Ways To Overcome Powerlessness

How does powerlessness affect us? Tips to regain your power over yourself.

Frances Ng
Change Becomes You

--

Photo by Trần Toàn on Unsplash

If you are feeling a greater sense of powerlessness these days, you are not alone. The COVID-19 pandemic has had catastrophic impact on the lives of many people that is beyond their control. The looming economic crisis and other local major political issues may also affect you in ways that you have limited power to change. All these can instil a sense of powerlessness in even the most mentally resilient people.

Powerlessness often arises when you are not able to effect control on your external environment or your destiny by making decisions.

“Powerlessness is most likely to be experienced when there is a sharp divide between those wielding power and decision making authority.” — Barnes and Mercer

A powerless person feels that he is the victim who can only passively accept the consequences of the decisions made by a higher external authority. While this can arise in any imperfect democracy, this is especially true in an autocracy whose Government officials are in effect not accountable for their wrongdoing or poor decisions and are hard-handed in stifling dissent. Consequently citizens are…

--

--

Frances Ng
Change Becomes You

Professional freelance content writer and part-time Senior Research Assistant in the Faculty of Social Sciences at HKU (https://www.linkedin.com/in/frances-ng)