“Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness.” (Page 21, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)
Whilst there might be a natural instinct that balks against the admission of personal powerlessness over alcohol, it’s interesting how there’s a perverse—and unnatural—instinct not against persona powerlessness but in favour of personal powerlessness when it comes to most other things.
Every time I heap responsibility for my situation, my life, my circumstances, my thought life, my emotions, my decisions, and my actions on something or someone outside my control, I am appealing to the notion of personal powerlessness. I’m saying: I’m a pathetic, lifeless wretch, a pincushion, a punchball. Yet others, who are powerful, have agency. Sally and Clive are responsible for how I feel yet I am not responsible for how either I feel or how they feel. They’re powerful. I’m a victim. Boo-bloody-hoo.
This is attractive because it projects my guilt onto others, and I am relieved of the fear attendant upon guilt. It is delicious, because, as a victim, I’m a superior sort of person, a holy innocent, to whom things are done by the wicked, the wicked, of course, being everyone but me. It serves as an excuse to inflict actual wickedness on others: whatever I do to others is justified by my victim status and whatever I have suffered at others’ hands. Anything now goes. This is why someone adopting a victim stance will prompt others to tense up: when I’m in that stance, I’m retracting only to better pounce.
One sees this in the world more clearly than in one’s own direct experience. Once it is seen in the world, the mechanism can be understood, and one can start to see it pervading one’s interactions and relationships.