During the first eighteen years of my life, I learned that it was safer to be invisible than to be seen. I learned to give my power away as a form of self-protection. As a young girl, from elementary school through high school, I was persistently bullied. These experiences were confusing and devastating to my developing self. I learned to abandon myself by ignoring the signs of trauma and stress in my body. The fear and lack of safety I felt drove me further out of my body, diminishing my ability to trust myself or feel confident in my ability to experience love, connection, safety and belonging.
It took me nearly four decades to realize that my life has been an apprenticeship to power. A deep immersion into the study of how power is exchanged in human relationships, societal systems, and through the legacy of the patriarchy. I came to this realization one messy learning at a time. Heartbreaks, disillusionment, confusion and anger all guided me to take ownership for where I give my power away and where I attempt to take it when I’m in states of fear, scarcity or lack.
Eventually, in 2010, I started Revealing Wisdom, which has allowed me to work with hundreds of leaders and their organization’s culture. My relationship with each leader, and organizational system, has further refined my understanding of power dynamics. I’ve untangled the murky terrain by exploring which power structures serve innovation, trust and connection, and which create cultures of fear, division, and isolation.
There is a growing movement of awakening exploding on the planet. This rise in consciousness is catalyzing a new prototype of leaders who are poised to express a wholehearted and integrative approach through every aspect of their lives.
Revealing Wisdom: The path of Embodied leadership
I’m passionate about the process of integrating and descending from our heads into our hearts, and into the ground of our being. Creating coherence between mind and body is an unstoppable force. It interrupts patterns of dissociation, compartmentalization and alienation from our intuition and internal reservoir of wisdom.
“Leadership is a power of influence, for better or for worse.”
I describe my work with conscious leaders as the path of embodied leadership. An embodied leader is a revolutionary guide who walks into the unknown because the known and predictable paths are no longer enough. They curate the artistry of being open-minded, curious and compassionate. They take personal responsibility for their personal influence on the environment — starting from the inside out. Self-awareness and personal responsibility come together to form a revolutionary and embodied expression of integrated power.
Everyone is a leader. The way we care for our bodies, welcome our emotions, embrace our dreams, and track our reactive patterns of protection and control all contribute to how we lead and love. Sourcing our authentic power from within is one of the most influential leadership legacies of our modern times.
Our influence upon others can range from inspiring and energizing to deflating and draining. Taking an honest inventory of the ways we show up, impact, and feed the environments we operate in is a form of power and care. Becoming more conscious and curious increases our ability to engage compassionately with the complexity and vulnerability of being human. When we feel open-hearted towards ourselves this fuels a power surge of compassion that ripples towards everyone around us, whether it’s felt consciously or not.
What is power and why does it matter?
In this article we’ll explore how power is one of our most influential energy sources. We’ll delve into two paradigms of power: power-over and power-with. I’ll share common examples of what it looks like to give, take and withhold power. And lastly, I’ll introduce the Power Reclamation Map, a hero/heroine’s field guide of self-awareness.
We have been living in a patriarchal dominated culture for centuries. What does that mean? The patriarchy is a system of thinking that favors power through control, dominance, greed, shaming, exclusion and hierarchies that segregate economics, genders and races. It is a structure dominated by power-over, in service of personal agenda, regardless of impact on others. It is a system based upon fear instead of love. The reign of the patriarchy still runs rampant in our political and cultural systems.
All of us have internalized patriarchal beliefs, thought patterns and behaviors are alive within us, each in our own unique way. We often experience these through patterns of fear based control. Through shaming or blaming to get needs met. Striving from a place of lack or scarcity. And self-aggressive thought patterns.
The implications of a patriarchal society has caused a collective repression and fear of embodying the feminine within. It has marginalized slowing down to be, and elevated striving to do more, better, faster. In the wake of unilateral forms of control and decision-making, the patriarchy empire has lost access to compassionate and empathetic care for the whole. It has lost focus on the art of listening to one’s heart, practicing patience, or leaning into uncertainty as a doorway into infinite potential rather than trying to control every detail.
One by one, we can dismantle the imprints of diminishment, oppression and exclusion that we’ve inherited from archaic power structures. Each time we reclaim our power and take responsibility for the impact that our fears and reactivity have on those around us, we cut through the illusions of control and power-over. This process of deconstructing power-over will birth a world of power-with.
Let’s begin by exploring the question, what is power? Then we’ll explore the distinction between power-over and power-with.
Power is energy
We power our electrical grids through a variety of energy sources such as fossil fuels, wind, water, plants and the sun. Similarly, our life force and presence is our power.
Personal power is a mysterious energetic force. Our lives are animated through our connection to our inner source (often also referred to as presence, God, the mystery, divine nature, higher self).
We express our personal power through our beliefs, behaviors, emotions, body language, personality style, spiritual connection and perceptions about reality. We communicate our power through our reactions and responsiveness to states of fear and love.
Integrated power is the fullest expression of our essence — including our heart, intellect, gut feelings, intuition, body sensations, presence, passion and sense of soulful purpose.
When we’re in our power, we set boundaries to support our vitality. We trust ourselves, we’re in touch with our body wisdom, and we make choices in alignment with our personal values. We learn to honor our authentic needs.
We practice saying no when we are aware that saying yes would override our ability to be present or true to our values and needs.
We courageously say yes when a knowing in our heart calls us into action, despite our fear of the unknown or the losses we may incur as we honor our yes.
This kind of self-love and self-care grants us access to our erotic life force. Being grounded in our erotic nature fuels the creativity and intimacy that feed our hearts and souls.
Power is intimately connected to our life force and energy levels
When we place our power outside ourselves, and give power away, we deplete our energy reserves and resiliency bank. Common ways we leak energy and power is through a lack of boundary setting, habitual patterns of compliance, excessive busyness with no space to refuel or blaming external circumstances for our states of being and feeling victimized by this. The results are depletion, reactivity, resentment and helplessness. Giving power away draws upon our primal energy. This is why managing our energy consciously, through the art of boundary-setting, is essential.
To further complicate the matter, we each have subconscious beliefs about what we feel entitled to, or not entitled to, which will prompt behaviors resulting in: power-over through control, dominance and fear. Or a collapse and abdication of our power to please others, avoid conflict or seek harmony over authenticity. All of these innocent adaptive strategies are a response to fear and scarcity. Each action we take will either draw from our energy reserves or deposit more fuel in our vessel.
Have you ever stayed at a job, or with a partner, when it has become misaligned, passionless and draining? There are times in life when we may prioritize security and certainty over leaping into the unknown in hopes of thriving again.
We reclaim our power when we reflect on our choices and courageously explore the deeper answers to, “why do I stay?” or “why do I let go and leave?” These inquiries becomes intimate investigations into the bundles of entrapping beliefs, fears, self-denial or withdrawing to protect when we feel threatened and uncertain.
This is an exploration of power from the inside-out. Why do we stay in conditions that cause suffering? Are we learning and mastering something through an initiation or are we stuck in beliefs that make it hard to break free?
Power in relationships
We can look at power in three categories of relationship:
Personal power — in relationship to ourselves
Interpersonal power — in relationship with others
Collective power — in relationship to a larger whole or system
PERSONAL POWER — IN RELATIONSHIP TO OURSELVES
Our personal power is deeply connected to our life force, passion, sense of self-worth, purpose and creative expressions in the world. Learning to access and trust our inner authority is the key to our power. Yet, our ability to trust ourselves can be hampered by our core wounds and the discrete ways in which they abate self-worth and self-love.
How do you relate to your personal patterns related to managing fear through control or love through trust and surrender?
What are the habits you’ve formed to protect your vulnerability?
Earlier I mentioned how self-awareness and personal responsibility come together to form a revolutionary and embodied expression of integrated power. Both skills are essential power tools to draw upon as we integrate our shadows. They help us mine for, and expose, our reactive patterns of fear, protection, control, covert manipulations and aggression towards self and others.
Embodied personal power includes embracing our pain, heartbreak and grief. One of the shadows to the New Age culture of “happiness-manifestation movement” is a concurrent message that if we’re not happy, it’s our fault because we ‘create our reality.’ This message can cause shame and feelings of brokenness. We’re not going to be happy all the time, and this expectation can become a violent message that results in increased anxiety and disconnection from ourselves, rather than compassion, self-acceptance, and integration. Personal freedom is accelerated when we learn to de-villainize states of emotions that are not happy, chipper and socially preferred. To love is to accept and meet the fullness of our human emotions.
What is your relationship with your emotions?
Do you select favorite states and deny or banish others?
Are there forms of addiction that you engage in to avoid feeling? (work, sex, substances, gossip, stacked social experiences, etc.)
In our quest to fully reclaim our personal power, we will meet the internal voices of fear, worry, control and criticism. Many of these have been inherited and internalized from our family, culture, and brainwashing from the patriarchy’s diminishing messages of our broken sinfulness. We need to know that we’re still lovable and worthy, despite our imperfections.
Our power is found through investigating our operating system and re-integrating fragmented aspects of ourselves back into our innate wholeness. To learn more, read my article, Wired to connect and protect.
2. INTERPERSONAL POWER — in RELATIONSHIP TO OTHERS
Interpersonal power is the way in which we exchange energy with one another, consciously or unconsciously. The dance of power vacillates between two polarities, love and fear.
When our power is rooted in fear, it’s wielded through tactics of control, rigid expectations, agendas and perspectives that are self-serving at the expense of the whole. This often results in disconnection, increased reactivity, and an accelerated impulse to control, gain influence and amass power over others. Fear-based beliefs becomes seeds that can harvest into acts of greed, violence, entitlement, separation and inequality. Fear-based power leads to power-over, which stomps on the sovereignty and free will of others.
When our power is transmitted through love, the expressions tend to create connection, collaboration and attunement to the whole system. This gives rise to the art of listening with mind-heart, self-trust, and surrender, which begets states of flow, curiosity, innocence, play and care for how our personal choices impact others.
A few contemplations to consider related to interpersonal power:
Are you operating from fear and forcing your need for people to behave in a certain way in order for them to be worthy of your love and acceptance? For example, do you force your children into the field of medicine because “that’s just what we do in this family”? Do you blame your partner for wanting different things than you do or instead do you seek to understand the differences and grieve them without shame and blame?
How do you navigate differences? Do you attempt to find common ground through fear tactics such as coercion, control and strong-arming an imposed agreement? Or do you abdicate your needs to assuage the differences and potential conflict or disappointments with others?
Do you yearn for a world of mutual encouragement of each other’s freedom, self-discovery, and radical aliveness, even if that means you have to confront difficult feelings of conflict, not getting what you want in the moment, disappointment or vulnerability? If you long for this, how will you contribute to the creation of this kind of world?
3. COLLECTIVE POWER — IN RELATIONSHIP TO A LARGER WHOLE OR SYSTEM
Collective power runs through the shared beliefs, behaviors, and values held by groups and cultures.
Group mind is a powerful force. When enough people join together to invoke a shared vision, spontaneous healing and magic can occur. On the other hand, when a group mind is rooted in superiority and power-over, selective thinking can blindly justify causing pain to innocent people. Living in the amnesia of forgetting we are One is a painful and sometimes dangerous expression of separation.
The reign of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi movement, genocides, and other violent acts of superiority symbolize the devastating effects of power-over in action. The majority of the leaders and follows of these movements felt aligned and justified in their beliefs. Extremely young boys in civil wars are taught to rape, in the same way, they are taught to shoot a gun. People become weapons and targets when empathy is replaced with purpose, mission, justification. Losing contact with empathy creates compartmentalized ways of operating and a failure to perceive that when we hurt another, we hurt ourselves.
A revolutionary paradigm shift: A movement from power-over to power-with
We’ve explored what power is and how it’s expressed personally, inter-personally and as a collective culture. Now, let’s look at a shifting paradigm from power-over to power-with.
POWER-OVER
Power-over is a global phenomenon of destructive and un-integrated forms of power. Power-over models are based on dominance and they are prominent in various aspects of our culture, such as politics, certain religious institutions, global corporations, or other hierarchical structures that seek to create conformity through shame and fear.
We recognize power-over through non-consensual domination and control. It’s commonly expressed through systems that seek compliance and dis-empowerment through structures or rules that illicit fear, powerlessness, shame and scarcity. Power-over tactics often develop into acts of violence, greed, entitlement, discrimination, and war against each other and ourselves.
Extreme expressions are recognized through large systems and corporations causing substantial harm in the name of capitalism. When human rights and dignity are overpowered to serve economic gain we’re achingly replicating centuries of violence and oppression. When fear, greed and superiority have swallowed the oppressors into blindness these harmful acts become rationalized. In these cases, often one’s impact on the whole is minimized or even dismissed.
One example that feels inconceivable to me, breaks my heart and boils my blood, is sex trafficking. The covert masterminds who order hired guns to kidnap young children, and trade them as a commodity into sex trafficking, is the dark side in action. Power-over sexual violence has been illuminated through the #metoo campaign, painfully and imperatively illuminating these shadows into the light. Corporations are killing forests and jungles, polluting the oceans and annihilating species into extinction for fiscal gain. Witnessing the impact of the palm oil industry on orangutans and their habitat is unacceptable to someone who is consciously aware of their braided connection to the whole. And, yet to a person whose heart is compartmentalized and fragmented it’s a massive blind spot.
These are some ways in which we collectively suffocate under patriarchal forces of supremacy, dominance, punishment, greed, aggression and control.
While these cultural examples of power-over constitute one aspect of a global epidemic, we can also take a look at the microcosm of power-over happening every day in our relationship to ourselves and others.
Power-over can be expressed through a spectrum of aggressive and controlling to subtle sarcastic digs or passive-aggressive behaviors. Sometimes we have to dig deep to see how we’re slipping into power-over against ourselves and with others. Power-over happens through non-consensual means. When boundaries are violated, trust and safety are shattered.
2. POWER-WITH
Power-with is a consensual and integrated expression of power. Power-with is founded upon a commitment to conscious leadership through self-awareness and personal responsibility. When engaging in power-with, we’re attuned to the way our decisions impact the whole. We listen to a larger field of wisdom to guide our choices.
Signature influences of power-with, reside in the art of love, presence, listening, befriending our shadow, embracing the unknown, accessing the wisdom of our intuition and body, patience, cultivating magic, and seeing beyond illusions — many of which have been forced underground and out of the collective currency of relating to ourselves and one another.
We become more integrated with our power as we increase and expand our capacity to feel empathy, love, and responsibility for our own fear-based reactivity and patterns of control.
To practice power-with is to hunt for traps, based on fear and control, and take ownership to short-circuit them before acting them out. This is all possible when we expand our consciousness, self-awareness and take personal responsibility for the impact our beliefs and behavior have on our selves and the whole.
This hero/heroine’s journey is one of entwining the power of love, care for the whole, and personal ownership into our choices. And, to create safe relationships, and cultures, in which being receptive to feedback, delivered in a respectful and loving way about our blind spots, is welcomed and not held as a personal failure or reflection of our brokenness.
Power dynamics become increasingly complicated when there are authority figures and subordinates. For example, if a boss neglects to take responsibility for proper time management, and on Friday afternoon, hands a 10-hour project to a team member that’s due on Monday, what happens? Does the employee say yes, knowing they’ll have to forfeit plans with family and friends to work all weekend?
If the team member fears punishment for not obliging with this request, or fears falling into bad graces with the boss, or is strongly identified with a self-image of “being good/loyal at any cost,” then where is there actually internal space to say no? If the employee is afraid to say no, or the boss has a track record of being close-minded, or shaming others who express what they need, then feelings of powerlessness will likely lead to a non-consensual yes.
On the other hand, if the boss is modeling a corporate culture infused with authenticity, as well as a shared practice to negotiate requests and share impact in an open-hearted and minded way, then the employee may feel safe to speak up about the impact of this request and deadline on her weekend. What becomes possible? Will the leader have empathy for the impact of her request? Will she take responsibility for poor time management and organizational skills? Will an opportunity for power-with through shared negotiations present itself with this type of openness and ownership? Will she initiate a power-with discussion to negotiate and collaborate needs and resources together?
The key to power-with is the strong-hearted courage to own our contribution towards inflaming feelings and impactful outcomes. It also includes a willingness to source a co-creative solution that increases the potential to honor everyone’s needs and boundaries. And, this is not a perfect science, there may be times when someone needs to concede and accommodate, but it’s how this process unfolds that makes all the difference in the world. In such cases, when the communication is held with empathy, deep listening, curiosity and seeking to understand the need behind one’s position, a concession may end up feeling like a contribution to the whole rather than a personal loss.
Through each conscious leader these powers are rising again to counterbalance the global power structures operating through fear, greed, manipulation, coercion and separation. As climate change and other destructive epidemics continue to spread, our fierce discipline and awareness of these internal landmines is imperative to shift away from the patriarchy paradigm of power-over. This is revolutionary leadership.
“An integrated leader is the biggest change agent on the planet.”
Mutual ownership of our vulnerabilities and core wounds naturally gives rise to a power-with dynamic and revolutionary solutions.
Power-with is the journey of embodiment. It’s expressed through our capacity to welcome, soothe, and tend to our reactive animal bodies. We have the power to illuminate and own our core wounds as the medicine. We can interrupt patterns of shame, blame, projection, and separation.
Choosing power-with is a humble surrender. It requires a refinement of discernment and a growing trust in one’s ability to recognize and navigate the powers of love and fear.
That’s an overview of power-over and power-with. Now, let’s look at how we give, take and withhold power; it’s often much more subtle and common than we realize!
Exchanging power: Giving, taking, and withholding
How do you manage the way you give, take, or withhold power?
1. GIVING POWER AWAY
Many of us have been conditioned to withhold our true feelings and give our power away in order to avoid conflict, rejection, or loss. Or, to maintain self-images that feel essential to our sense of safety and worth.
Our early life experiences may have taught us to hold back our needs, hopes and dreams for fear of being judged, misunderstood, or blamed for our authentic expression. We give our power away when a boundary is crossed and we don’t speak up or take action to manage what we need. If we can’t speak directly to the source, or they are transgressing in non consensual ways, then we must find other means to take care of ourselves and maintain our dignity and sovereignty, sometimes that may look like complying; it’s what we do from the inside out that gives us our freedom.
“Our body sensations and emotional states have information about our needs and power. Do we listen?”
How do you subconsciously collude with power-over dynamics and give your power away?
Here are some examples of what it can look like:
A need to be liked and to belong: Submission of our power can happen when we favor being liked or validated at the expense of being authentic. In my business consulting work, I see this with executives who avoid setting clear expectations and holding people accountable for fear of creating conflict and losing the social status of being cool. The irony is that this tactic slowly generates a loss of trust and respect. When an executive abandons upholding the business vision, or cultural values of the organization, in an attempt to keep the peace, they’re giving power away to sustain their self-image, which will likely impact the success of the business, trust in their leadership skills and their own personal sense of fulfillment and ease.
Authority figures: When someone in a position of authority needs or expects something from us, we may find ourselves unconsciously giving our power away without a second thought. This is what I was referring to in the example earlier with the boss’s last minute project request. Depending on how the boss holds her power the request could have become a power-over or power-with situation. Authority figures can be someone in our family system, a boss, a teacher, a peer, a potential romantic partner or the messages from media or government.
During my undergraduate studies, when I told my mom I wanted to study psychology, she told me that ‘psychology is for quacks.’ I remember the punch in my gut and the decision to change my major. What she thought became more important to me at that time than what I wanted. I gave my authority to her because I believed that I needed her approval to validate my worth in the world. Each time I make someone’s agenda for me more important than my own, I give my power away.
Projections and idolization: Have you ever perceived that someone has gifts you don’t have, making them irresistibly magnetic? Maybe you’re in admiration or maybe they’re a secret mirror for dormant gifts that already live within you? It’s compelling to submit to someone we idealize and put on a pedestal. This can a spiritual teacher, entrepreneur, business super-giant, romantic partner, parent, or celebrity figure. In these cases, we project our unfulfilled gifts or repressed genius onto them. If we become enamored with their gifts, or compare ourselves as less than, we risk dismissing of our own medicine in our quest to become what we see in them. This is a disguised self-betrayal. On the other hand, if we are aware that they are a mirror calling forward something within us, we can turn inward and search for how what we want from them already lives within us.
I once dated a man who was a poet. The imagery of his passion for life spilled out of his mouth and eyes in the most erotic ways. We worked for the same organization in Chicago in which I slowly felt myself dying. I was disillusioned by the heartless corporate culture. His passion and deep thinking became a fountain flowing into the cracked and dry river bed of my robotic corporate life. He matched me in my hunger to feel, express, and commune with the depths of human suffering, love and connection. He awakened my inner muse and poet. I fell in love with his passion. I initially felt inferior in contrast to his mastery with words and humor. It left me feeling like I needed to strive to be better, but not from passion, from fear he would lose interest. I talked with him about this and he sang back to me all the magic I brought to him that he was unable to feel without my presence. Instantly, I dropped my need for self improvement story and recognized our value exchange. I felt an increased freedom to explore my inner muse and poet when I no longer needed to be as good as he was. I felt my power again.
Fear of hurting or disappointing another: How many times have you watched a loved one, or yourself, stay in a situation or relationship primarily because of fears of hurting the other or feeling responsible for another person’s happiness? How many times do we stay in collapsing circumstances for fear of loneliness, financial strain, denial or anxiety associated with the loss of companionship, status or power? It’s normal to fear those changes, but when we give in to fear for extended periods of time, we give our power away. When we lean into addictions (more screen time, substances, work, etc) to cope we diffuse access to our soul’s calling and the potential to use these moments as initiations and growth into the next steps or manifestations. It’s a more subtle form of giving our power away to paralysis and fear. Reclaiming our power is when we courageously recognize that we can’t unravel our complex feelings on our own and so we ask for help and support.
Protecting our self-image: We may give our power away when we make assumptions about how someone else is perceiving us and adapt in an attempt to bolster the self-image we want to portray to get what we want such as approval, love, connection, sex, money and so on. Do we choose the image we want to be perceived as over our vulnerability and authentic expression? When do we turn away from what we truly feel and need if it opposes the image that we are attempting to uphold or dazzle another with?
Self-inquiry:
In which relationships, or arenas of life, do you give your power away?
What relational triggers cause you to give up your power?
When you fear hurting someone you love, what are your go-to bargaining chips? What do you deny to avoid conflict? How do you grasp or control to keep what you want?
What authentic feelings and needs do you give up to avoid feeling responsible for disappointing another or losing connection?
When we give our power away, we often ignore our boundaries and deplete our energy tank. Setting authentic boundaries helps us to maintain a balance of power and shared consent. To learn more on boundaries, read my article: Mapping your relationship to boundaries.
2. TAKING POWER
How and when do you align with power-over? Most of the time, taking power is driven by fear, which prompts the need to control others.
We all feel powerless and helpless at various times. It’s a complex aspect of being human and often laced with patterns of trauma that are real, painful and require tender care and support. Taking power is most often a result of attempts to manage fears of insecurity, scarcity, mistrust in self or the world and fighting for survival — on a psychological, physical, emotional or even a spiritual level. How we manage feeling these moments is important to familiarize ourselves with. When your sense of safety (physical, emotional or self-image) is being threatened, what do you do?
A sneaky shadow to keep an eye on is the impulse to take power by seducing others into our pain and drama instead of taking responsibility for what we can control and surrendering to what we can not. Another is blaming or shaming another instead of owning our vulnerability and expressing our fears.
A few examples:
Blame or shame others: If you fear you might be fired or lose a significant bonus after making a significant mistake on a project, will you attempt to protect yourself by blaming a colleague or client to cover your back? Do you shame or blame a partner when you feel vulnerable instead of expressing your fears? When under stress, how do you attempt to control others behaviors, or change their needs, so you can feel calm again?
Managing helplessness: When you feel vulnerable and helpless do you pull others into your pain through subtle pleas to be rescued to manage feeling scared, powerless and alone? Do you own and work the material underneath or do you enroll others to rescue you and maybe even expect them to take the pain away? If so, does this keep you stuck in a pattern of seeking externally instead of feeling your inner strength to cut through illusions and stories?
Navigating different needs: When your partner needs something in the relationship that you don’t know how to give, do you shame them and punish them, hoping they will lose interest in that desire? If so, contemplate these impulses of protection or fears of unworthiness. Go to the root of what’s actually occurring inside of you. The underlying current is usually one of vulnerability often associated with a sense of “I’m not feeling good enough.”
Self-inquiry:
When fears of loss, rejection, or perceived danger arises, do you usurp power from others through tactics of subtle control and domination to abate your anxiety?
When someone sets a boundary that you don’t like, or that brings up feelings of rejection, do you try to manipulate it through sweet talk, affection, blame, criticism or convincing them to see it your way?
“Taking power is usually caused by feeling insecure.”
3. WITHHOLDING POWER
Withholding power can be similar to giving power away, but there are subtle nuances. When shame arises, there can be an impulse to hide, withhold our internal struggle from others, and avoid looking within instead of blaming others to regain power.
We unconsciously protect ourselves from our most vulnerable feelings by overly identifying with the mind. Culturally, we’ve been taught to value our intellect, disregard our feelings, and treat our body like a machine, often driving ourselves into illness and burnout. We withhold power from ourselves when we don’t pay attention to our body sensations and cues from our emotional states. It’s important to recognize when we become overly identified with our rational thinking while disregarding our emotions, sensations, heart messages or gut feelings.
When we’re disconnected from our bodies, and living primarily in our thoughts and habitual emotional patterns, we’re missing a reservoir of wisdom and power that await patiently for our attention.
Some examples of withholding are:
When we have a strong desire or need that we keep private and hope someone will identify by reading our mind
When we mistrust or dismiss our instincts, intuitions or sense of knowing. How do we each learn to discern the felt sense between fear or embodied knowing? And, what does it take to act upon it even when our own mind, or criticisms of others, pull us back from self-trust.
When we focus on other’s needs, instead of our own, hoping our needs will later be reciprocated without needing to ask. This can be tricky if we expect others to eventually tend to our needs but don’t ask for it. Likely resentment will build and subsequently new narratives about the other person taking advantage of us may rise. This may be true, but a result of our withholding rather than the other person’s intention or desire.
When we withhold from being direct about what we desire or need for fear of rejection, criticism or humiliation.
“Withholding is an innocent means of protecting ourselves from repeating situations in which we felt used, manipulated or betrayed.”
Self-inquiry:
Do you dismiss your intuition or emotions because they’re not logical and somehow seem irrelevant?
Do you expect others to read your mind? Do you hope that indirect comments will make your needs clear? Do you withhold your desires or needs for fear of rejection?
Consent is a key equalizing ingredient needed to shift from power-over into power-with
One of the key distinguishing factors between power-over and power-with dynamics is mutual consent.
To consent is to grant permission and agree to do something, or engage in a certain way. Consent is one of three key equalizing ingredients that can accelerate the process of integrating our power. The other two are self-awareness and boundary setting. To learn more read my article, The three equalizing ingredients in power dynamics: consent, boundaries and self-awareness.
Consensual power is often overruled when positions of authority break agreements or cross boundaries. When there is a lack of consent, unequal ground ensues. Non-consensual power dynamics breed manipulation, slavery, and violence.
Consent requires open and transparent conversations about differing needs, visions, preferences and levels of investment. Without direct conversations, we live in a world of assumptions and moving targets of expectations, differing needs, disappointments and the associated breakdowns and conflict that result from these mazes of complexity. Without consent, we perpetuate a world of fear based interpersonal dynamics driven by control and compliance.
Our inner authority is stabilized when we have the freedom to choose our yes and no, without feeling forced to go against our needs and desires. This is accelerated when differences are navigated together rather than unilaterally and swiftly extinguished through power-over tactics.
When there is shared reality and consensual choices, everyone involved is in their power, regardless of who is in control and who is surrendering.
How do we attune to, and talk about, the power dynamics in our intimate relationships, corporate cultures and leadership teams?
How do we distinguish when dominance is being expressed as power-over? (A hint, the primary discriminating factor is the presence or absence of consent.) What does it require to build a world of power-with from the inside-out?
Self-knowledge is power
Any kind of substantial systemic change starts within. Self knowledge is power.
Self-awareness and suspending habit to study what we’re doing subconsciously is a revolutionary leadership path that is shifting consciousness on the planet towards unification rather than destruction and disembodied ways of being. Embracing our shadows is the pathway to becoming the change we wish to see in the world.
Running away from our wounds and reactive tendencies reinforces strategies of protection, judgment, dissatisfaction, and entrenched attachments to our self-image. When we consciously embrace the ways in which we give our power away or seek to take power from others, overtly or covertly, we create the opportunity to make conscious choices that are in alignment with our mission and purpose.
Here are some questions to investigate our patterns related to power:
Do I know my patterns of reactivity that present through behaviors of fear-based control, compliance, or protection?
Do I track my hidden agendas? And if they’re exposed, do I take ownership of what I’m not revealing? Am I drawing upon covert tactics to avoid being direct about my needs? If so, what’s a stake that makes me withhold? Am I not safe to be real with others? Am I afraid they will overpower me with more authority in some way?
When given feedback about my blind spots, do I listen and humbly discern what I can investigate further? Or do I justify my actions, rationalize, minimize, blame external circumstances, or defend against feedback?
Do I welcome differences as a means to learn and grow? Or do I interpret differences as a threat that I must ‘fix’ as quickly as possible? Either by complying and surrendering my own needs to avoid losing connection, or by overpowering others through convincing, judging, or shaming in an attempt to get agreement in my favor?
What is my relationship to vulnerability? Do I judge myself or others for being emotional or do I feed on it? Am I more comfortable being the hero, caretaker, or loyal soldier than the one in need? What happens when I have needs, feel stressed or anxious? Do I feel it and tend to the root of the issue inside of myself, or do I focus on fixing the external circumstances to feel in control and safe again?
Each time we reclaim our power and take responsibility for the impact that our fears and reactivity have on our well-being, and that of those around us, we cut through the impulses to unilaterally dominate through power-over. One by one, we can dismantle inherited beliefs from the archaic power structures of the patriarchy. By deconstructing structures of power-over, we can birth a world of power-with.
The Power Reclamation System
Power reclamation is a journey of hunting and tracking for areas in which we have unconsciously lost power. Are you aware of when you innocently give your power away in response to fear, social pressures or internalized beliefs about scarcity and lack?
Many of us know, deep in our hearts, that to embody the force that we were born to become, we need to call all of ourselves back into the wholeness of our being. Yet, we’re rarely given an easy roadmap to reclaim and integrate our lost power.
The Power Reclamation System is a dynamic, non-linear discovery process designed to welcome exiled parts of our power, presence and inner authority back home.
Have you innocently thwarted your powerful life force by unconsciously reinforcing patterns of acquiescing your needs to please others? Do you comply to keep the peace even when you it disempowers you?
Are you aware of when you unconsciously defer to tactics of power-OVER by using charm, guilt trips, blame or shame as a means to control others to get what you want?
Six distinct entry points for power reclamation
There are six distinct powers that encompass the wheel of integrated power in the Power Reclamation System.
Each power serves as an entry point to illuminate our individual gifts and superpowers, as well as conditioned or banished aspects of ourselves that eagerly await our acceptance and fierce love.
“You’re human, not broken.”
Join the revolution of integration
To integrate is to unify separate things. An integrated leader is the biggest change agent on the planet.
Integrated power is the full expression of our essence, including our heart, intuition, and presence of being. It takes practice to be in our full presence, aware and attuned to power dynamics.
In contrast, un-integrated power takes over when we’ve forgotten we have a body and get caught in our thoughts, assumptions, or anxiety patterns, thrusting us away from the quiet presence within. When we’re checked out or activated, we’re in a state of fear. When we feel under threat, it becomes harder to trust ourselves, and our reactivity and protective mechanisms take the lead.
Power resides within our vulnerability. It lives in the moments when we courageously take a step back and see things as they are, even when it’s not how we want them to be. To stop resisting is to learn to surrender and listen for what is possible, instead of railing against what is and attempting to force change before it’s time.
We lose power when we relinquish our inner authority to something or someone outside ourselves. When we attempt to fit into the cultural and social standards of who we “should be,” we dismantle the potency of our personal medicine. These choices result in forfeiting our sovereignty and an embodied remembering of our wholeness.
We reclaim our power when we welcome exiled parts of ourselves back home. When we reintegrate the fragments of our vulnerability and innocence that live in the shadows of our awareness, often bound by shame, fear, or control.
“Power resides within our vulnerability.”
Fortunately, amidst antiquated systems of power-over, there are droves of brave, wise and revolutionary beings who are deconstructing the patriarchy by going within and reaching towards the lonely, exiled parts of themselves that long to be integrated back into the wholeness of being.
Reintegrating our body wisdom dismantles the systems that are responsible for reducing our planet, and its species, on a reckless greed train to nowhere.
The vibrations of love and fear have potent creative power. Which forces do we want to align with to create our internal environment and external world? What is your power reclamation and radical leadership story?
Your stories and questions are welcome here. If you prefer to send a question anonymously, you can do so via the form included on Ask Anne-Marie.