CONTENTS
The payoff for being powerless
The hope of making things right this time
The costs
Powerlessness creates fear
How we created the myth
The basic fear and the derivative fears
The indicators of underlying beliefs of powerlessness
Stories and beliefs that perpetuate the powerlessness lie
Boulder-dash and bullbleep!
Make the choice now and don't let go
To get out of powerlessness you must give up all stories
Possible affirmations
For additional understanding read these
Helplessness is related
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THE PAYOFF FOR BEING POWERLESS
Many people create it in their minds that there is a payoff to being powerless (or helpless or dependent, which are virtually the same idea). The believed payoff makes it difficult to give up, just as in a similar way it seems hard to give up believing one is still a child. Being powerless also allows a person to be a victim and get similar payoffs, plus pity (attention) as a surrogate form of love. There is benefit to studying the triumvirate of powerless, victim, and child - all three of which are similar but not true.
One of the bits of reasoning here is that if they give up being powerless, then they'll have to be responsible for their own lives - which could feel like finally abandoning the idea that one will be rescued or that one can be loved unconditionally and given that which one so sorely missed in childhood. Giving up this hope can leave one being afraid of facing responsibility, and if one also gives up being victim at the same time, one is left with no one to blame, but oneself (this is a figurative statement, as there is no "blame" in responsibility. When one "gets" (understands fully) this, one is empowered to stop blaming!
People are looking for recognition that they are victims, so they keep holding themselves as being a victim, thereby, illogically, preserving their chance of being recognized and cared for. They stay powerless little people, hoping that someone will rescue them.
You've got to recognize that none of the "reasoning" for getting a positive payoff overall are true. And since there is no cheese down that tunnel, it would pay to stop being dumber than a rat (see Addictions for the elucidation of what this means in life and note that holding onto the idea of being powerless is a form of addiction and just as stupid and possibly more harmful).
THE HOPE OF MAKING THINGS RIGHT THIS TIME
A major psychological tenet is that much of what we do later in life (if we live without sufficient use of our higher brain) is from a desire to "right" the wrong or "correct" the situation or "get the love" one never got from one's caregiver - to resolve the unresolved [and unresolvable in the manner normally addressed]. Many people do not accept the idea that it was not possible for anyone out there to give sufficiently enough to a child to fulfill all the child's needs.
Even Harville Hendrix, of relationship fame, says that when we get "excited" when meeting that "special someone", it is really about the primitive mind seeing characteristics of the caregiver who never gave us enough (love, attention, understanding, etc.) - and the reason it gets excited is because now it has an opportunity to get it right, to get all the totally unconditional love from that "caregiver surrogate". (This is why one feels "chemistry", which is literally true, as that is what the primitive mind generates. See the movie What The Bleep Do We Know and/or read The Physics Of The Mind.) But, lo and behold, after a while, those same characteristics prove not to work once again! (Duh!)
The hope of anyone else "making it right" or receiving true unconditional loving is like a fairly tale that we want to believe, perhaps in fond memory of the security we felt as a child. Yes, one can have complaints about one's childhood, but still have selective memories of feeling safe and/or loved, at least for a brief and memorable moment here and there.
Giving up the fairy tale is essential. It won't happen!
Once you give it up, then you can go about using what "free" people do - take responsibility for creating one's own happiness, with no dependence on others to create the basic foundation.
THE COSTS
Fear
Loss of self-esteem
Give up benefits of your doing for yourself what works
Loss of power in life
Loss of happiness
Feeling "at effect", rather than "at cause"
Confusion
POWERLESSNESS CREATES FEAR
Believing one is powerless creates all sorts of fears and those fears create symptoms. Read The Symptoms Of Fear - See what the symptoms are and then trace them back to your core fear. Your fear is obviously heightened if you feel you can't handle what comes up in life. Read Fearlessness and Undesired Outcomes to understand this fully.
HOW WE CREATED THE MYTH
The conclusions we drew as a child and how they created our fears are discussed in Our Core Desires And Fears, which also identifies the fear-want connection. (If you want me to expand that, email me.)
As a powerless child dependent on the big people to feed us, we made up a little system of things that we tied to survival. If we were “bad” or “wrong”, then we construed (made up) that as a threat to our survival, since the big people might not love us which would mean that they would not feed us. That could have been “kind of” the truth when we were indeed little and powerless. But we are capable of surviving now but have failed to recognize it.
Claudia Black, in The Missing Piece, Solving The Puzzle Of Self: "Children experience difficulties in their lives when they fail to believe that they have power over their own lives. Unfortunately so many of us as children had few, if any, models of people who were truly in touch with their own internal power. Even more hurtful, many of us had models of people who used power over others in a hurtful way."
It's time to give up operating from these totally untrue premises, that are definitely not true now!
THE BASIC FEAR AND THE DERIVATIVE FEARS
Basic Fear: I won’t be fed by the big people. And therefore I won’t survive. (No
longer true.)
Derivative fears (and derivative of the derivatives)
1. I am powerless and must depend on them to feed me. (No longer true.)
The following one appears to be a derivative of this one:
1A. I must have their approval or they’ll abandon me and I’ll die. (No longer true, as are all the ones below.)
1A1. I must be worthy (“good enough”) to be loved and keep them there.
1A1a. I must not be flawed or they won’t love me.
1A1a - 1 I must be right.
1A1a - 2 I must not make mistakes.
1A1a - 3 I must not do “bad” things.
1A2. I must be attractive and pleasing, so they’ll love me and stay.
1A2a. I must look good, be smart, and/or be perfect…
1A3. I must have the approval of others.
Since 1A is untrue the derivatives must be untrue, though they can be proven to be untrue on their own.
Nevertheless we let ourselves get trapped within an old false paradigm that existed in our childhood, acting as if it were still as true as it might have been then. The trap is in having to have someone from the outside provide what is necessary for us to be "happy" (at least in our minds and in not ever having that fulfilled for us.
Powerlessness always produces bad results over the long term.
THE INDICATORS OF UNDERLYING BELIEFS OF POWERLESSNESS
All of these are from a powerless basis, and all of them are dysfunctional and manipulative, rather than direct and effective:
___ Complaining ___ Getting angry ___ Blaming ___ Gossiping
___ Lying in order to get something ___ Making others wrong
___ Being stuck in "being right" ___ Using force or "mock" force
___ Telling stories where you are the victim
STORIES AND BELIEFS THAT PERPETUATE THE POWERLESSNESS LIE
Out of our powerlessness viewpoint as a child and out of its sister viewpoint of we "must be loved to be fed, we have created this tremendous complexity of fictions based endlessly upon other fictions. We set them up as if they are real and make them into a "pink elephant", created by us as a child.
I’m nothing without love.
I must have love.
I’m not good enough unless someone loves me.
I’ve got to be popular.
I’ve got to get approval.
I must figure out my whole childhood.
I must learn to forgive. .
Then, we spend our lives feeding and walking around the pink elephant, as if it were real instead of being a fictional basis we created as a child and then added to in order to be consistent with the original (false) conclusions!!
It is incredible that we would live this way, with our life unduly held back by this farce.
BOULDER-DASH AND BULLBLEEP!
Those concepts simply contain no truth. I am powerful and able to create what I need. And that’s it.
MAKE A CHOICE NOW AND DON'T LET IT GO
We are capable of making good decisions if we have adequate information and use our higher brain's reasoning power. And we need to accept that we do not make good decisions, except perhaps by chance, when we are not using our higher brain.
So it is imperative that we make all of our decisions when we are fresh and clear-minded and able to use our higher brains.
So, we ask here that you make these decisions right now - and don't leave them for later when you are not in your higher brain. And you should declare them strongly and affirm them so that you can build some neuronal pathways with what is true and useful - which will often compete with and win against some of the old programming.
Choose, and know that whatever you choose you cannot ever go back and deny:
___ I am weak (powerless).
___ I have the power to “do”; that is what power is.
TO GET OUT OF POWERLESSNESS YOU MUST GIVE UP ALL STORIES
Part of your commitment to stop the powerlessness syndrome would be to stop telling all stories that support it. Except for when you analyze and reword it, you will never repeat any such story to justify or to explain why you must be powerless because it was "done to you" and "cannot be changed" because you are stuck with the programming and cannot change it. [Of course, you can change it!]
The more you tell the story, the more the neuronal pathways are reinforced, including the fears that are attached to it. Give them up and the neuronal pathways will weaken and the material will be used by the brain for constructing your new pathways.
This is an absolute, require pledge, if you want the desired result of happiness.
___ I will continue to tell the stories.
___ In order to evoke sympathy
___ In order to convince others that I am powerless and need rescue.
___ I swear that I will do my absolute best to cease telling any of these stories
POSSIBLE AFFIRMATIONS
I know that I am powerful and that is it, period, end of story! I need not engage in any conversation or action indicating powerlessness.
I am no longer passive. I know that I have power and that I can choose to use it or not. No one else is going to rescue me, so I am the one who will make my life be what I want. More and more, I am living into the power to do what I can
Take each one of the powerlessness-based beliefs and say the opposite:
It is bullbleep that I need to be right to earn approval, and I refuse to engage in such nonsense. (Or some bold, absolutely clear statement.)
FOR ADDITIONAL UNDERSTANDING, READ THESE:
HELPLESSNESS IS RELATED
