Fear of Personal Power

In my Somatic Attachment Therapy Certification course, we have been talking about the practice of focusing. It’s a practice in which the focuser describes what is happening in their body in that moment and the focuser’s experience is reflected back to them by an individual called the companion.

There was a beautiful example brought up in class with regard to personal power:

“Barbara McGavin recalls a time in a workshop when she was observing a focusing session between two students toward the end of the session, the focuser, a big power station that had a switch on its front. The focuser noticed a feeling that it would be right to turn the switch off. So she did. She noticed that her body felt calmer. However, what came into Barbara's body as she was watching was turmoil. She noticed that for a while and sensed into it, what came to her was I wonder how the switch felt about being turned off. After checking in with her, if it was okay, she shared the feeling with her. She suggested she might take a moment to ask the switch how it felt being turned off. A look of great surprise came over her face. She said, it feels sad when I turned it off.”

The example went on to say:

“The feeling would like for this person to learn what it is to be with their own sense of power and the ability to contain it and perhaps to expand their capacity for that, in this instance, the focuser had slipped out of presence and became merged with a part that was afraid of her power, which then wanted to do something to what was there.”
This is what really caught my eye in the example. As a result of the woman being afraid of her own power, she merged (identified) with the feeling of fear and acted from a place that was ok with turning off her power.

Often we tell people to step into their power without realizing that the individual may be afraid of their own power. Therefore, before they can step into that power, they need to be with the part of themselves that is afraid of that power. They may even identify too closely with the fear to identify that the fear is even there. This would be an example of being merged with the feeling about that feeling. In order to be at a point of personal power, these layers need to be addressed first.