The Energy of Powerlessness and the Awareness That Opens the Way Out

There’s a kind of powerlessness that creeps in quietly, the kind that disconnects you from yourself long before you realize you’ve checked out.

We’ve all been there, at some point or another. At the very bottom of the barrel, numbing ourselves out. In that place where life is happening to you, around you, about you… and you can’t quite feel. Or you don’t want to feel. Or you don’t allow yourself to feel. And honestly, why would you want to?

Feeling can bring guilt, shame, hopelessness, defeat, helplessness, insecurity, inadequacy. It can stir up the “why me?” spiral we’d rather avoid. So of course we disengage. Of course we slip into avoidance. Who actually wants to feel powerless? Who willingly chooses the sensation of having no control? I certainly don’t enjoy my trips there.

And yet, somehow, we return to this place, this familiar, almost predictable pitstop, again and again. It can feel eternal when you’re in it. But it doesn’t have to be.

We do get to choose our thoughts, our emotions, our actions, our behaviors. But choice takes practice. Practice noticing when we’ve slipped into the dark. Practice not judging ourselves for ending up there. Practice pulling ourselves out, even when it feels slow or uncomfortable or unfamiliar.

Here’s the truth most people never admit and even fewer say out loud: You’re not broken for ending up here. It’s part of the human experience.

What would shift if we stopped judging ourselves for getting stuck? What if we accepted that sometimes this place is part of the process?

There are moments when our mind brings us here as protection, shielding us from discomfort, responsibility, or emotional pain. And because we’ve been on autopilot for so long, we pitch a tent the second we arrive. We settle in. We stay far longer than necessary.

These emotions, these reactions, this energy, they’re not good or bad. They serve a purpose. But they are catabolic. Catabolic energy is like carrying a backpack full of wet sand and continuing to go about your life with it on. To say that it's distracting is the understatement of the century.

When we perceive stress, we dip into this heavy, constricting energy. Not because something is wrong with us, but because our system is overwhelmed and trying to cope while attempting to continue about our lives.

It’s not a place we want to stay. And only you get to decide when enough is enough.

Catabolic energy will always exist to some degree. That’s standard. We just want it to stay low, because it’s directly tied to stress. Keeping it low requires self‑awareness and conscious choice, moment by moment.

Learning your energy patterns, on a typical day and under stress, is a game‑changer. It reveals the filters you move through the world with, the ones shaping how you show up, how you interpret situations, and how satisfied you feel in the many facets of your life.

And it raises a powerful question: What would shift if you consciously chose how you showed up, instead of reacting from old patterns you never questioned?

Life gets heavy. There’s no way around that. But you have the ability to make the load lighter, at any moment, when you commit to yourself and to the work of awareness and conscious choice.