Are you aware of when you feel helpless regarding others or situations?

In my work with clients, I find that most people are not aware when this painful feeling is being triggered. Instead of experiencing their helplessness, they immediately do various things to avoid it – before even being aware of feeling it. Helplessness over others is such a painful thing to feel that most people have learned to avoid it.

There are good reasons for this. As infants and children, we all had many experiences of helplessness, such as:

• Crying as an infant, with no one coming. Feeling lonely and hungry, terrified of dying if no one came to take care of us.
   
• Being yelled at, criticized, ridiculed, dominated and/or rejected by parents, siblings, other relatives and/or teachers, or others in authority. Not being seen or heard.
   
• Being physically and/or sexually abused.
   
• Loss of a parent, sibling, grandparents or other loved one.
   
• Lack of choice over hairstyle, clothing, how we spent our time. Being made to learn things in school that had no relevance to us.

Not A Feeling A Child Can Manage

As children, feeling helpless over ourselves was way too big a feeling to manage, so we all learned many ways to avoid it. The problem is that most people are still doing those protective things to avoid this feeling, rather than noticing it, acknowledging it, and lovingly managing it.

How do you avoid feeling helpless over the way others think, feel and act? How do you avoid feeling helpless over situations?

• I cry as a victim.
   
• I get angry or rageful and blame someone else.
   
• I give myself up to try to get the other person to do what I want them to do, or to not be abusive to me.
   
• I turn to food, alcohol, drugs, spending, sex and other addictions to avoid my feelings.
   
• I judge myself, making it my fault.
   
• I shut down and get depressed.

I find helplessness to be one of the very hardest feelings to feel. I had much painful helplessness as a child, with no way of managing it, and it has taken me many years to let go of my many addictions stemming from needing to avoid this very difficult feeling.

For me, often when I feel instant tears coming up, I know that it might be signaling helplessness,and that I may need to let myself cry to release the pain of it. This kind of crying – to release the natural pain of helplessness - is different from crying as a victim. Sometimes I need to do an anger process - really letting myself yell, releasing the anger energy, privately and in my own space, and not actually in the presence of whoever or whatever is causing me to feel so helpless, until I can come around to acceptance and faith that all will be well. Sometimes I simply need to walk or run in nature to move the painful energy and come back into feeling centered. Mostly, I need to open to compassion for this very painful feeling and embrace it until it’s ready to move through me.

Name the Feeling

One of the things that has become very clear to me, regarding helplessness and other existantial painful feelings, is that I need to be able to name the feeling. If I'm feeling badly and I haven't recognized the feeling as helplessness, I can get stuck. But the moment I am able to name it, a little space opens up between me and it, something seems to release in me and I'm able to move into compassion, acceptance and faith – and often take a loving action for myself. There is much magic in being able to name the feeling. For me, naming it generally enables me to bypass being reactive to it.

Do you know when you are feeling helpless? What does this state feel like to you? What are the signs in your body that you are feeling helpless? I feel tears in my eyes, a tightness in my chest, and agitation in my body. I also often feel somewhat breathless – like the air has been knocked out of me.

See if you can begin paying attention to the sensations in your body, so you can identify and name your helplessness when it arises, and learn to lovingly manage it with compassion and acceptance.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."

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