2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Powerlessness and helplessness are unwanted guests and, often, outcasts, on the list of valuable experiences. Joy, for example, is pleasant to experience. And powerlessness and helplessness have no right to be and happen to me! Forbidding oneself to experience them, a person loses part of his humanity, loses the ability to accept and feel the warmth, tenderness, care of another person and to give them sincerely.
Why are these feelings so diligently avoided?
Helplessness is a state that means: I can't cope on my own. A healthy reaction would be: I need help. And then it remains only to find the supposedly necessary person and ask. This can happen in different areas and planes of life. On the physical level: “My hand is injured, I cannot open the door. Can you help?”; “I don't have time to do two important things. Please help me!" On a psychological level: “I'm scared to go there alone. See me, please "; “I am very anxious, stay with me”; "I don't understand how to solve this problem, explain or suggest a solution if you know."
Helplessness is when I don’t know what to do, I don’t understand how I can cope with the situation alone; when you lack your own strength and internal resources and you need the help of another. But how we react and act in this situation depends on the experience gained in childhood. If a child experiencing difficulty was supported, his requests were answered, helped to cope, then it is normal to be helpless and it is clear how to act. Moreover, when asking for help, you can simultaneously learn and give in exchange something that the other may need. You can get benefits and pleasure from this process. And if they were ashamed, ignored, laughed at, helped from above, or from their own shame provided help before the child realized his need for help and asked for it, then helplessness becomes a very painful condition. And it turns out to be absolutely impossible to ask for help at the necessary moments.
This is how powerlessness is born - you lack your resources, turn to the world, to another person, you are ashamed and scared for help. Added to this is despair and the belief that it will always be this way. Dead end. And there is no understanding and experience of how something can be changed. A person is left alone with his insoluble problem. In those moments when a person cannot admit his powerlessness and accept it, then it is expressed through tears, screaming, rage, destructive behavior towards oneself or others.
Intolerance and rejection of one's need and weakness can be found in communication with another person who is in a helpless state:
- irresistibly wants to start doing something for him, to save, for example. Without waiting for a request and not wondering if help is needed. To be involved in his situation, as if it were my problem.
- compulsively giving advice and step-by-step instructions on what he needs to do to solve a difficult issue. In any way, influence him, force him to do something, only so that he does not remain so helpless. Get angry and angry with a person because he does nothing, that he still has not become happy, but continues to complain and suffer.
- if it was not possible to “save” him, diligently, under various pretexts, avoid contact. Less, but better not to communicate at all.
Why is it difficult to admit your helplessness? Because then we must admit that I am not self-sufficient, unable to cope, that I am needy, weak and, as it were, flawed. In these moments, I experience myself as a very vulnerable, unprotected, open target that anyone can throw a stone at. Any inaccurate word or movement of another person who is nearby, even unintentionally, can be very hurtful.
It is very unsafe to admit that you need help and support. What good will it be if you open up in your helplessness to another? Then he will receive full power over me, and will be able to do anything with me: reject, laugh, disgrace in front of others (everything that was done to me in childhood). Moreover, it is not known whether they will give help and support or not, and it does not depend on me. Opening up - there are many risks.
To admit your powerlessness means to be disappointed and to abandon the image of yourself as omnipotent and omnipotent, that you can always do something, that powerlessness simply does not exist - this is just an excuse and justification for laziness. Give up the idea that I can control and take into account everything, and create absolute emotional security for myself, and I will never be hurt again, I will never have to humiliate myself and ask for help, and get hurt in case of refusal. Get rid of the illusion that I do not need anyone, and I can cope with all the difficulties myself.
What is the value of accepting your powerlessness and helplessness? This allows, finally, to see a dead end situation, a stopping point in its development. Life stands still, and a person is not moving anywhere, although at the same time he can perform a lot of useless exhausting actions and efforts, give all his best, get tired, but never come to the desired result. See it all and try it differently …
… I am a man among people. In something strong, in something weak. Each of us has moments of instability, confusion and weakness. How much happiness can there be in supporting someone who is now in difficulty, to share what I have in abundance! And how much happiness and freedom there is in allowing yourself to be in need, without wearing the mask of omnipotence, thereby giving the other person the opportunity to show their love, tenderness and care!
How to stop, not run anywhere and admit your own powerlessness? How to recognize helplessness and not distance yourself from people at this moment? How can I overcome the horror of being seen as vulnerable and seek support? These are very difficult tasks. There is a lot of respect not only for those who provide help, but also for those who have the courage to admit this need. Respect for the one who finds the strength to be not God, but Human …
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