At the risk of being seen as promoting any one politician or their view of what is happening in our nation, I want to share an insightful video Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released a two days ago. The value in this clip (time stamp 9:43-11:20) is her ability to articulate, expose and reframe false power. As a therapist, I so often help clients with younger experiences and stories when they legitimately lacked power in their family system. And yet that same sense of powerlessness can feel so real to them now even decades later.
A part of the journey towards exercising our intrinsic power is seeing the control others attempt to exercise as anemic. Understanding false power and how it’s unreal can feel impossible because we experience it as SOOOOOO true and big in our nervous systems. Though it can feel at the helm of the ship, injustice and oppression have power but they are not omnipotent, So, in the spirit of helping us all understand what false power is and how it can be actively controlling our lives now, I give you the insight and boldness of AOC.