By Angela Dunning
When there has been a profound wound to the Self/Psyche/Soul early in life, it can leave a person floundering and with a definite sense that they are powerless, helpless, and without choice. When this feeling takes over the way a person views themselves, then access to their own agency is usually lacking and sometimes almost completely absent. There’s a pervasive sense that life happens TO them, and they often feel out of control.
Without a solid connection to our agency and capacity to affect our lives, we are left adrift in a sea of powerlessness, feeling that we can’t make choices and have an impact on the direction of our life. We might also feel we can’t ever say no to people and their demands on us, forever acquiescing, giving in, and putting ourselves and our own needs and desires last. We are also left vulnerable to repeated feelings of overwhelm, which often gets imaged in our dreams by things like tidal waves coming to engulf us or other scenarios where we feel helpless and unable to DO anything to save ourselves or those we love.
People with a history of trauma and particularly early childhood trauma and attachment wounds, often experience this state of overwhelming. As adults, they struggle to create the life they truly desire, or it only ever happens in ‘fits and starts.’ Each time they make mistakes or ‘fail,’ it hits them especially hard, and recovery can take a very long time. All the while, their self-confidence, and faith in themselves take further hits, and the cycle continues.
However, it IS possible to heal this particular wound and, over time, begin to reclaim our innate capacities for agency, choice, direction, and personal power. All of these may have lain dormant for many, many years if not decades, but they still remain inside of us somewhere. In this sense, they are potential new energies and abilities that we DO possess; they just need rediscovering and activating. As with all healing, this is best done incrementally over time and with support.
As Peter Levine says: “Because every injury exists within life and life is constantly renewing itself, within every injury is the seed of healing and renewal. At the moment our skin is cut or punctured by a foreign object, a magnificent and precise series of biochemical events is orchestrated through evolutionary wisdom. The body has been designed to renew itself through continuous self-correction. These same principles also apply to the healing of psyche, spirit, and soul.”
So beneath the injury lies our innate self-healing capacity to recover this lost potential. Shamanic healers know all about this realm when during soul and power retrievals, they go off and find these lost aspects of their client and bring them back to the person to integrate them. Without these parts, we are not whole, so it’s vital we find ways to reclaim them.
Another part of this process, however, is learning to become familiar with both feelings and using this newfound power. If we’ve lived most of our adult life feeling powerless and lacking in agency, then it can definitely feel wonderful to finally have this sense, but we also have to take care with how we use our newfound sense of power, being sure not to wield it over others in harmful ways. We will be clumsy to start with, and it will need time to settle and for us to refine how we use it so that we are not gung-ho about our missions in life.
It’s in the body where we will initially experience these new feelings and capacities, so we need to work carefully with our body and allow it to guide us as to how much power to use, when and in appropriate ways.
Don’t underestimate just how good it feels to finally feel you have the courage and the capacity to say no to people and situations that aren’t in your best interests. Or to make choices that really do serve you and to begin to direct your life in new and satisfying ways which bring you not only fulfillment but also joy and happiness, states which are also found wanting in people who lack agency because we tend to believe we don’t deserve to feel good like other people do.
You DO deserve to experience these things. You DO deserve to create a life that serves your needs and desires and brings you joy. You DON’T have to continue feeling powerless and ineffective. You are FAR more powerful than you think, and you DO have far more agency than you’ve come to believe. It’s all there, lying deep inside and simply waiting for you to approach and make the connection so that you can bring these jewels up into the light and enlist their service to you and your life. It’s your time, so start your search now.
Quote by Peter Levine from his book ‘Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma’, p.123.
Photo by: Alexandre Jawfox
