Powerlessness: Making your powerlessness smaller
Sometimes you can explode with helplessness. It can infuriate you that someone is not cooperating in achieving your goals. These can be business goals and personal goals. Or you may feel powerless because you are not succeeding in changing your own behavior, why isn't your willpower stronger?
In this blog, I discuss powerlessness and power and what causes you to experience more sense of power and less sense of powerlessness
What is power?
To understand what powerlessness is, it’s important to first understand what power is. Power is the ability to exercise control over your environment. If you can get your dog to sit on command, you have power over your dog. If you can tidy up your house, you have power in your home, and if you can get people to do what you want (whether or not through positive influence), then you have power over people.
What is powerlessness?
Powerlessness is the opposite of power. For example, you are not able to eat healthily. You are not able to make that dog sit. You are not able to clean up your house, and you do not have the power to make people do what you want, regardless of whether you use positive or negative influence to achieve this.
The psychology of powerlessness
What makes you feel powerful or powerless right now? Research[1] shows that your internal sense of power—your self-control —influences this feeling. In addition, your social interactions affect this feeling.
Initially, your ego and how big it is matter to your sense of power. When your ego becomes smaller due to your failure to control yourself you already have a smaller sense of power. You already feel more powerless. This has nothing to do with whether you can get people to do what you want.
When you do feel in control of yourself you have a greater sense of power.
Because self-control can run out when you have to do things all day that drain your energy, you can therefore feel more powerless at the end of such a day than at the beginning of such a day.
When it comes to power over others, the ability to get along with people is important. Research shows that when you feel powerless, you have a strong motivation to get along with others and make friends. The researchers had expected that people with power would be less affected by this, but they were unable to prove it.
So whether you have power or not, you want to get along with other people[2]. You seek to connect with people, so to speak.
When you feel powerless, it is also very normal to then look for situations that give you more options. Situations in which you have more options to choose from[3].
Making the feeling of powerlessness smaller
If you look at what matters to the sense of power these are 3 things, namely:
- Self-Control
- Social connections (helping you)
- Opportunities to make your own choices
Self-Control
Self-control is about your own behavior—whether you can do or not do certain things. Quitting smoking, for example, is very difficult because you quickly become addicted, but if you succeed, you’ll immediately feel a lot more in control.
If you feel powerless because you just can't seem to master certain behaviors, a hypnosis expert can help you with this. Quitting smoking, for example, is something that is often done with the help of hypnosis. The healthy not smoking is then easier to carry out.
Improving your self-control can certainly be done with hypnosis, especially if you know what behavior (or lack of behavior) you are most frustrated with, you can reinforce it with hypnosis.
With guided visualization, for example, you can ensure that you perform the desired behavior more often, giving you a greater sense of power.
Social connections (helping you)
A feeling of powerlessness can also arise because the people you deal with are totally out of sync with your thoughts and goals. This can range from misunderstanding of your situation or your way of working to actual opposition.
Nothing is more frustrating.
You may even have tried all kinds of things by then. Slithering to get your way. Threatening to get your way. Nothing helps.
In that case, it’s better to seek out like-minded people. This is also why it’s so important to determine during a job interview whether or not you’re a good fit for the team. It may feel like a petty rejection, but if you’re not on the same page, working together (and therefore getting your way every now and then) becomes very difficult.
You can gather new people around you in many ways. For example, there are Facebook groups for finding new friends. You can look for another job and, as an entrepreneur, you can look at several networking groups that suit you and, of course, after networking, meet with those entrepreneurs you really click with.
Opportunities to make choices
Do you feel like you can't make choices? Then it is important to realize that you always have a choice, in fact, you always have the choice to leave.
After all, not choosing to tackle something different is also a choice to continue in the way things are now.
If you don't have opportunities at work to control how you do your work, you can always determine the state in which you do your work. You determine with what attitude you do your work. For example, if you work at McDonald's you often have to do everything in a set way. Bring a good mood and set yourself a goal, for example, to do everything as neatly as possible or as quickly as possible.
You can also choose to leave and find another job with more freedom of choice.
If you think you have no choice, check to see if that's really the case. Check to see if someone else is making you feel this way, or if it is actually true. Remember that you always have the choice to leave, and then again the choices are endless.
Enhancing sense of power with hypnosis
There are certain situations when you feel super powerless, such as when you are a victim of violence. Research on the role of hypnosis to reduce trauma caused by sexual violence shows that hypnosis helps to enhance the feeling of power in order to thus suffer less from the trauma of such an event[4].
Visualizations
As with visualizing behaviors you don't normally have the self-control for, other visualizations about making choices can reduce your powerlessness. Walking away from bad situations and finding like-minded people is going to help you do this in real life, strengthening your sense of power.
Hypnotic suggestions
Another way is by repeating hypnotic suggestions that reinforce your sense of power. For example, these are ways to install new helping beliefs in your subconscious.
You can listen to them or repeat them aloud. For example:
"I am a leader not a follower."
"I make my own decisions."
"I will gather people around me with whom I am aligned."
"I have a voice that can be heard."
"I can do anything."
These are just examples. Depending on your own beliefs and blocks that make you feel powerless, a hypnosis expert can give you other suggestions that you can listen to or repeat out loud.
Regression
Sometimes it’s not entirely clear why you feel powerless—which beliefs are causing that sense of powerlessness. In that case, regression can offer a solution. Through regression, you go back to the moment in your life that gave rise to the belief causing you to feel powerless.
These are often events from your childhood because that is when you form beliefs about life. This allows you to discover very surprising blocking beliefs.
Because you can now look at it with less emotion and more mature knowledge, you can get rid of those blocking beliefs quickly, which will soon make you feel more powerful again.
Would you like to learn more about exactly how hypnosis works and how you can use it to help yourself and others? Then come to the hypnosis workshop or sign up for one of our training programs. Ask about our online options.
Also pin this handy infographic as a reminder:
Sources:
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167215574993
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.2089
[3] https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/what-happens-to-us-when-we-feel-powerless.html
[4] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00029157.1988.10402767