Personal Power
It never ceases to amaze me in my work how often people fail to recognize their own power. One client after another comes in focused on everyone else—how put together they seem, how confident and strong they appear, how they manage to push through life. People are measuring themselves from the outside in, assuming power is something you can see in others but somehow miss in yourself.
I sit with people every day who don’t believe they have any power at all. They describe themselves as incapable, fragile, behind. They talk about anxiety as if it runs their lives, as if they’ve never made a decision without it interfering. When asked what they want help with, they often say things like, “I don’t trust myself,” or “I fall apart,” or “I can’t handle things the way other people can.” But when they start describing their lives in detail, a different picture emerges.
They’ve gotten themselves through school, work, parenting, relationships, illness, loss. They’ve made hard decisions under pressure. They’ve adapted when plans fell apart. They’ve shown up to responsibilities even while feeling unsure or afraid. They’ve kept going. The accomplishments are endless.
They don’t see any of that as evidence of strength. They frame it as having no choice—or as just surviving. Because in their minds, power only counts if they were confident at the time. This is a pattern I see constantly and a perspective that needs shifting.
Most of us dismiss our own capacity because it didn’t feel good while we were using it. Anything done while anxious, overwhelmed, or uncertain gets discounted. Fear becomes proof that we weren’t really in charge, rather than information we carried while still acting. But fear doesn’t negate agency. Discomfort doesn’t erase decision-making.
Most of us move through our days on autopilot. We answer quickly. We explain ourselves preemptively. We adjust our tone to keep things moving. When people say, “I didn’t even think about it—I just did it,” they assume no choice was involved. But the opposite is true. Even without conscious deliberation, people function, adapt and succeed. That’s not nothing. That’s power.
What it usually means is that the choice has been practiced for a long time. When someone tells me they “can’t help” over-explaining, I hear years of learning that being misunderstood had consequences. When someone says they “can’t help” stepping in to fix things, I hear a history of being relied on. When someone says they “can’t help” staying quiet, I hear past experiences where speaking up made things worse. These are not personal flaws. They are learned responses that once made sense.
We start to feel stuck when we stop noticing that these responses are still choices—not because they’re wrong, but because they’re happening without reflection. What’s usually missing isn’t effort or insight. It’s evidence.
In therapy, a lot of the work is slowing things down enough to notice what’s already there. I encourage clients to look at moments they skip over: the times they didn’t send the message, didn’t escalate the argument, didn’t say yes immediately, didn’t collapse even though they felt like they might. Moments they were in control.
Clients often wave these moments off; “That doesn’t count.” But it does counts. Most of us also overlook how often we’ve evaluated situations accurately. We sensed something was off. We knew a boundary was needed. We recognized when something wasn’t working. We may not have acted on it right away, but the awareness was there.
That awareness is part of your power. Many of us tend to think power shows up as bold action or certainty. In the room, it shows up as restraint. As hesitation that buys time. As choosing not to repeat the same response, even when the alternative feels uncomfortable.
Many clients are surprised when we start naming this. They’ve spent years collecting evidence of failure and ignoring evidence of competence. Therapy often becomes the place where that imbalance gets corrected. Not by telling people they’re strong. But by helping them see what they’ve already done.
Power doesn’t appear all at once. It becomes visible when we start paying attention to our own history—not the highlights, but the day-to-day decisions we’ve made while managing fear, pressure, and uncertainty.
Once we start to see that pattern, it’s harder to keep believing we are incapable. The evidence just won’t support it.
-J. Donohue The Donohue Approach™