I was just reading Melody’s post about “Evidence Based” treatment, and it reminds me of the importance of exploring our beliefs around power. For many years, I had an underlying belief that I didn’t want to be like “those” people who abused power. I wanted to be seen as caring and saw power as the opposite of being caring. Clearly, I equated power with force, violence, and misuse. What I didn’t see was that by avoiding recognition of my power I was still misusing power. I underused my power, which is a less recognized abuse of power. Some us have survived years of obvious abuse of power and know the effects of dominate power. All of us have been impacted by decisions of power. From these experiences, you probably have some beliefs about what it means to feel powerful, and even beliefs about the word power. As I’ve been giving presentations around this topic, I am learning that exploring our beliefs about power can be anxiety producing. However, the cost of not exploring these beliefs can hurt us all. We all have times that we are in a position of power: as a parent, teacher, mentor, sibling, therapist, business owner, and the list continues. When we deny our role of power, we lose the ability to take responsibility for our impact and we lose the opportunity to allow our power to be directed by our heart. I look forward to being with you at the Life Beyond Trauma conference in October and joining with you in this journey of claiming our whole selves.