S1 EP55 – The Power of Accepting Helplessness Over Others and Outcomes

Transcript

Hi everyone. This is Dr. Margaret Paul with the inner bonding podcast. And today I want to talk about the power of accepting helplessness over others and outcomes. I’m wondering if you’re aware of when you feel helpless regarding others in regarding situations in regarding outcomes. Sometimes it’s hard to be aware of this because helplessness is a very, very hard feeling to feel. And it can even sometimes feel like life or death. To those of us who were left to cry for hours as babies with no one coming to help us, because we were so helpless over ourselves as babies and small children, it can trigger feelings of panic.

It’s hard to remember in these moments when fear is triggered that as adults, even though we’re still helpless over others and outcomes, we’re no longer helpless over ourselves. In my work with my 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 helpless is over others is such a painful feeling to feel that most people have learned many ways to avoid it.

And of course, there’s very good reasons for this as infants and children, we all had many experiences of helplessness. So it’s just, like I said, crying as an infant with no one coming feeling lonely and hungry and terrified of dying. If no one came to take care of us being yelled at criticized, ridiculed dominated over rejected by parents, siblings, other relatives, teachers, or others in authority not being seen or heard by the people important to us being physically and or sexually abused loss of a parent sibling grandparent or other loved one lack of choice over things like hairstyle, clothing, how we spend our time being made to learn things in school that had no relevance to us.

And of course, many other situations in life over which we felt helpless. And 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. For many of us, the deep fear that got programmed into us as young children can trigger our ego wounded selves, desire to control.

When we feel helpless over others choices, how do you avoid feeling helpless over the way others think or feel or act? What do you do when you feel helpless over another person? You get annoyed and irritated with that person. Do you explain and defend or lecture and teach? Do you shut down closing your heart and withdrawing your love or shut down and get depressed? Do you get angry, rageful and blaming to another person you cry as a victim collapsing into victim tears.

Do you acquiesce giving yourself up to try and get the other person to do what you want them to do or to not be abusive to you? Do you turn to food or alcohol or drugs or spending or sex or other addictions to avoid feeling or feelings? Do you judge yourself making it your fault? You go into resistance doing the opposite of what another person wants a view. Why, what do you hope for in behaving in any of these protective and controlling ways?

Do you hope to convince the other person to change? Do you hope to avoid the pain of helplessness and the loneliness and heartache that you might be feeling in response to another choices? Do you hope to feel safe rather than anxious or panicked? I find helplessness over others and outcomes to be one of the very hardest feelings to feel. I experienced much painful helplessness as, as a child with no way of managing it. And it’s taken me many years to let go of my many addictions stemming from needing to avoid this very difficult in painful feelings.

Often when I feel instant tears coming up, I know that it might be signaling helplessness, and then I might 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 inner bonding, anger process, really letting myself yell, releasing the angry energy privately in my own space and not actually in the presence of whoever or is triggering 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. One of the things that has become very clear to me regarding that feeling of helplessness and other existential 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 of helplessness, I might get stuck with a feeling, but the moment I’m able to name, it seems like a little space opens up between me and the feeling something seems to release in me.

And I’m able to move into compassion, acceptance, and faith, and then take a loving action for myself. There’s much magic in being able to name the feeling naming it somehow enables me to bypass being reactive to it. Do you know when you’re feeling helpless? What does this state feel like to you? What are the signs in your body that you’re feeling helpless over others or over outcomes? So 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. So you, if you can begin paying attention to the sensations in your body so that you can identify and name the helplessness when it arises, and then you can learn to lovingly manage it with compassion and acceptance. The basic motivation of the wound itself is to feel safe by trying to have control over, getting low and avoiding pain. When someone does something that triggers your feelings of helplessness, loneliness, and heartache, your wound itself is deeply programmed to move into action.

But the other option other than trying to control, avoid and protect against pain is very challenging for most of us. The option is to fully accept that ultimately we have no control over others. What would you do differently if you fully accepted this? What I do is to move into compassion for myself, for the very painful feeling of helplessness. Now I disliked this feeling as much as anyone. And for many years, I was often unsuccessful in not getting triggered into my wound itself.

At times when another’s behavior was extremely painful to me, I got triggered into my infant, my infant panic, and attempted to control the other person. I found it very challenging to not be reactive when someone was violating or mean, or had betrayed my trust in a profound way. But I did know how important it was to keep working at it. Now, as soon as I feel this very painful feeling, I move into compassion toward myself, lovingly helping my inner child feel the intense pain of helplessness, loneliness, and heartbreak. I surround myself with the warmth and power of my spiritual guidance so that I’m not alone with these feelings.

Now I lovingly disengage from the situation I’m generally feeling so sad that I need to be alone and cry. As I said, crying can help me move the feelings through me so that I don’t get stuck with the pain. And as I said, sometimes I need to do the inner bonding, anger process to further release the feelings. Then I do further inner work to fully accept that I have no control over the other person or over the situation. To what extent are your conflicts, your fighting and your disconnection, the result of not accepting your helplessness over others and outcomes. Take a moment to think about an important relationship in your life where there’s conflict or distance is this the result of not accepting your helplessness over another person and not being willing to feel this very painful feeling.

You might want to consider learning to manage this feeling rather than continuing to try to avoid it and rent in ways that are actually creating relationship problems. Given that helplessness is one of the hardest feelings to feel. It’s understandable that most of us are unwilling to even know when we are and what we are and what we’re not helpless over much of our controlling behavior towards others comes from our unwillingness to accept our helplessness over others, intention, to learn or intention to control. We do not want to know that we’re helpless over whether another chooses to be loving to us or judgemental towards us sometimes because we often manage to have control over getting approval or avoiding disapproval.

We may confuse with love and think we have control over getting love, which we don’t have. If you truly accepted your health as your helplessness over others, what’d you continue to get angry with them. Would you continue to blame to judge a shame and criticize? Would you continue to comply or to be nice? Instead of honest, if you truly accepted your head health, is this over. Whether others love you and accept you, you would, you work so hard to prove your worth to others. Would you make others responsible for your worth? Would you continue to believe that you’re not good enough?

Which causes you to feel shame as a way to believe that if you only did things right, you could control others into loving you, moving beyond your controlling behavior, as well as letting go of the lie that you’re not good enough, which creates the feeling of shame will happen fairly easily. Once you fully accept your helplessness over others, intention and feelings and behavior. Our core shame is our deepest oldest addiction or oldest protection against feeling our feelings of helplessness or shame gives us the illusion of power over others.

That is if we’re not being loved because we’re not good enough, then we can continue to strive to be good enough. And then we can convince ourselves that we’re going to have control over getting the love. We want paradoxically accepting our health illnesses over up over others leads us to our personal power. Once we fully accept that we can’t have control over others, loving us or rejecting us. We may then finally turn to our spiritual guidance for help in loving and accepting ourselves.

This major step moves us out of being victims of other choices of others’ choices and into control over our own lives, which is what we do have control over. We do have control over our own intention to love or to control equally challenging is accepting our helplessness equally challenging to accepting our helplessness is accepting our helplessness over events and outcomes. So here’s an example. Beth’s whole life was focused on attempting to control the outcome of things.

She’s a successful clothing designer and her thoughts were constantly occupied with fantasies of how she hoped her business would expand and what she could do to make sure things turned out the way that she wanted. When she wasn’t preoccupied with her business, she was ruminating on the kind of man she wanted to meet and how she couldn’t impress him into liking her. Then she would go on to thinking how much he wanted to have a baby and how time was passing her by Beth rarely felt happy in the moment because she was so occupied with the future. She believes that when her business was going the way she wanted and she found the man she wanted and had a baby, then she would be happy.

Meanwhile, she often felt empty and depressed. Here’s another example. Alexander also felt empty and depressed. Most of the time, he was a successful lawyer with a lovely wife and two children. Although having all that Alexander was rarely present in the moment. He was constantly occupied with thoughts of how he could control the outcome of his cases and how he could get his wife to be more turned on to him and how he could make sure his kids were healthy and successful in school and how he could make sure that people liked him. He rarely enjoyed all that he had in the present because he was constantly attaching his happiness to future events, Beth and Alexander, like so many people believe that their happiness is attached to outcomes and that they can control outcomes.

This attachment to controlling the outcome, keeps them from being present in the moment they are actually missing out on their lives, letting go of attachment to outcomes, into attempting to control outcomes is a major challenge for most people. And it’s actually a spiritual challenge in order to let go of trying to control outcomes. You need to accept your helplessness over outcomes and be in faith that there is a higher power that is always supporting your highest good. If you accept your helplessness and trusted that you were always being supported in the highest good of your soul’s journey, buyer’s spiritual guidance, whatever this is for you, it would be so much easier to stay in the present moment and do what you can do, which is what you do have control over.

It’s only when we can let go of thinking about and attempting to control future outcomes that we can be fully present in this moment. Often when someone is sad or anxious, anxious, it’s because he or she is attaching to some future outcome and ruminating about it. When you’re accepted, when you accept that you’re not in control of outcomes, then there’s no longer any need to obsess about them. Letting go of outcomes brings us into this present moment by being present in the moment, you can now be in step one of inner bonding, which is tuning into your feelings.

If you discover that you’re not feeling peaceful and joyful, you can now move through the six steps, discovering what you’re thinking and doing that is unloving to yourself and then taking the loving action that can result in feeling peaceful and joyful. As you can see, avoiding your feeling of helplessness over outcomes and being attached to controlling outcomes keeps you from being present in this moment with your feelings and your experience. When you’re not present with your feelings, you do not know when you’re behaving in ways that are harmful to you, to you.

This is what keeps you behaving in ways that keep you stuck in anxiety and depression, unhappiness, fear, anger, and emptiness. If you feel stuck with these feelings, ask yourself, what am I attaching my happiness to? What am I trying to control? Asking yourself these questions without judgment with a deep and compassionate intention to learn will help you uncover the attachments that are keeping you from feeling the peace and joy of the moment. And from being empowered to take the actions that you are in control over, why waste anymore of your life by trying to control others and future outcomes, which you can’t possibly control.

Anyway, life is right now in this very moment. Love and peace and joy and happiness can be experienced right now. When you let go of trying to control others and outcomes and open your heart to learning in this present moment and open your heart to being present with the love of your spiritual guidance. This is something that you do have control over the paradox is that the more you let go of control over others and outcomes, the more you find that you can manifest what you, you want country showing energy does not lead to be able to being able to manifest you want manifestation occurs as you open your heart to learning and to loving.

Then your spiritual guidance can co-create with you to create the life you want. As I’ve practiced inner bonding over the years, I’ve become stunned at my ability to manifest my dreams. You’re going to feel incredibly empowered. Once you fully accept your helplessness over others and outcomes, try it for one week. Try throughout the day, reminding yourself that your help is over others and outcomes. You might actually be astounded at the results. Now. I hope you join me in my upcoming virtual inner bonding course.

I invite you to be sure to get on our mailing list by signing up for our free seven day inner bunny course or register for our free inner bonding journal. Then you’re going to receive my emails about downloading my new free ebook, the four mistakes that block self-love and relationships you’ll receive my invitation to join my free webinar, three secrets to loving yourself and others. And you’ll be invited to join my course, the power to joyfully heal your life. The revolutionary inner bonding process for healing, freedom and vibrant love this powerful virtual weekly eight week course starts June 3rd.

And we’ll help you move out of controlling what you can’t control. Learn to control what you can and learn to manage your helplessness and other painful feelings of life so that you no longer have to try to control others and outcomes to avoid them. Also, if you scroll down on the homepage@innerbonding.com, you can directly download my free ebook. I hope to see you at my inner bonding course, and I send all of you love and blessings.