions: “What is the evidence that this thought is true? Is there an alternative explanation? What’s the worst thing that can happen? Has this situation unreasonably grown in importance? Am I worrying excessively about this?”
Take the first smallest step possible. We can quickly feel helpless and powerless when taking action feels overwhelming. This is why it’s vital to break it down, and as Appio said, “way down.” Make it so small, simple, and doable that it’s easy to take action.
For instance, Appio’s clients often need to feel empowered when speaking up for themselves (and their needs) with others. A small, simple, and totally doable step would be to notice you have a preference or need, and then name it for yourself, she said. Another small, simple, and totally doable step would be “expressing your preferences in lower-risk contexts, like offering your opinion about a movie you saw recently or where you’d to go for dinner.”
Consider this question. When we feel powerless, we often criticize and shame ourselves for past mistakes or bad decisions. Instead, try to refocus on solutions. Monson suggested contemplating this question: What will I do differently next time? Channel any regret or anger you’re holding onto into exploring creative, effective solutions for that next time.
Spotlight your why. Consider the deeper why of what you’re doing. That is, if you need to make a specific change, pinpoint the reason you’re taking action. Appio suggested considering: Why am I making this change? Why now? What will happen if I don’t make it? Then “stay connected to what makes the time and effort worth it for you.”
When you’re feeling powerless and helpless, and thinking similar thoughts, remember that this isn’t the truth. Remember that this is your fear talking (or years of ridiculous statements you’ve heard). Remember that you can take action—no matter how small a step might seem. Everything counts.
Remember that you can always reach out for help—whether that’s a loved one, a support group, or a therapist. This doesn’t make you weak. It makes you smart.
Remember that the way to effectively navigate difficult situations is simply to practice and grow your skills. And you can absolutely do that. You’ve likely done it before.
Psychology Around the Net: September 14, 2019
Let’s dive into this week’s Psychology Around the Net for some perspective on how we decide to trust the news we trust, new research on a hormone we secrete when we’re panicked, a survey that shows happy people don’t just ignore the social issues around them, and more.
Substance Use in the Food Service Industry: The American Addiction Centers recently conducted a survey that sheds some light on substance use among workers in the food service industry, an industry that is often stereotyped for drug and alcohol use. Among some of the findings: 10% of workers report they work while under the influence of drugs on the majority of their shifts and 6% report the same for alcohol; 16% of workers report they use alcohol more now than in the beginning of their careers and 10.75% report they use drugs more now than previously; and more than 40% of food service workers report they consider casual substance use to be a part of their work culture. What can we do with this information?
New Study: How Sexism Hurts Mental Health: Experiencing sexism can do more than just piss you off. According to a new study, women who reported experiencing sexism are three times more likely to also experience depression, psychological distress, and lower levels of self-rated and health and life satisfaction.
In the News We Trust: Several factors work together to sway whether we think a publisher is trustworthy including, but not limited to, how load times, navigability, and advertisement intrusiveness.
Your Bones Secrete a Hormone That Can Make You Panic, Scientists Find: Ever get that uneasy, feel-it-in-your-bones sensation? Well, it’s not all in your head — it actually is in your bones. Gerard Karsenty, a geneticist at Columbia University, is interested in studying how our skeletons support us physical as well as how they interact with the rest of our body. He and his colleagues released a new study that shows our bones secrete a hormone, osteocalcin, when we’re in stressful situations. Osteocalcin, which is produced by some of the same cells that make bones, seems to be important to our fight-or-flight response and separate from other kinds of stress chemicals such as adrenaline.
When Inattention and Forgetfulness Go Together: People who have ADHD tend to experience both inattention and forgetfulness…but why do these two things connected?
Happiness Doesn’t Make You Ignore Social Problems: The “Pollyanna hypothesis” states that happy people might be too happy to care about current issues and less likely to take action to improve society. However, a new study contradicts this hypothesis. Researchers recently surveyed three groups of people to find out how generally happy they are and how much they care about a particular social issue. Survey participants reported on actions they had taken related to the issue and any future action plans. Some participants reported on their willingness to sign up on the spot to take action. Says lead researcher Kostadin Kushlev: “There’s a naïve belief out there that maybe we shouldn’t be focused on making people happier or increasing their well-being because they won’t be motivated to do anything […] But our findings suggest the opposite: Being happier links to more action, not less.”
How racism harms children
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Racism hurts children, in real and fundamental ways. It hurts not just their health, but their chances for a good, successful life.
That’s the bottom line message of a new policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). It is a call to action for all of us. If we care about the health and future of all of our children, it says, we need to take real steps to end racism — and to help and support those who are affected by it.
Racism informs our actions when we structure opportunities for and assign value to people based on our interpretation of how they look. Biologically we are truly just one race, sharing 99.9% of our genes no matter what the color of our skin or what part of the world we come from. But historically we have found ways to not just identify differences, but to oppress people because of them. Racism grew out of and helped rationalize colonization and slavery. Despite our biological sameness, people continue to look for differences — and claim superiority. While we have made historical progress, the beliefs and oppression that underpin racism persist; it is, as the AAP statement calls it, a “socially transmitted disease.”
How does racism affect health and well-being in children?
And it truly is a disease. Racism and its effects can lead to chronic stress for children. And chronic stress leads to actual changes in hormones that cause inflammation in the body, a marker of chronic disease. Stress that a mother experiences during pregnancy can affect children even before they are born. Despite improvements in health care, racial disparities exist in infant mortality as well as low birthweight.
These days, it’s important to think about chronic stress for the children of immigrant families. Many live in constant fear of being separated from their parents if they haven’t been already.
Children raised in African-American, Hispanic, and American Indian populations are more likely to live in homes with higher unemployment and lower incomes than white children. This means that they are less likely to have good housing, good nutrition, good access to health care, and access to good education. Such disparities increase their risk of health problems and of receiving less, and lower-quality, education.
Even when minority children live in wealthier areas, research shows that they are often treated differently by teachers. They are more likely to be harshly punished for minor infractions, less likely to be identified as needing special education, and teachers may underestimate their abilities. And when a teacher doesn’t believe in you, you are less likely to believe in yourself.
Referencing the National Center for Education Statistics, the AAP statement notes that in the 2015–2016 school year, 88% of white students graduated from high school. In comparison, only 76% of African Americans, 72% of American Indians and 79% of Hispanics did the same. This is important not just in terms of economic opportunity but also in terms of health: adults with a college degree live longer and have lower rates of chronic disease than those who did not graduate from college.
The juvenile justice system is another place where racism plays out. Minority youth are more likely to be incarcerated, with all the health and emotional consequences this brings, both during incarceration and after. Being incarcerated forever changes a person — and changes how others see them.
Discrimination extends beyond racism
The statement points out that it is important to remember that it’s not just the color of one’s skin that can lead to discrimination and all the problems that brings. Differences in sex, religion, sexual orientation, and immigration status can lead to discrimination, as can having a disability.
The policy statement reminds us that children are being hurt every day by racism and discrimination, and the effects can be not only permanent but continue through generations. There is real urgency to this.
How can we help change course on racism and discrimination?
Fixing racism and discrimination is obviously not easy and cannot be quick. But there are things we can all do immediately.
- We can take a hard look at ourselves, take stock of our beliefs and our biases, and work to change them.
- As part of this, we need to think about and change how we talk about each other, as individuals and as a society.
- We need to speak up when we hear or see racism or discrimination in any form. Empowering ourselves and each other is an important way to begin.
- We need to talk to our children about racism, and teach them healthier ways to think about themselves and each other.
- We need to work to stop institutional racism.
- We need to work with our schools to be sure that all children, no matter what, have access to a good and supportive education. This is no small endeavor, but it needs to be our goal.
- We need to be sure that there are programs in place to not just help people who are poor or struggling, but lift them out of poverty.
- We need to be sure our laws truly protect all people, not just some people.
This is about the future of our children — and our children are our future.
The post How racism harms children appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.
Five confirmed cholera deaths in Sudan since August 28
Five confirmed cholera deaths in Sudan since August 28
Reuters: Health
There have been five confirmed deaths from cholera in Sudan's Blue Nile state since Aug. 28, the health ministry said in a statement.
Reuters: Health
There have been five confirmed deaths from cholera in Sudan's Blue Nile state since Aug. 28, the health ministry said in a statement.
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