The frustration of feeling like I have no power : some insights

This morning sitting on the edge of my bed after bathing and breathing and stretching I said a prayer asking for Higher Power’s help to negotiate through a day in which I grow and learn and I read a page in Michael Brown’s book The Presence Process which spoke of how most of the discomfort we try to medicate within ourselves or run away from relates back to unintegrated emotional charges from childhood. My mind turned to all the recent dealings with the bank that made me feel again so powerless and small and I remembered how in a much older family I so often felt that way. Everyone was constantly very busy and engaged in their inner and outer worlds and it was hard to get noticed at all and the big killer was after my accident when I really struggled and wanted to go back to study teaching and my Dad disallowed it and sent me to secretarial college instead which was a joyless place of rote learning. Sadly I didn’t have the means to rebel except silently. In those years my addictions really started to kick in and I got involved with another addict and learned to dream his dreams of going overseas.

Of course he abandoned me after my father died shortly before I was due to leave for that trip overseas with him at the end of 1984, I delayed my departure and Dad passed and then Mum pushed me to travel anyway and I was very lost by then, very, very lost.

The feelings of powerlessness go back even further though to my younger years, my need to gravitate around others in order to get noticed, my concern with my older sister’s illness and then involvement with others, or attraction to others undergoing problems…. I was just reading a reading too on Codependency in Tian Dayton’s daily reader on recovery and it spoke to me. I sometimes find it hard to just focus on my own life and stay on my own side of the fence. I get involved in other people’s problems and this entire bank fiasco started due to helping Scott try to get free in June last year. And it has magnified out of all proportion to what was initially required, just a small sum to a huge amount of money so its no wonder the bank has blocked one of my accounts now. I can get access to the money but only with proven bills and its down to a duty of care which I am not going to rebel against. I just have to wait now until they finish their investigations and I have no idea how long that will take.

Some things in life I am truly powerless over. Others such as my attitude I can change. If I approach things with a ‘victim’ mindset everything looks bleak and dark, the world and other people are out to get me or do me harm, there is no hope or light or grace or opportunity I can see. It can take a long time to see that this is the kind of thinking we are involved in, the book I am currently reading on every day narcissism shows how making kids duty or rule bound confines them to a life of feeling powerless and like victims. If we are told we just have to buckle under and follow edicts that are not right for our soul, it is soul destroying. If we come to believe we are powerless to change that is also painting ourselves into a corner. I feel a lot better since I realise the bank is actually trying to take care of me. It may be in the wrong way but at the moment it is keeping me safe.

And as far as certain members of the family not contacting me I am happier now too. They are just getting on with their own lives not meaning any harm. If I wish to be included in their lives I need to reach out. I don’t have kids of my own and I do love children but maybe the big kid I have to take care of right now is myself. I actually sat with my inner child today and let her pour our her feelings of powerlessness. I really listened to how it was for her and how she often felt when young and over all those years she foundered within addiction and even sobriety. She then reached for alcohol to numb the pain and shut down the true feelings she was not every allowed to fully articulate with adult me. Luckily I don’t have to do that anymore. I can reach for help in different ways and I can show up for and be present for my inner self.

Numbing myself out in the long run achieves nothing. Its far better for me to sit with my discomfort in a present way and try to find out what it is telling me and what from the past is being triggered for me. On the particular page of the Presence Process, I was reading today Michael Brown writes :

The pursuit of happiness – as in the desire to control and sedate our external circumstances so we feel at ease in ourselves – is nothing more than a behaviour that stems from fiddling with an effect in order to adjust the cause Since this is impossible, such behaviour leads us further and further away from the joy we already available in our child self. Our child self is our harbour of innocence, joy, and creativity. When we ignore its unintegrated state, we diminish our capacity for innocence, joy and creativity, and instead invest our energy in attempting to “be happy” by “making something of ourselves”.

So we arrive at another major insight. Unless we reach back through time and space to rescue the stranded aspects of our child self and bring them into the resonance of the present, where we provide them with the unconditional attention they require, we can’t fully realise peace.

Well I agree. My morning meditation today ended in peace after I came to the realisation of where feeling so powerless and frustrated came from. I was able to be with my inner self and really listen. It is a morning practice I am going to keep up over the coming weeks in order to learn even more about my inner life and outer reactions. I know my growth in awareness will continue to gain energy as Mercury slowly stations to turn direct in three to four days time.