[di meliora]

Psychology Today has a number of articles about how to grow from adversity. I liked the one on empowerment here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/colle...al-empowerment

The authors, Cattaneo & Chapman, define personal empowerment as

"...a process in which a person who lacks power sets a personally meaningful goal oriented toward increasing power, takes action toward that goal, and observes and reflects on the impact of this action, drawing on his or her evolving self-efficacy, knowledge, and competence related to the goal."

This section talks about experiences I am familiar with:

Why complaints are the perfect tools for achieving personal empowerment

We all encounter complaints on a regular basis, yet far more often than not we fail to pursue them effectively. Instead, we typically complain about them for the sole purpose of venting our frustrations. For example, we feel so helpless and hopeless about resolving our consumer complaints that a staggering 95% of consumer dissatisfactions go unresolved because we fail to complain effectively about them. The same holds true for complaints in our personal lives. When we are frustrated or hurt by a friend or loved one, we discuss our complaint with a large number of other friends and loved ones and rarely with the original person. (Emphasis added)

We are convinced that bringing up our complaints with the people responsible, whether they are friends and loved ones, or companies and businesses, will be more trouble than it's worth, will not lead to a satisfying resolution and that it might actually make the situation worse. It is difficult to imagine another social domain in which we feel less empowered than we do when handling our interpersonal or consumer complaints.

Sad as this reality is, it makes our interpersonal and consumer complaints an ideal arena in which to work on personal empowerment. By pursuing a complaint successfully we can demonstrate our influence in our relationships and/or our social context and feel more capable, competent and empowered.

The remainder of the article discusses how to achieve personal empowerment. I expect I shall be reading this again and again. In fact, I am getting a callback from a computer tech today. Perfect.

[Fresia]

Food for thought. Thanks, E.V.

[Open Eyes]

I can relate to this article in that as I make every effort to hold someone responsible for their negligence, many people advised against taking action. I was amazed at how many people do not fight back and are willing to sit with losses that should not be theirs.

In my life, I have seen a lot of people who simply do not fight back and sit with all kinds of abuse. It never ceases to amaze me to be honest. And the statistics must somehow be well known because when one does choose to fight back, the system is designed to make that fight long, long, and difficult. In my fight the person I am fighting has a lot of power in using time (years) to wear me out, and it is legal. And that is another thing people seem to know. The constant message is pick up you life, don't waste your time fighting back, because it is a grueling process.

As this is a known fact, society as a whole feels a sense of not being empowered enough to make a real stand against those that take advantage, abuse, and are negligent.

With the process I am involved in, I can see why many just count their losses and run. And the sentiment I do get is that I should not fight back. It is a strange response in my opinion. It is hard to comprehend that it is well known and is perfectly legal to make a victim wait out a long process that perpetrators and their insurance companies use to escape the responsibility of addressing damage and financial responsibility. It is called due process, but it is allowed to go on for many years and further victimize a true victim.

I will never forget the day my neighbor approached me asking if I had a problem with him knowing full well and even admitting a problem when I experienced damage from a malfuction in their underground electric containment system for their dog. Initially my first attorney guestimated a date as I was trying to process and address many damaged horses/ponies. My neighbor didn't like that date and stood there looking me in the eye telling me it was his word against mine and he replied "I know for a fact that fence was broken the beginning of May" and that was exactly the time line I had already figured out and turned into my attorney.
He was admitting that he was well aware that fence was malfunctioning for almost three months. And this conversation took place with him standing next to a no tresspassing sign I had put up that he admitted tearing down because he didn't like it and in order for him to tear it down he had to trespass to do so.

It has been over 4 years of addressing damage, great debt due to damage, taunts from my neighbor, loss of business and experiencing a condition called PTSD that continues to challenge and cripple me. And every once in a while I hear a comment like, its too hard to fight back, it will end up killing you, and the system in place makes the process completely draining. Oh, and be prepared to still lose everything.

Open Eyes

[Open Eyes]

I just want to add here that it is important to stand up for ourselves. I am dealing with an extreme here and I have yet to find any strength in fighting back in my situation.

But there have been many situations in my life where I have fought back where others would not and it did serve to empower me. And I still believe it is important to speak up and be brave. I just wish that I had more people that stood behind me in my efforts instead of sending messages to the contrary.

Open Eyes

[gma45]

My problem all my life has been learning to be assertive not submissive and dont drink and get aggressive. moderation is my key!

[Penny T. StDuhnam]

Nail. Head. That hit it from what I've read so far.

[Alcinus_of_chell]

Very interesting article, but I feel the author misses a critical point about empowerment in many contexts, that bureaucracy, relationships and what not, rob the rule abiding and conscientious individual of personal power by setting limits on our actions.
That isn't an inherently bad thing, most people who think about this are willing to, in almost all situations, give up that power for the stability and comfort of rules and systems.
But it can lead to people not realizing they have the power to disobey at all.
This can cause problems, when the system is ineffective or useless, or when encountering someone who 'doesn't play by the rules'.
And also it's hard to responsibly wield power, most people would rather someone else do it for them.
And this can cause people to forget, or not realize they have the power.
So when the person who they've transferred it to does something that may be wrong or
incorect, or they simply disagree with they can feel frced to go along, because they've forgotten how to act, or think, on thair own.
But they have the power and empowerment, is I might argue, the process of releasing, or remembering, that.

[di meliora]

The article states: "One of the most important takeaways from this new model is that identifying goals that promise a higher likelihood of success can be vitally important to any empowerment process."

"Knowledge" is one of the steps to empowerment. Bucking systemic limitations one feels are wrong is noble. Yet too, we must realize the likelihood of success may not be as high under these circumstances.

I tend to be more motivated to fight for others rights more than my own. I feel more reward in helping others than I do in helping myself. I have fought for educational services for my sons, employment rights for older people, against media for misusing information to paint a story in a biased perspective, and against government forcing rural communities into urban centres by shutting down essential services in rural areas. However, I rarely fight for my rights in a workplace.

Bureaucracy is a brilliant system that breaks procedures up into too many smaller pieces so that the whole is not seen. This complicates and separates people and produces a sense of disconnection from the whole, causing delays, confusion, and only partial solutions instead of complete solutions. The power of bureaucracy successfully discourages people from upsetting the system by any disruption. That is why people don't fight back. fear of upsetting the apple cart so to speak.

[Open Eyes]

Ingrid, do you understand what your conveying here? What prevents you from supplying yourself with fulfillment? This is something that is common in many that suffer from lack of self worth. I find this very troubling and I do see it a lot. Often as I dare to get into the depth of where it comes from is some message that is presented to people when they are so young that they are somehow unworthy. How is it that so many live out their lives questioning their core and right to experience pleasure and meaning in their lives? I have come across many people that are so kind hearted but truely struggle when they are judging their own self worth.

[Open Eyes]

Originally Posted by Elan Vital

The article states: "One of the most important takeaways from this new model is that identifying goals that promise a higher likelihood of success can be vitally important to any empowerment process."

"Knowledge" is one of the steps to empowerment. Bucking systemic limitations one feels are wrong is noble. Yet too, we must realize the likelihood of success may not be as high under these circumstances.

Yes Elan I do see what you are saying. And most people will only stand up when the pathway to empowerment is in clear view, something that has been achieved by others. But these pathways began with certain strong individuals that stayed a difficult course when others would not.

As I bear the timely process in my own effort to stand my ground, I can clearly see that though there are pathways that have been made by others before me, these pathways have been met with equal efforts in presenting obstacles by those that do not want to be held responsible. It is a reminder that the choice to make a stand is a difficult path and because this is so, many will simply choose to suffer losses thinking that it is the most reasonable path to choose. Unfortunately the fight for individual right has always been an ardulous one. And because of that the most common response is to give in and allow oneself to be controlled. From what I understand there is a name for that, "Victim Mentality". So many victims of abuse remain that way because they feel it is just too hard to present the truth and so instead they begin a path of self denial, looking for ways to just pretend somehow it didn't happen or it isn't real. Or even more predominent is that somehow though something bad did happen, they are just suppose to adjust to that bad and find a way to live around it in some kind of acceptance.

One of the things that profoundly effected me in my youth was bearing witness to watching my brother endure being bullied every single day for years. I could not believe that this process was allowed to take place.
I could see the bus driver seeing but ignoring, other children, seeing but ignoring. No one stood against it, no one. And I simply could not understand this human experience.

Today, over 40 years later, there is an awareness that it is not acceptable and efforts are being made to convey that this is not acceptable. Why, so many years had to pass before this was viewed as dangerous and truely unacceptable is simply amazing to me. However, I still see that in many ways it is a part of society everywhere from young to old and in every class of people.

I talked about not attending a neighborhood party about a month or so ago. And as I thought about some of the people that would be there I didn't want to be around them and pretend that their children bullied my child constantly didn't happen, or that one woman just left her horses out in extreme heat with no water or during a fly swarm with no protection running around being bitten and sweating drawing even more flys. Or leaving a sick pony to go off to a class reunion in the care of a neighbor who didn't know what to do? And how many times her dog was loose and almost got hit by a car, and other neighbors that didn't contain their dogs even when asked and I did see those dogs running up and down the road presenting a challenge to parents driving their children home from a nursery school up the street.

And it was something that my husband said to me that made sense. He said, "Open Eyes you are not one to go back for more abuse, you know it is not right, that is what others don't know, they would rather just pretend and when they come across something that upsets them they know to tell you because you will say something. They like that because their concern will be addressed and they can still pretend and be one of the group. So that way they can have their cake and eat it too."

It is true, what people fear the most is being excluded from the group so they will hold their tongue accordingly. People are so afraid of losing that they just don't fight for their rights. And yet in my life, I honestly do not go along with any kind of deception, somehow this is known about me. And in the quiet of individual councel I am asked questions that often surprise me. I had two women that were troubled about the poor treatment of the horses that didn't have any water. And yet knowing that they still chose to go to that party and pretend that never happened. But because I made a call to the owner and pointed it out, I am not really acceptable within the group. Oh, yes, I am invited but it is hoped that I wont be present as I am just a reminder of guilt.

My attorney does the same, he knows he has made mistakes so rather than appologizing to me directly, he chose to do so to my husband whom he knew would not have the strength to call him out on his mistakes. This is something I noticed as well, if someone is harboring guilt from making errors, they will often choose to releive their guilt through someone who relates to their victim in an escape from direct contact to the person they wronged.

Yes, many will choose the safe road, the sure thing, when it comes to self empowerment.

Open Eyes

[lizardlady]

From what I understand there is a name for that, "Victim Mentality". So many victims of abuse remain that way because they feel it is just too hard to present the truth and so instead they begin a path of self denial, looking for ways to just pretend somehow it didn't happen or it isn't real.

Open Eyes, as a survior of childhood abuse and 26 years of domestic violence, I did not chose a path of self denial. I was brainwashed into believing that I deserved what I got. For years I did not know or see that there was a path out of where I was to a place where I could be treated with respect.

I agree with you that there are people in the world who choose to lay back and complain that the world mistreats them. uch people can be difficult to deal with, but I try to remember that they might not be aware they have a choice.

[Open Eyes]

((((Lizardlady)))) Yes, that happens as well many are not aware there may be an option where they can be treated with respect. Well at least, because some came forward and were very brave, the years I suffered boarding a school bus only to endure the experience of constant bullying is now being recognized as very wrong behavior. I felt I had no option but to endure that daily experience. No one ever got up to say it was mean or wrong, most were just glad it wasn't them and kept quiet.

Open Eyes