Step One ACA Powerlessness Questions

1. How is powerlessness different than helplessness?

Powerlessness means that I am powerless over the actions of others, over the past, over the dysfunction that happened around me as a child, that I am powerless over the effects of growing up in an alcoholic and otherwise dysfunctional home, that I am powerless over the effects of trauma, child abuse, neglect, domestic violence, surviving a parental suicide, emotional abuse, and other childhood and family difficulties; powerlessness means I am not responsible for these things, I didn't cause them, can't cure them, and can't control them. It means I don't need to feel responsible for them, I don't need to feel bad for them, I don't need to feel ashamed because of them, I don't need to feel ashamed, defective, unloveable, damanged, "wrong", unworthy, ineffectual, or any other judgments because of these things, because they are not a statement about me, they are not a reflection of me, and I can stop reflecting them in my behavior, attitudes, and beliefs; I can stop being a reflection of these experiences. This means I am free to choose a new way of life; I am free to choose again; I am free from this moment on, I am free to free myself from these old shackles, I am free to release these old ways of being and reacting and thinking and behaving and believing and perceiving, I am free to be free, free to be me, free to leave all that behind, free to free myself from my old family dynamics, free to free myself from my family's past, free to be separate, free to be autonomous, free to choose my own identity and free to choose my own destiny.

Helplessness, in contrast, was a learned behavior that I had picked up as a result of being raised in a dysfunctional household. Learned helplessness was a reaction to being raised in an abusive home. I learned to be helpless because I learned that at the time, it wasn't safe for me to stand up for myself, to protect myself, to demand decent living conditions and a decent emotional and physical and family and social environment, my survival depended on my ability to repress my healthy mechanisms of living and associating and relating, and my survival depended on my repressing and suppressing my true self, my healed self, my healthy ways of adapting and dealing with situations, my constructive impulses. If I had had these intact at the time, I would probably not be alive today, because I probably would have been killed. So, as the smart savvy child and being that I was and am, I suppressed my natural reactions to these situations in order to survive, suppressed my natural healing impulses and adopted malfunctional, dysfuncational behaviors and beliefs, with the hope that one day I would be able to go back and recognize these and undo them, to uncover my true self, and to unleash the past and all that was done to me, to heal and to be able to be the real me inside and outside, to share myself with the world.