Posted by Sylvia Graves, MA, LCMHCA

I wonder which memories from your life represent for you the experience of fulfillment––or at least, some close but imperfect approximation of it. I am willing to guess that whatever season or event or moment comes to mind, it is one in which you felt more deeply connected to others and more hopeful about your agency in life than you have at other times. 

In a previous post, I discussed the way in which our sense of connection to others nourishes a fundamental need within each of us, and the ways in which co-regulation and attunement bolster the process of healing from moments of aloneness. In this post, I am venturing into another angle of human thriving which also has to do with connection: the ability to experience life as though we have significant but limited agency. 

Human beings with a healthy sense of agency are able to embody the Serenity Prayer embraced by Alcoholics Anonymous: able to “to accept the things I cannot change…to change the things I can…and…to know the difference.” Hope depends on our ability to take on an active role in life, to effect goals for change. At the same time, our lines of connection to others and our internal sense of wellbeing depend on our ability to occupy that active role within the parameters of a larger story we need not try to control. 

Integral to human health are the faith and motivation that go hand-in-hand with  “chang[ing] the things I can.” As Maslow reasoned, and as researchers have confirmed, an individual’s belief in and experience of her own agency ties strongly to her level of satisfaction with life. Some refer to such goal-oriented thinking, which involves confidence in our efficacy to help shape our own life narratives, as the “mastery motivation system.” Humans orient themselves toward hope by embracing the power “to derive pathways to desired goals,” a confidence motivating the behaviors necessary for achieving those goals. 

We are happiest when we believe our decisions bear weight. As with social connection, agency is crucial to development from a young age. As with secure relationships, our sense of agency in the world is both integral to health and necessary for weathering trauma. 

And yet, beyond believing my decisions bear weight, only by also accepting the ways in which I lack control over the threats of the future am I able to allow the vulnerable experience of joy into my life. Although healthy human agency involves a sense of power in life, motivating the achievement of goals, it must also involve the ability to “accept the things I cannot change.” Only with a backdrop of such acceptance can human beings truly work effectively, rather than frantically. And on a deeper level, as Brené Brown has found, joy and gratitude are vulnerable experiences that are only possible when we are able to release control over the potential disappointments of the future and accept the present moment amidst all of its uncertainty. 

Experiences like COVID disrupt our sense of healthy agency in the world. There is a unique pain to enjoying a certain level of agency in life, and feeling as though that agency has slipped away; in fact, Daniel Gilbert argues that while “gaining control can have a positive impact on one’s health and well-being…losing control can be worse than never having had any at all.” 

COVID was nothing if not some loss of control for each of us. None of us could control how the virus would behave, how well the general public would collaborate to prevent the spread of it, what laws would pass, how quickly the vaccine would be developed––our influence over the pandemic was limited at best. Because of this, it is difficult to process COVID without some sense of powerlessness.

As with aloneness, the experience of powerlessness during trauma strips us of a fundamental tool for dealing with that trauma. The strength of the mastery motivation system is a crucial component of resilience in the face of life’s stressors. Part of what predicts the degree of damage wrought by a traumatic event is whether or not the individual experiencing the event is able to “becom[e] an agent in his own rescue.” Do we narrate this past experience with a sense that we had choices to make, or is the story overshadowed by the circumstances beyond our control, leaving us helpless? 

Many of us embrace a false dichotomy regarding agency: we believe we either have “power over” life or are entirely “powerless.” After an unexpected, largely out-of-control experience like COVID, this mindset becomes particularly insidious. The sense of vulnerability accompanying unforeseen, unpleasant events like the pandemic can lead to either a sense of long-term helplessness on the one hand (“powerless”), or a sense of hypervigilance on the other (“power over”). 

One way in which I might embrace this false dichotomy is by reasoning that, since I certainly did not have power over the pandemic, I must fall into the category of powerlessness––I am doomed to be a victim in life. After COVID, I might find myself living as though I am still on lockdown when it comes to my own agency. Rather than playing a protagonist’s role in the story of my life, I might feel that life––like the virus––is only ever one great big bully after another, dropping from the sky out of nowhere and lingering like ugly company. Challenges from unexpected loss or rejection on the one hand, to my own lifestyle choices on the other, might begin to blend together––all seeming completely, chaotically beyond my control. This “learned helplessness” view of life is a cornerstone of depression; its cost to my happiness and health will be mighty. 

Alternatively, I might buy the same “power-over or powerless” narrative by deciding I will have “power over” every eventuality in life. Rather than resigning myself to victimhood, I might react with hypervigilance to the experience of powerlessness embedded in trauma; as Dan Allender puts it, for some survivors of trauma, the “goal [becomes] to never be surprised” and to “kno[w] the enemy and where he is at all times.” After an experience like the pandemic, the “enemy” might become the emotions of surprise and disappointment themselves; I might vow never to experience them again, and spend my life attempting to pound my circumstances into a shape that accommodates my avoidance of these feelings.

This drive to control not only my own actions, but also any unpleasant replication of past pain, is ultimately useless. Because hypervigilance runs on reactivity, it pollutes efficacy in decision-making and does not ultimately serve my efforts to avoid pain. In addition, hypervigilance will bar me from peace and joy. The hypervigilant mind is guarded and suspicious––its frantic countenance spills over into relationships, prioritizing self-protection at the expense of any ability to be intentional, open, or vulnerable in the present moment. Ultimately, as Allender points out, the “human frame was not made” for “hypervigilance”; when we try to expand our sense of agency within life into “power over” life, we become exhausted. 

If you––like many––experienced COVID as a lonely and powerless season, and you are still feeling disrupted and displaced, it is no wonder. Healthy agency is key to healing from trauma and experiencing joy in life, and agency is a difficult thing to nurture when unforeseen crisis throws us on our backs. 

The good news is that humans, body and soul, are built to heal. When it comes to agency, healing involves the recovery of the “wisdom” spoken of in the AA prayer––“the wisdom to know the difference.” In order to develop this wisdom, we must examine our day-to-day anxieties, revisit our narratives of the past, and invite trusted others to do so with us.

Developing “the wisdom to know the difference” between what we can and cannot change is challenging, because most of our hypervigilant attempts to control what we cannot are as automatic as the process of imagination. Outside of our awareness, we tirelessly manufacture illusions of certainty and sovereignty. In the same way, it is often outside of our awareness that we learn the lesson of helplessness. These are implicit reactions that precede our conscious responses. 

To bring accountability to these automatic processes, we will need to begin noticing our most rigid areas of anxiety and avoidance. When am I most afraid? When, in my fear, am I most unbendable––either in my efforts to control, or in my insistence on withdrawing from responsibility? Where have these responses begun to disrupt my life?

 To an extent, we can begin answering these questions by making the simple choice to adopt a posture of curiosity toward our emotions and decisions on a day-to-day basis. Practicing self-awareness on our own is always a worthy endeavor. But for many of us, the areas of anxiety and avoidance hurting us most are invisible, the way water is invisible to a fish. In addition to examining our own inner worlds in the present, two steps are vital to the process of healing from damage to our sense of agency: becoming curious about the past, and noticing who in our lives cheers us on in our healthy practices of agency now. These steps are key to discerning the difference between what I can and cannot change––and where I tend to blur the lines between courage and power-over, or between serenity and powerlessness. 

What story do I tend to tell myself about the events of the past that have shaped me most? Do I tend to underestimate my own resourcefulness amidst awful circumstances, or do I tend to blame myself for what was ultimately beyond my control? 

Just as it is wisest to journey alongside others as we recover discernment about when to exercise courage and when to exercise serenity, we need to notice which relationships in our lives tend to foster and respect our healthy sense of agency as we put it into practice. Who in your life respects your ability to change without trying to control you? Who in your life is able to hear the truest version of this past narrative and of your narrative of change moving forward? Who respects your agency and exercises their own? This person can hear your story, and witness that story as it continues unfolding now. 

On the one hand, healing from crises such as COVID must involve a willingness to accept what we have had to weather, regardless of our choice in the matter, and to embrace our vulnerability to the unseen events of the future––we have no power over them. But on the other, we heal to the extent that we are able to courageously shape our own lives––to reject the narrative of powerlessness we might be tempted to take away from the pandemic, and embrace our agency with all of its limits. Armed with the resources of curiosity about our responses, past and present, and trusted witnesses to journey with us, we will begin to experience the dignifying agency we are designed for once more. 

Bibliography

Allender, Daniel. 2018. The Wounded Heart: Hope for Adult Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse.  Colorado Springs, CO: The Navigators.

Baradell, J. G. and K. Klein. 1993. “Relationship of Life Stress and Body Consciousness to Hypervigilant Decision-Making.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(2), 267-263. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1993-21526-001.

Brown, Bréne. 2013. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead. London, England: Portfolio Penguin.

Gilbert, Daniel. 2006. Stumbling on Happiness. New York, NY: Knopf. Masten, A. S. 2001. “Ordinary Magic: Resilience Processes in Development.” American Psychology, 56(3), 227-238. 10.1037//0003-066x.56.3.227

Snyder, C. R. 2002. “Hope Theory: Rainbows in the Mind.” Psychological Inquiry, 13 (4), 249-275.

Tony. 2019. “The Serenity Prayer and Me.” SHARE Magazine, 48. 

Van der Kolk, Bessel A. 2015. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

Welzel, Christian and Ronald Inglehart. 2010. “Agency, Values, and Well-Being: A Human Development Model.” Social Indicators Research, 97, 43-63.