We all experience small and big traumas in life. Small traumas, such as a comment that hits hard, that makes you slam shut or you are rejected by a loved one. Or you have experienced bigger traumas, such as childhood bullying or not being seen or heard.
Traumas are experiences of powerlessness
Traumas are essentially experiences of complete powerlessness. At that moment you feel powerless to take action and deal with the situation. It overwhelms you, blocks you and therefore you cannot do what is good for you.
Often the feeling of impotence hits inside. This powerless feeling can slumber and take on a life of its own. This can create a pattern, for example that you don’t really dare to give yourself in a love relationship anymore, because you don’t want to get hurt like that again.
Life always challenges us to grow further, it always gives us opportunities to process our traumas. You will therefore regularly encounter situations in which you block or stagnate. These are often situations that resemble the event in which the trauma once arose, moments when you experienced a sense of powerlessness.
But those moments when you shut down, become frustrated or tense are the very moments in your life that allow you to develop. Which allows you to come more into your authenticity and into your strength from impotence.
I’m going to give an example of how you could do that.
Practical example: Marijn is not listened to
Marijn experiences in his working relationship that he is not listened to. His emails and apps are not responded to and if he says something during a meeting, he is interrupted. If they do let him speak out, then nothing will be done with his opinion or not responded to. He is bothered by this and becomes frustrated and angry about it, but snaps shut in the moment and is then unable to say anything about it.
As a coach I investigate with him where this blocking pattern comes from, what the source of this is. We get to his childhood. He grew up in a busy family with 3 children where his opinion didn’t matter. When they sat at the table with the whole family, he was often interrupted by his older brother or father when he told his story. He felt more and more that his opinion didn’t matter. At a certain point he therefore said almost nothing at the table.
In a number of coaching conversations we discuss how this has been for him and how he felt about it. Gradually he dares to admit his anger and sadness about this. Feeling and expressing those old, deeply hidden emotions again, provides the starting point to investigate with him how he wants and can deal with such situations in the future.
We also look at incidents in his daily life in which this plays or has played and what happens in his body. He indicates that he does recognize it when this happens. The frustration and tension then rise enormously internally, both in his mind and in his body.
Experiment with different behavior
Marijn would like to learn how to deal with this differently. He doesn’t know how yet, but at least not the way he did it until now. Together we discuss scenarios and practice how he could react differently and stand up for himself more.
At a next meeting at work, in which he is interrupted again, he feels the frustration rising in his body again. He notes that his first thought is, “Never mind, there’s no point in this anyway.” He becomes aware of the tension rising further, then takes a deep breath and then interrupts his colleague.
The first thing he says is that he doesn’t like being interrupted and that he wasn’t done with his story yet. His voice now becomes more stable and firmer and he continues his story. To his surprise, his colleagues listen.
This experience gives Marijn self-confidence and he decides that he will not be walked over again. Every time he finds himself in such a situation, he finds it exciting, but he always says something about it. And if he does miss it, he will come back to this at the next meeting.
Standing up for himself like this all the time makes him feel good. He has stepped out of impotence and his strength and self-confidence are growing.
How do you turn impotence into power and ultimately into strength?
Life deals blows and you keep being tested and challenged. You often attract those situations where you still have something to learn or where you may have left something out. By then dealing with this situation differently and experimenting with different behavior than you did before, patterns can change. And you can gradually take back your power and therefore also your strength. Good experiences build confidence and strength.
A number of things are essential for this:
- First, that you realize that you are now an adult and no longer a child. Now, as an adult, you can act where you couldn’t before. And even if you don’t know how to act in the moment, you can always come back to things now. In this way you can grow more and more towards the coincidence of the moment of stress and the direct expression and action.
- Also realize that you (unconsciously) attract those situations and people that trigger you, where you still have something to learn, or what still needs to be processed. These situations are an opportunity to clear and clean old patterns or pain. As described in the example above, Marijn can grow in his maturity and strength precisely in the situation that frustrates him so much.
- Finally, it is important that you investigate, possibly with the help of someone else, the source of this behavior that frustrates you so much and allow the pain about it. You will have to really feel this, often deeper, pain, because if you step over it, the (blocking) behavior will continue to sabotage you and the new behavior will become just a trick.
In this way, by processing your old feelings of powerlessness, by letting go of your old wounds, you can eventually turn your vulnerability into your strength.