Reclaiming Power: How Trauma Steals Agency and How to Take It Back

When people discuss trauma, they usually center on the incident itself—what happened, how severe it was, how much damage it produced. But the sense of powerlessness accompanying trauma is what defines it, more than the actual occurrence.

When we confront something overwhelming—something we cannot escape, fight off, or control—trauma results. The unifying denominator in all these events—physical violence, emotional neglect, bullying, or being overlooked in times of need—is that they rob us of our sense of control, power, agency. And when powerlessness starts to define us, it can influence our perspective of the world and ourselves for years to come.

Many survivors of childhood complex trauma find that the sensation never completely disappears. Rather, it becomes a prism through which we view life—sometimes without even recognizing it.

My Personal Experience with Powerlessness

When I look back on my life, one of the strongest themes running through it is powerlessness.

When a young child, I felt powerless when:

• Nobody stood in to stop my brother from bullying me.
• My neighbor bullied me; I had no means of stopping him.
• My parents fought; I had no control over what was happening.
• Emotionally absent, my mother left me to sort things by myself.
• I felt invisible, defenseless, and unheard.

There was no getting away. No way to fight back. Nobody around to provide emotional support. These events left me feeling quite powerless, and over time that helplessness evolved into something more insidious—a notion that I had no control over my own life.

Psychologists refer to this as learned helplessness—that is, when repeated experiences of powerlessness shape our belief that nothing we do would improve our situation. Once that notion takes root, it shapes everything—our choices, our relationships, our capacity to trust, even our capacity to heal.

Why Powerlessness is the Core of Trauma

Psychologically, one can argue that trauma’s greatest damage comes from powerlessness. Our nervous system responds in one of four ways when an event or situation is overwhelming:

1. Fight: We endeavor to push back or resist.
2. Flight: We aim to flee.
3. Freeze: We shut down and go numb.
4. Fawn: To keep safe, we endeavor to appease or surrender.

For many trauma survivors—especially children—fight and flight are not choices. An abusive parent cannot be stopped; we cannot flee when we are too young to survive on our own. That leaves freeze and fawn, responses that reinforce powerlessness.

This conditioning can, over time, cause us to:

• Question our capacity to transform our life.
• Feel imprisoned in toxic relationships, jobs, or circumstances.
• Battle with making decisions and risk-taking.
• Develop low self-worth, shame, or self-blame.

Trauma rewires our sense of self and, rather than merely leaving us with painful memories, instead anchors the belief that we are powerless to change our own life.

Reclaiming Agency: How to Break Free from Powerlessness

The good news is that learned helplessness can be unwound. Though it takes time, one can gradually regain a feeling of agency.

Here are few strategies for beginning to reclaim your agency:

1. Recognize That Powerlessness Was a Survival Response, Not a Truth

• As children we were helpless. As adults, though, we have options.
• Healing begins with learning that, rather than an objective reality, the sense of powerlessness is a conditioned reaction.

2. Rebuild a Sense of Control with Small Actions

• Start with simple, predictable routines, as trauma often makes life seem erratic.
• Making conscious, everyday decisions about what to eat, when to work out, or when to go to bed helps one to restore a sense of self-direction.

3. Use Mind-Body Practices to Regain Presence

• Practices including meditation, breathwork, and qi gong help you regain control over your own nervous system and body.
• By means of movement, awareness, and self-regulation, these techniques help to offset freeze states.

4. Journaling to Rewrite the Narrative

• Many times, trauma experiences are narrated from the standpoint of powerlessness.
• Write about past events, but reinterpret them with an eye on survival and resiliency.
• For instance, replace “I was stuck,” with “I did what I needed to survive, and now I have the ability to choose otherwise.”

5. Break the Pattern of Avoidance

• Trauma sometimes drives us away from uncomfortable situations.
• Whether it’s social anxiety, fear of confrontation, or fear of failure, gently confronting avoidance habits helps restore agency.

Daoist Wisdom: Healing Powerlessness by Aligning with Flow

The Daoist healing arts appeal to me in part because they present a different perspective of power.

Daoism emphasizes that power results from understanding natural cycles and working with them, not from imposing control or fighting against life.

• Wu Wei (Effortless Action): Powerlessness results from our sense that life is happening to us. Daoism holds that we restore our flow when we learn to move with life, instead of against it.
• Qi Cultivation: Poor energy, tiredness, or numbness are often manifestations of powerlessness. Qi gong and other Daoist techniques revive body energy, therefore restoring a felt sense of personal power.
• Harmonizing with Cycles: Trauma throws us off our natural rhythms. Reestablishing stability and predictability can be achieved by tuning into daily cycles, seasonal changes, even breath cycles.

The Daoist perspective of power is about using choice to move in alignment with life’s energy; it’s not about asserting dominance or control.

Final Thoughts: Turning Powerlessness Into Empowerment

I felt powerless to some degree for much of my life. Even now, I still battle with it occasionally; but I’ve also realized that the first step in recovering my power was acknowledging my powerlessness.

Healing is about changing how we engage with the past, not about wiping it out.

Every every time I:

• Choose consciously instead of reacting out of anxiety,
• Establish a limit instead of being silent,
• Align with my own energy instead of imposing control,

…I recover a bit more of what trauma stole from me.

If you’ve ever felt powerless, know this: Right now you are not powerless. One choice at a time, you can gently and deliberately start to recover your agency. And with time, each of those little decisions add up to something truly transformational.