ARE YOU RUNNING
ON EMPTY?
SUBTITLE
POWERDIGM
By
Jayne Lind, PhD
Smashwords Edition
Copyright ©Jayne Lind 1998
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All named characters in this book are fictitious Their stories as well as their names have been altered to disguise their identity.
Scripture quotations from the Holy Bible,
New International Version
Zondervan Bible Publishers
Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S.A.
To Edward, for his support and belief in me.
Jayne Lind is a clinical psychologist and author.
She lived in England for many years and now
resides in Massachusetts.
Other books by Jayne Lind
Talk With Us, Lord
The President’s Wife is on Prozac
In the Days of Noah
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Power-full and Power-empty
Chapter 5 Romantic Relationships
Chapter 7 Depression and Anxiety
INTRODUCTION
Outside my window is a tree that loses its leaves every winter. But it doesn’t lose them all at once. Some fall when the first strong wind blows, others drop off gradually as the autumn progresses. And some are so tenacious they stay till the very end. They are the last to drop to the ground.
I watch my tree as it grows thinner and wonder about those leaves that hang on, buttressing themselves against the elements. Why do some appear to be so much stronger? Weren’t all leaves created equal? They all look alike to me, but obviously, they are not all alike. Some are stronger and appear to be much more connected to the tree. Others evidently have a fragile hold on life and aren’t able to withstand much hardship.
Human beings are not so different from the leaves on my tree. Some, who look like all the others, who may even look better on the outside, don’t weather storms too well. And others, who might not look as good to an outsider, have an inner strength which sustains them through almost anything.
This inner strength, inner power, is what we need. Inner power makes all the difference between those who are secure in this world, secure in their social interactions with others, and secure within themselves.
When using the word power in this book, I am speaking of inner power, inner strength. Power, both positive and negative, exists. We can’t see it, but we feel it. If we think of power in a positive sense, a sense of ‘being filled up,’ then lack of power is just the opposite; it is a sense of emptiness, of having no strength.
We seek to be filled, to obtain power in many ways, often unconsciously. We seek power through our accomplishments, through material acquisitions and through our relationships. But power is often elusive and sometimes, when we have successfully climbed to the top in our career, or have attained financial security, or married the person we want, we still feel unsatisfied. We are striving, not thriving, living in the future rather than the present. We look forward to an event like a birthday, a trip, or the completion of a project and when the event happens, when we attain or finish something, it does not feel as good as we thought it would. The happiness turns out to be temporary, fleeting. Many become disillusioned when their goals are reached, become upset with themselves. We ask ourselves why we are never happy and we probably blame others as well. What’s wrong with us? What is wrong with us, at least many of us, is that we feel powerless in numerous areas of our lives, powerless inside and therefore, outside.
It is my belief and the belief of many who work in the mental health field that inner power comes from feeling loved, ideally as a child, and then continuously throughout our life. Being loved as a child gives our personalities a good foundation; we are started on the right foot, so to speak. Those who have been filled with the power of love are power-full and have little need to struggle for power. Those who are not filled are either power-empty or feel powerless in many situations.
Just as one way of looking at the universe is by understanding the laws of physics which govern our planet, one way our actions, personalities, and motivations can be seen is through the concept of power and/or lack of power. Without inner power, there can be no inner peace.
Christ said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.” (John 14:27) Do you experience that peace? Do you know what he meant by those words? In many churches, Sunday after Sunday, the service ends with the blessing, “May the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Peace that passes all understanding—those words used to haunt me. What was that peace, I used to wonder? I now believe, based on my interpretation of the Scriptures and on what I know of human nature, that the inner peace Christ spoke of is the secret of happiness.
Yet there are many who do not experience that peace, some because they do not have a personal relationship to Jesus Christ, and others, who are Christians and who want that peace very badly, yet do not understand why they do not have it.
Nicholas, a postman in a small rural village, constantly finds himself struggling in relationships with others. Not only at home with his wife, but as he delivers his mail each day, it always seems to him the people he deals with criticize him and he gets angry. “What do you mean the mail is late today! I’m exactly on time, well, maybe a few minutes late, but you shouldn’t be just standing there waiting for me,” he says crossly. At home, he often finds himself trying to dominate his wife, to get his way. For Nicholas, life is one daily struggle.
Paula, on the other hand, is pleasant with others, she hardly ever has a confrontation with anyone. Smiling and co-operative, everyone thinks Paula is a very nice person. But Paula still struggles. She struggles within herself. She has an eating disorder and for her, as for Nicholas, life is difficult.
Life can be one long struggle and one way to look at it is that life is a struggle for power. In interactions and inner actions, we struggle with someone else or struggle within ourselves. Either we are trying to overcome something about ourselves we do not like or we are striving for power in relation to others.
Whether the problem is a struggle within ourselves, for example, a problem with weight, or whether the problem is an exchange with another person in which he or I come away feeling deflated, the dynamics are the same. If I continue to gain weight, I feel powerless in this aspect of my life. I will have an internal struggle and an internal dialogue that can be defined as a power struggle. In terms of interactions, whether it be with a spouse, a boss or any other relationship, there are times when we feel powerless. If there is a one-down position in any relationship, a power struggle may occur. The more powerless we feel, the more we will struggle. And the more we struggle, the less we will have peace within.
This does not mean there are not balanced relationships, nor that there are not areas in our lives we have conquered, where we are in control, where we do have power. But many encounter power struggles on a daily basis.
Besides wanting help with their emotional problems and wanting to know how to change themselves or their situations, clients in my practice always want to know why. Why they did what they did, felt as they felt, and most of all, why they seemed to repeat their past mistakes, particularly in relationships.
In reviewing their childhood and subsequent lives, we are often successful in pinpointing theoretical reasons for their behavior. However, when I began using the concept of either having power or not having power, struggling to achieve power and/or giving up one’s power, the whys became clearer.
This new paradigm for personality theory, Powerdigm, as I have named it, gives me a useful method of helping people understand why and how they got where they are. A paradigm is an example or pattern underlying a theory or methodology. A paradigm shift is a fundamental shift in approach or philosophy. The shift in this case is not exclusive of other paradigms of personality; it is simply a different way to look at it.
In this book, I am combining psychological principles with spiritual principles. We are spiritual beings, just as we are psychological and physical beings. We are what we are because God made us this way, so in speaking of things psychological, I must intertwine them with the spiritual.
Paul said ‘I do not understand what I do.’ (Romans 7:15) Hopefully, this book will help the reader understand his or her own behavior. Hopefully, this book will tell you why you do what you do.
The first three chapters of the book will help you understand the concepts of the Powerdigm theory. The fourth chapter provides background about how our personalities are formed. Subsequent chapters deal with specific topics such as: male/ female differences, relationships, depression, anxiety, addictions and anger. The concluding chapter is about spiritual power, the most lasting kind.
Chapter 1
POWER-FULL AND POWER-EMPTY
Power-empty
Tom is someone who seemed to have everything he needed. He went to the best schools, then on to a prestigious university, followed by medical school. Gregarious, Tom had many friends and outwardly, he certainly acted as if he were happy. But deep inside, Tom felt hollow, empty. He put up a good front—he became successful, he worked hard, and it wasn’t until his marriage broke up and he went into therapy, that he began to admit how powerless he felt.
Tall and well built, Tom reminded me of the pictures in Gentlemen’s Quarterly: impeccable looks and impeccable clothes. One would never know from looking at him on the outside that anything was wrong.
“I don’t understand why I’ve always felt something was missing,” he told me. “My parents are wonderful people—they gave me everything I wanted. You hear about all these poor kids who are abused, whose parents are alcoholics, all those terrible things. I had nice parents. They never did anything wrong.”
However, as I got to know more about Tom, a picture began to develop of a very lonely little boy in a big house with two people who were indeed, very ‘nice,’ not only to Tom, their only child, but to everyone. They gave Tom everything they were capable of giving him. His parents didn’t lose their temper; he wasn’t criticized; they were not overly strict; but neither did he see a lot of smiles, or laughter, or affection. The picture that began to emerge was of a home in black and white. No color.
Although Tom’s parents had given him everything he could want in material ways, they had not given him the inner power that only comes from being loved. Not because they didn’t want to, and not because he wasn’t loveable, but because they simply did not know how. So Tom went along trying to earn what he instinctively knew was missing, trying to earn love, trying to be filled up.
Power-full
Maria, on the other hand, grew up in the poor section of a city, a very tough neighborhood. She had to resist drugs and crime and she worked long hours after school at McDonald’s. She had never known her father; Maria was born to a teenage mother whose boyfriend had refused to have anything to do with her when he found out she was pregnant.
But Maria had an inner peace. She was happy, cheerful, warm and loving. In the midst of the poor circumstances in which she grew up, Maria was given consistent love and acceptance by her mother. Maria and her mother were a solid family unit, bonded in a strong love for each other. Maria was filled with a positive force, a positive power. She was power-full.
We all know people like Tom, who seem to have everything and yet are unhappy and, conversely, people like Maria who have grown up with deprivation and yet seem to be secure, self-confident.
Princess Diana was the ultimate in terms of someone who looked good on the outside, had all the power outwardly one could want, yet must have felt empty inside. She was searching for love, struggling for the inner power of love.
Positive Power
We start our life as empty vessels. It is true we are born with inherited predispositions toward different personality traits, but in the very beginning we are empty in terms of love. Think of a human being as an uncharged battery—we need to be charged. We can be charged with positive power or negative power or a mixture of both. If we label love as positive power and hate as negative power, it is apparent that what fills us makes a difference. If we were not filled with positive power as a child, as was Maria, or do not find, later in life, some one person who loves us enough to fill us with the power of love, and/or do not experience the love of God through Christ, then we may feel empty. Or we may fill ourselves with negative power—emotions such as envy, hatred, or anger.
Love is positive power, comparable to the power generated by electricity. Without it, our light does not shine, so to speak. We are dark. Without love, we feel powerless, running on empty. Just as an electrical cord that is not plugged into the wall is devoid of power, so are we without power unless or until we are hooked up.
When we love someone, we bestow power on that person. We literally give some of our power to that other person. We need God’s love, but we also need love from others. Christ told us to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:39) Love your neighbor as yourself—I used to read these words and think of them only as an instruction to me, telling me what I was supposed to do. I am supposed to love my neighbor as myself.
I now believe those words are also a clue that all of us need to be loved. God has created us in such a way that we need love, not just want it, but need it. Christ is telling us that we each, individually, need to receive love from at least one other human being. This does not diminish God’s love, it adds to it. By making sure we obey and love others, we are helping to fulfill God’s intentions, His intention that everyone be loved by someone.
For some understanding of how important the emotion of love is to God, take a Bible concordance and look up the word love. There are an enormous number of Scripture references to that word; it was an eye opening experience for me.
Receiving Love
There is a catch, however. Unless this love is received, it will not help. Love may be there, being offered, but often, because someone doesn’t feel worthy and/or cannot believe that anyone would love him or her, and therefore is not open to accepting this love, it will not be received. There are those with personality problems, emotional and mental illnesses, who put up barriers to receiving love, even that which comes from God. There are those who have built up a defense and do not let anyone love them, so that even though these people feel empty, they receive no power from those who try to love them.
Empty Power
The power that our accomplishments give us is either negative or neutral, empty, unable to fill us, and also temporary. It never lasts. A baseball star was being interviewed on the radio after having been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He told the interviewer that it was a wonderful feeling, the height of his dreams He was then asked, how long that feeling lasted and his reply was, ‘Oh, about twenty minutes.’
For all of us, whether we are power-full or not, awards, titles and/or money, don’t make a lasting impression in terms of inner peace and strength. After attaining these, we often still feel empty. In the case of a career, a title may be given to us, or a pay raise, yet we may not experience a feeling of real satisfaction. Most people who earn a doctorate feel a let-down after their dissertation is completed; the elation they expected isn’t there. After all that hard work, where is the joy? We are puzzled, despairing, often becoming depressed or anxious when we have attained whatever it is we were seeking and find it so unsatisfactory. Is this all there is?
Someone, not something, must give us love. Objects do not give us love; professional titles and positions do not give us love. Both objects and titles do contain power, but not the kind of power that satisfies us. Objects and titles can, and often do, contribute to our self-esteem. Doing a job well and having others recognize us for our hard work, talent, and intelligence does make us feel better about ourselves. Even if no one gives us praise for a job well done or for having gained financial security, these achievements certainly make us feel better than being jobless or a failure. Yet after we have accomplished what we were striving for, the achievements and/or the praise and recognition often seem empty. In the end, objects and positions alone are not enough to make us power-full—we just will not be quite as empty.
High Self-Esteem vs. Power-full
Tom’s life certainly fit into this category. He had external power, lots of it. He had attained his goals and the financial security which one would think would make someone feel power-full. He was good looking, in fine health, well liked and respected by his colleagues. Tom also felt very good about himself. He was proud of his accomplishments and did not minimize them. Though not boastful, he did have high self-esteem.
I have used Tom’s story because it so aptly illustrates the difference between high self-esteem and feeling power-full. It is possible to have an honest, true self-appraisal that is positive, in other words, to have high self-esteem, and yet not be power-full. Tom thought he was a good physician; he thought he was a sensitive and caring friend; he believed in himself; he had high self-esteem. Yet he still felt empty.
Tom blamed himself; he knew he was unhappy, but since nothing seemed to satisfy him, he finally decided he needed help. All his life he had set goals, and he, like most of us, assumed that when he finally reached his goals, he would be content. He blamed his unhappiness on the fact that he was continually striving after one more achievement. When he finally got to the pinnacle and found that the magic of being happy was not there, he blamed himself for the dissatisfaction he experienced.
Over the years, I found many clients who expressed this same vague sense of restlessness. Most of the time these people were affluent, had families, interesting jobs and interesting pursuits. Yet there was a struggle for some undefined quality. Since everything looked good on the outside, they inevitably felt they should be happy. ‘Why am I not happy?’ was often said to me in the privacy of my office.
Happiness vs. Peace
We all want to be happy. Happiness sounds like a noble goal, but I have come to believe that human beings are not constitutionally made to always be happy. Even when everything is wonderful, we do not seem able to sustain that feeling for long. It is then that we berate ourselves—we think we should be happy and we are not.
We do not often use the word peace to describe what it is we want out of life. Instead we use the word happiness. But I believe that is the turn in the road where we make our mistake. If we are seeking happiness, we can attach all kinds of labels to that word, different for everyone and different for each of us at any given time. But if we knew from the start that what we were seeking was inner peace, which would, in turn, bring us happiness, then our personal journey would be much more satisfying.
Feeling at peace within oneself is much more stable than the emotion of happiness. That is because inner peace starts within and manifests itself outwardly, whereas happiness depends on other people or things or events—therefore it begins exteriorly and we expect it to make us feel good inside. Scripture does not promise us happiness, but it does promise us joy and peace. Inner peace is a state of calm, of serenity, of lack of struggle.
We can and often do struggle to feel happy. That’s what much drinking and drug taking is, a struggle to feel exhilarated, even if only for a brief time. Bars have ‘happy hours’ with drinks being less expensive, the connotation being a time to get happy. A classic example of struggling to be happy is a New Year’s Eve celebration. Let’s whoop it up! Let’s celebrate! Many times there is actually a let down because we’ve built up our expectations; we think we should be ‘happy’ at a time like that and we often are not.
A feeling of happiness comes when it comes. It won’t come by artificially trying to make oneself happy. Peace, on the other hand, is stable; it is not transitory. A person who is at peace within himself has no need to struggle for a feeling of happiness.
Negative Power Power Struggles
Over and over again, I have listened to people in therapy say these exact words, ’I feel empty.’ If we feel empty, if we feel a void in our lives, we will seek to fill that void. When we feel empty, we feel we have no control over our life. And if we have no control over our life, we feel insecure and will instinctively struggle to be filled up, to gain strength, power, often in negative ways.
The more powerless we feel, the more we are going to struggle for power. That is when the word power begins to take on negative connotations. The struggle is negative; it is against other forces; it is pushing rather than working alongside. It leaves us and others around us with negative feelings.
Far too often, marriages become one long power struggle. Every therapist who does marriage counseling hears these words, ‘I don’t even remember what the fight was about!’ Probably what the fight was about was a struggle for power. If couples are not equal in terms of feeling power-full, if one or both of them feel empty, there usually will be a more or less constant struggle for power.
Roger and Shirley had been married for ten years, were the parents of two school-age children, and for the past five years, had worked together in the small neighborhood dry cleaners they owned. On the surface, their working together appeared to be the problem. Until the youngest child went to kindergarten, Shirley had stayed home. While they don’t remember their early years together as being idyllic, they agreed that it was not as bad then as now.
“She contradicts me all the time,” said Roger, with a grimace. “I can’t do anything right in her eyes. No matter what I say to a customer or no matter what I do about a problem, she has something to say about it.” Shirley did not see it that way, of course. She felt that Roger was always putting her down, making her feel incompetent. “He is so particular about everything. He looks over my shoulder and lots of times does something over again, after I’ve done it.”
This couple, in their early 40’s, had come to marriage counseling out of a feeling of desperation. Neither of them liked conflict and yet their life had become one constant battle. As soon as they closed the shop, they reviewed the day, blaming each other for what each had done wrong. Of course, the resentment didn’t start at the end of the day—it had been brewing quietly while other people were around. The minute Roger and Shirley were alone, a fight would erupt.
Neither of them had much self-confidence; neither of them felt power-full. And since the majority of their day was spent at the shop, this shared work experience became their battle ground. If they had worked in separate places, these eight hours spent together would not have provided the fuel for their power struggles, but they still would have argued. It was necessary to get to the root of their sense of emptiness, to lead each of them to an awareness of how the power struggle filled them with negative power. This negative power, unfortunately, often feels better than being empty.
Without getting into the details of this case, but simply describing their behavior, these two people were engaging in what had become a constant power struggle. Each had a desperate need to get the better of the other one; each felt resentment until the other person was put in his or her place. I explained to them that they were competing with one another, competing for power.
There was much more work to be done on this marriage, but that explanation helped them a great deal. When I put a name on their behavior and each of them began to see what they were doing as each incident happened, change began to occur.
Definition of Power
The word power is used very loosely and often has negative connotations. My dictionary’s first definition of the word power is the faculty of doing or performing something. That does not sound negative; that sounds very ordinary. It does, however, imply motion, a sense of moving ahead. In contrast, the word powerless presents images of standing still, being motionless. Power denotes strength. My thesaurus lists the words force and strength as synonyms for power. Some of the other words given are vigor, might, potency, authority, control, command, vitality, magnetism, and mastery.
There are not as many synonyms given for the word powerlessness, but as one would expect, they all begin with the prefix in-(inability, incapability, inadequacy, ineffectiveness, and impotent.) When we feel powerless, we do feel incapable, inadequate, etc. And when we feel full of power, all those strong words listed above are true—we feel we can handle anything. Yet in actuality, we may have power at times and feel powerless at other times, depending on to what area of our life we are referring.
Power Continuum
Very few things in life are black or white, one extreme or the other. Most concepts can be placed on a continuum, rather than being either/or. If total power is at one end of the continuum and lack of power at the other, total power represents the number 100 and no power at all would be 0.
With this graphic image in mind, it can be seen that hardly anyone is at either end of this spectrum. Everyone is at some point on the continuum. And not only that, everyone is at a different point on the continuum in relation to different people and different circumstances.
A man may be about a 65 on the power continuum at his office. He may be in charge of many people (and therefore has power over them). He may be entrusted with important decisions every day; matters of his judgement may mean the difference between financial profit or loss to his company. Or other people’s welfare may be entrusted to him and his decisions, skill and ability impact other people’s lives.
Yet this man may be about a 20 in his relationship with his wife. She may have almost total power over him. Not necessarily in the sense of the stereotypical henpecked husband. She may have power over him because he has her on a pedestal, is so much in love with her that he believes she can do no wrong—this gives her power. Or she may be physically ill; this gives people a lot of power. Whether her illness is real or not does not matter in terms of power; the fact that she is ill could make him give in to her when he would rather not, perhaps stay with her when he would rather not. Any of these factors and many more could hypothetically affect the difference between his place on the continuum in his work as opposed to his relationship with his wife.
A teenager may feel power-full at home. She may have loving parents and feel good about herself in relation to her family. But this same student might have many doubts about herself at school. She may have to struggle all the time to keep up with her peers scholastically and could label herself as powerless, when actually it is only in that one area that she is powerless.
So we need to categorize, separate the areas of our lives and not give ourselves or others a blanket appraisal of having power or being powerless. We are each on a different point on the continuum, depending upon the relationship to which we are referring. Those who are power-full, especially those who received this gift of love from birth on, are much more stable in terms of the continuum of power. They seem much more content than others might who are always struggling to get higher on the continuum.
If the Powerdigm theory of positive and negative power, plus the concept of power struggles, either within ourselves or with others, strikes a chord within you, this book will help bring you to an understanding of yourself. I am convinced that understanding has to come first. My purpose is to lead the reader into the realm of identification, of solving the mysteries deep within him or herself.
Power-full and power-empty are feelings, feelings which can and do shape how we feel about ourselves and others. A power struggle is the name of the process—it describes what happens. Not every idea, not every situation, is for every reader; but each may find his or her story in the stories of others.
However, the overall concepts of understanding yourself or others in your life, the theory of either being power-full or power-empty, or somewhere in between on the continuum, the theory of positive power and negative power, applies to everyone. We have all had negative experiences. The amount and the intensity of those experiences are what make the difference.
Habits and emotions can be changed and behavior can be changed. There are many people in the church who have personal as well as personality problems, sincere believers who do not understand why they do the things they do (like Paul!). Hopefully, this book will be a beginning for the process of a more power-filled life.
And there are many who are still searching for God, who may not even know that is what their sense of emptiness is about. Knowing why, naming the problem, redefining what is missing or what is wrong, all these make change less difficult to accomplish.
There are many circumstances as well as interactions that can be defined as power-fillers and power-drainers, events which sometimes change the very course of our lives. Negative emotions, negative interactions, drain us of power. The power of love recharges us, fills us. The next two chapters will deal with these factors.
Chapter 2
POWER DRAINERS
There are events that fill us with power, make us feel good about ourselves, on top of the world, and there are others that have the opposite effect—there are incidents that literally drain us, rob us of power. Even if someone is power-full, there are situations that can be temporarily draining. And for those who are not power-full, power draining situations such as interactions within one’s family can often be deadly, affecting them for many years afterward.
An example of how family interactions can deeply impact people was brought home to me as I watched a young Mexican-American man who is in prison for robbery being interviewed on television. The program was about the plight of teens who break the law. He recalled a time in high school when he made the decision to change his habits and began to study for the first time.
“I got an A on my report card! I was so proud,” he said, smiling as he remembered the feeling. “But my brothers and sisters, when I told them, they said I was a nerd. And then I took the report card to my mother and she said, ‘Oh, that’s nice.’”
This young man smiled during the entire interview; he never looked sad. I, however, felt very sad as I was watching, because when this event is viewed in light of the Powerdigm, his disappointment was an enormous power drainer. He felt good, filled with some power, when he got that first A, maybe as much as he had ever been. Internally, he had gained some positive power, but externally, in his interactions, he had gained nothing. The reaction of indifference he received to his achievement was like the pricking of a balloon. It was a pivotal turning point, a supreme power-drainer.
I am sure this one event did not thrust him into criminal acts, yet he had obviously gone on to seek power in other, more negative, ways. If there had been some reinforcement, no matter how little, for that wondrous report card, if someone had been as proud of him as he was of himself, the event would have been power-filling rather than power-draining.
It may sound reckless to state that one event, one power-draining incident or conversely, one power-filling incident, can determine how one’s life will go. Yet over and over in therapy, I have had clients tell me there was a turning point, one event that had changed their lives, for better or for worse.
We Want to be Right
Putting daily interactions into the Powerdigm has helped me to understand many behaviors, in myself as well as others. In any interaction there is a desire, conscious or not, to be the one who is right. Even if we know we are wrong, yet win the interaction, we gain some power. Not positive power—this kind of filling up will never make anyone power-full, but it usually feels better than losing.
Why do we have such a need to be right? Why does that demon of obstinacy rise up in us when someone tells us we are wrong? Because it is experienced as a power struggle and in power struggles, we either win or we lose. If we lose, we have lost power, or at least that’s how it may feel and how it may be interpreted. If we win, we feel we have gained some power.
I was writing in my office one day when a colleague came in to say hello. I explained the theme of this book to him and he said the concept intrigued him. He went on to say that he had a friend who was a script writer in Hollywood. “Whenever we watch a scene on TV together, after two people have had a conversation, my friend asks me who won that?” In other words, who ended up on top in terms of power? This screenwriter knew about power struggles—she was referring to the same concept as I am.
We want to be right. We don’t want to be wrong. Being right, winning the point, is a power-filler. When a person ‘one ups’ another, there is a sense of power. Perhaps there is also a sense of anger; perhaps the relationship is weakened rather than strengthened, but the person who got the last word or got one over the other one did gain a sense of power, negative power. When someone says ‘I put him down a peg or two,’ what that person really is saying is ’I put myself up a peg or two,’ gained some power, albeit negative power. However, the other person in the interaction will experience this as a power-drainer, unless that person happens to be self confident enough to see the interaction for what it is.
The expression ’taking the wind out of his sails’ is a graphic example of a power-draining interaction. We win and lose these every day, but there are people who feel they lose them all and others who have an intense need to win them all. Whenever power is extended outward to become power over someone or something else, it can become destructive. The classic power struggle begins.
I only know Sam through what his wife, Sheila, tells me. Sam would never come in for therapy, not even for one session so that I could meet him. From hearing Sheila’s side of the story, it appears Sam engages in power struggles with whomever he meets, at home, on the job, or with anyone who ’gets in his way.’ He has to be the expert, no matter what the topic of conversation, and if the other person doesn’t immediately agree with him, he begins haranguing and putting the other person down. Of course, this leads to frequent job changes and not having friends and a horrendous marriage.
Why is he this way? Why start something everytime you meet someone? All I can do is guess, since Sam isn’t about to let someone like me talk to him. My educated guess is that Sam is very, very angry, that his anger was born in childhood, that his father probably treated him exactly as he now treats others, and that the negative power he fills himself with by ‘winning’ these self-imposed arguments are all he has to go on. This negative power is his fuel. He is probably very empty and knows no other way to fill himself up than what he has done all his life. It is sad, but there are many Sams in the world, needing help, needing to be off their guard long enough to let someone love them, to be filled up, and yet who usually remain as they are all their lives.
I had a professor in college who fascinated me in terms of her ability to cope with whatever came up in the classroom. My observation was that she never, ever, became defensive. When someone in the class challenged or disagreed with her, she would smile or laugh and carry on a discussion with that person in such a positive way that the result was disarming. She was so sure of herself, so apparently power-filled, that she did not need to prove anything to anyone about herself. She was confident in her knowledge and ability, but there was more than that. Her personality was such that arguments were not power-draining for her; they were not a setback. She simply handled the situation, made her point, and at the same time, did not make the student feel foolish for doubting her statements. It was a pleasure to watch, a role model for anyone who was studying the dynamics going on, certainly a lesson for me.
Criticism
Criticism is a deadly power-drainer. There are very few of us self-confident enough to ignore it. Humiliation is a deeper and even more destructive form of criticism, more power draining. I often see and hear interactions between parents and children in which the child is unbelievably humiliated, so much so that it makes me cringe. The damage done to a child’s self-esteem, the powerlessness of the child (usually a small child) is so devastating that it is hurtful to watch.
Competition
Competition can often be seen as a power struggle. The best one wins—not just the prize or the game, but power also. Winning makes one feel more powerful—losing makes one feel less powerful. Competitions do not have to be large. Sam turns every conversation, every incident, into a competition, but all of us have to compete at times. How one accepts the results depends upon whether one is power-full or power-empty or somewhere in between. A power-full person can have a competitive spirit in a healthy manner. He can play a set of tennis, or bid on a job, or run for office with all his resources and can accept the results without anger (if it is a loss) and without arrogance (if it is a win.) Competition is present every day for all of us, but for some, if there is not a win, it is experienced as a drainage of power.
Imagination
Our imagination has the potential to be a power drainer. Negative thoughts can actually make us feel down, sad, depressed, or just worse than we did before we thought about something unfavorable. If what we are thinking is true, rational, then the negative feelings probably cannot be helped. But if our imagination builds a scenario that isn’t true, then our imagination can get us into trouble.
Let’s imagine a scenario right here that illustrates the point. Jerry is walking down the street and sees Tiffany, one of the high school cheer leaders. She is in his math class this term. He begins to imagine that she is going to look at him, smile, and say hello. His imagination continues, goes on and on, building a movie-type love scene. Jerry feels happy inside. Here she comes; she’s getting close; she’s going to see him and break out in a big smile any minute now!
Tiffany, unaware of Jerry’s imagination and in reality, unaware of Jerry at all, walks right by him without noticing him. Jerry is crestfallen. He feels terrible. He had filled himself with power using his imagination and now he feels drained, upset, even a little bit angry at Tiffany. He shouldn’t be angry at the girl, of course, it isn’t her fault he feels this way. His imagination has pulled his feelings down; his imagination caused him to build expectations that were unrealistic. His imagination became a power-drainer. We all do this kind of thing to ourselves, drain ourselves of power needlessly by building unrealistic expectations in our head.
Worry
Worry is a power drainer. Worry is a form of fear, a form of anxiety. Scripture tells us that an anxious heart weighs a man down (Proverbs 12:25). Yet we do get anxious and we do worry about all kinds of things.
Indecision is an example of a power drainer. When we don’t know what to do, the manifestation of not knowing what to do is to worry. If we don’t know what is going to happen, and if we let that indecision, fear of the unknown, worry us, we can be drained of a great deal of our power. Worse yet, anxiety and fear can make us feel so powerless that we can’t think straight and become paralyzed, unable to use what resources we do have to solve the problem.
Worry is the antithesis of trust. Jesus told us not to worry, not to worry about shelter, food, clothing, or health. (Matthew 6:25-34) How much of what we worry about has to do with those four things? We worry about having the money to buy a house, to keep the house up, to furnish it, to redecorate it. We buy a new coat when we already have three and then we worry about the credit card bill. We overeat and then worry about our weight. And we worry about our health. We worry, even though Jesus said that we could not, by worrying, add one hour to our life.