Summary

Recovery from various personal challenges, such as addiction or trauma, involves reclaiming one's personal power that was surrendered to cope with difficult situations.

Abstract

The concept of recovery, which is highly subjective and pertains to a range of personal struggles including addiction, trauma, and abusive relationships, is intrinsically linked to the process of regaining personal power. This power is often relinquished as individuals adopt harmful coping mechanisms, such as substance abuse or submissive behaviors, to navigate through life's challenges. The journey of recovery requires individuals to confront the root causes of their power loss, understand their role in their current situation, and gradually reclaim their agency. This process can lead to a profound realization of self-worth, the right to one's own opinions and needs, and the importance of self-love and respect.

Opinions

Recovery is a deeply personal process that involves redefining and reclaiming one's power from external sources or substances.
The initial surrender of power is often a misguided survival strategy, where individuals rely on substances or behaviors as a crutch instead of developing their own coping skills.
In relationships, power dynamics can perpetuate trauma and low self-esteem, leading to a cycle of giving away personal power.
The realization of one's self-worth and the right to assert one's own opinions and needs is crucial in the recovery process.
Society's expectations and the pressure to appear fine can exacerbate the tendency to give away power and adopt unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Recognizing and processing one's emotions, rather than suppressing them, is a key step in regaining personal power.
The journey to reclaim power can be challenging and may involve facing uncomfortable truths about one's own role in their struggles.
Taking back power is not only about self-improvement but also about fostering healthier relationships with others.
The process of reclaiming power should be approached with care to avoid overwhelming oneself or those around you.
Ultimately, each individual is inherently worthy of their own power and love, and recognizing this is a pivotal moment in recovery.

Mental Health

Part of Recovery Is Taking Back Your Power

The power you gave away for survival was yours all along

Fancy pen and notebook are mine. Don’t be jealous. Photo by author.

We’ve been discussing recovery. Recovery from what? Addiction? Trauma? Abuse? A bad relationship? Just last week I wrote about what “recovery” means to each of us, and that holds true. It’s subjective, and we’re all working on something all the time.

One aspect I wanted to talk more about was how much of recovery is actually taking back the power that you gave away in the first place.

When we start drinking or using a substance, we are trying to cope with something we believe not to have the ability to cope with in the first place. When we don’t understand what’s happening within ourselves and in our relationships, we learn behaviors just to get by. To survive.

We pretend that things are fine because that’s what the world expects of us. That’s what social media expects from us. That’s what our jobs expect from us.

Unfortunately, that’s not reality.

In learning these behaviors we give up our coping power to the substance. The substance or behavior instantly becomes a crutch, and we instantly forget how to cope on our own.

The coping mechanism doesn’t necessarily have to be a substance. It can be a behavior. In relationships there are power dynamics. If you were emotionally abused as a child or made to feel less than you deserved, you are likely to carry this into adulthood. This is how we pass down trauma from generation to generation — because we parent how we were parented.

If you never knew you had the power in the first place, you wouldn’t know to use it. If you never learned the coping skill that enabled you to legitimize your feelings, you may be inclined to submit in certain situations. You’ll think your feelings don’t matter. In other words, you may not know you’re worthy of your feelings and that you’re worthy of respect. You may cower. You may submit. You may think, “maybe they are right. Who am I to have an opinion?”

That’s what I did.

When I first started therapy I was in a very low place. Although it’s been almost 4 years, I can still remember the look on my therapist’s face when I told her about an argument I had with my wife, and that I backed down from the argument because, “Who was I to argue? What did I know?”

I could see the pity in her eyes, though I didn’t understand it at the time.

Because of all the mistakes I’d made over the years, I didn’t feel I was worthy of having an opinion. Because having children was legitimately traumatic for me and I had to lean on my wife to learn how to be a parent, I didn’t see myself as an equal in the relationship.

As a result, my self-esteem plummeted. My self-worth was in the toilet. I didn’t know who I was, which way was up, or what to do next. I didn’t know how to ask for what I needed, or even what it was.

So, I submitted to her and everything else in my life. I drank, shut my mouth, and did whatever I thought she wanted me to do. I thought by being “easy going” I would make life easier for those around me, but I was wrong. I suffered, and I drank to cope with the pain. I lost myself.

What I wouldn’t see until years later is that it works the opposite of the way we think it will. What she needed me to do was take care of myself, and I wasn’t doing that.

What we don’t realize when we stumble into the darkness and substance abuse is that we have chosen the quick and easy path. Instead of doing the work on ourselves to understand what exactly is happening in our minds and bodies, we crawl inside a bottle or choose to pacify someone close to us. We sweep it under the rug.

Maybe we’re afraid to look like a jerk and ask for what we want. Or maybe we just want an easy solution for the night. Whatever the case may be, we have ignored the real problem.

That is one way we give away our power.

Now, to get the power back? I started my journey by taking my power back from the alcohol. Once I did, I was able to sit with all the underlying garbage I had swept under the rug, and process my emotions and figure out where they had come from.

One scary part is discovering that I played a role in it all. What role had I played in all this? When had I become codependent? We want to blame others, but that doesn’t help anything. To do it right you have to process and drop all the resentment you’ve been dragging around.

Taking the power back from the alcohol was just the first step, but it paved the way for several months of seeing myself for who I am. I was able to look in the mirror and see that almost everything I had been suffering from was based in fear.

Fear of looking demanding or bossy, fear of asking for what I want and being told “no,” fear of failure.

Then one day you realize you’re a person with every right to have opinions and thoughts and wants and needs just like every other person. You realize you are worthy not only of the love of others, but your own love. And you start to see how much power you had in you all along, and you start to figure out how to take it back. It’s best to handle this slowly and methodically, because it can be jarring for those around you, but you are worth it, and you will see it.

We all get to this realization by travelling a different road. At the end of the day, all roads lead to home.

It was your power all along. Don’t feel guilty for taking it back.