Why You Feel So Powerless
January’s theme is power, and it’s the right place to begin this year.
Last year, I completed a full cycle of monthly themes — seventy-two videos across twelve months — all centered around healing, awareness, and self-understanding. That chapter is closed now. Those videos live on Patreon, and this year opens something different.
We’re moving out of a long collective season of shedding, shadow work, and repair and into a season of movement, momentum, and embodied authority. The Wood Snake year is ending. The Fire Horse year is beginning. This is not a year for endlessly processing your wounds. It’s a year for riding forward.
Power isn’t something you acquire.
It’s something you stop leaking.
The Myth of Powerlessness
One of the most dangerous lies we internalize is the belief that power comes from outside us — from validation, safety, control, or approval. In reality, you are already powerful enough to become powerless simply by believing you are not.
Most people don’t lose their power in dramatic ways. They bleed it out slowly, habitually, and socially acceptably.
We leak power through:
Oversharing and trauma dumping
Over-explaining ourselves
Over-giving and offering more than was asked
Muddy or dual relationships
Hypervigilance
Guilt
A lack of containment
These behaviors are often praised as empathy, openness, or kindness — but energetically, they are drains.
Containment Is Not Repression
Containment is one of the most misunderstood concepts in Western culture.
We confuse it with repression.
Repression is unhealthy.
Containment is essential.
Containment means you feel your feelings without reacting from them. You observe your emotional state, honor it, and choose action without being hijacked by impulse. It is not denial. It is presence.
True containment looks like:
Slower speech
Fewer words
Assertive body language
Comfort with silence and pauses
Self-possession
Calm direction instead of self-punishment
It’s parenting yourself with steadiness instead of “shoulding” or self-abuse.
Regulating your nervous system is not the same as numbing your emotions. They may look similar from the outside, but internally they are opposites. Regulation requires awareness and tolerance of discomfort. Numbing requires avoidance.
We’ve taught men that numbing is stoicism. It’s not.
Stoicism is regulation.
Siphoning: When Your Energy Is Used Against You
One of the most corrosive forms of energy loss is siphoning.
Siphoning happens when your energy is fed into someone else’s ego, and that ego becomes the channel through which others access and drain you.
A common example shows up in relationships. A woman pours attention, belief, and emotional energy into a man. He feels confident and validated — not because the energy is his, but because it’s hers. Other women sense that energy and begin engaging with him, feeding off what he’s carrying.
What they’re after isn’t him.
It’s the energy running through him.
The result is triangulation. Your life force is used to undermine you, humble you, or destabilize you — not directly, but through the person you trusted with access.
The only way siphoning stops is when access is removed.
There is no boundary strong enough to stop it otherwise.
If your energy is the fuel, the only solution is to cut off the supply.
Power Is Directional
Power is not about domination.
It’s about direction.
Where attention goes, energy follows.
If someone is interrogating you, redirect the energy.
Answer questions with questions.
Turn the spotlight back.
If someone is collapsing into victimhood, stop propping it up.
If a dynamic feels draining, look at where the spotlight is pointing — and move it.
Power is also cultivated through practical choices:
Wearing clothes that make you feel confident
Spending time in nature
Letting go of relationships or situations that no longer fit
Creating vacuums so better things can enter
If you want a healthier partner, you usually have to let go of side dynamics first.
If you want better friendships, you often have to clear space.
Energy needs room to reorganize.
Energy, Personality, and Rest
Not everyone is designed to have the same energy output.
Introverts recharge alone. Extroverts recharge with people — but both can overdo it and burn out.
Human Design adds another layer:
Projectors and Reflectors need the most rest and are drained easily
Manifesters are sprinters — bursts of energy followed by rest
Generators and Manifesting Generators have more sustained reserves
When you expect yourself to operate like a type you are not, you don’t just drain your energy — you add guilt on top of it. And guilt is one of the most depleting emotions there is.
Knowing your design gives you permission to rest without self-judgment.
And that permission alone restores power.
This Is a Different Kind of Year
This year is not about fixing yourself.
It’s about self-possession.
It’s about containment.
It’s about movement instead of rumination.
I’ll be making fewer videos — intentionally.
Good healers aim to become obsolete.
The goal is not dependency. It’s autonomy.
This is a year for riding forward.
Choose what you’re riding — and stop bleeding energy into places that were never meant to carry it.
