In my blogs Is Everything Grief Work? The Losses We Don’t Always Recognize in Therapy and Is Everything Exposure Therapy? Why Growth Often Means Moving Toward What We Avoid, I explored two themes that seem to appear across many different therapy conversations: coming to terms with loss, and approaching experiences we would rather avoid.
Another question sits beneath both:
How much of what we do is an attempt to feel less helpless?
I find myself thinking about this when exploring anxiety, perfectionism, relationship patterns, and the pressure people place on themselves to figure everything out. Beneath very different struggles, there can be a similar experience: something matters deeply to us, and we cannot guarantee its outcome.
We cannot make someone understand us. We cannot ensure that everyone we love will remain safe. We cannot undo what happened in childhood, prevent every mistake, or know exactly what the future holds.
What do we do with that?
Sometimes, we find a meaningful way to respond. Sometimes, we keep trying to gain control long after we have reached the limits of our influence. Often, we do some of both.
The Discomfort of Having Limits
Helplessness can be deeply uncomfortable. It can involve feeling trapped, dependent, unable to protect ourselves, or unable to change something painful.
Vulnerability is closely related, although it is not quite the same. To be vulnerable is to be open to being affected: to care, need, love, hope, and risk being hurt. We can be vulnerable while still having choices and considerable influence.
Fear can arise around either experience. We may fear something we can take action to prevent, or something over which we have very little control.
These differences matter in therapy. Sometimes, we feel more helpless than we actually are. There may be a boundary we can set, a decision we can make, or support we can seek. At other times, our limits are real, and the work involves facing what we cannot change.
Both experiences deserve care. Neither is resolved simply by telling ourselves to “let go.”
The Many Ways We Try to Feel Less Helpless
Our attempts to manage helplessness do not always look like helplessness.
They may look like competence, generosity, intense thinking, or determination. They can be qualities we value in ourselves—and still carry a protective purpose.
Perfectionism can become an attempt to prevent criticism, rejection, or failure. If we get everything right, perhaps nothing painful will happen.
Over-giving can become a way of trying to secure connection. If we are helpful enough, understanding enough, or easy enough to be around, perhaps the relationship will remain safe.
Rumination can feel like an effort to turn uncertainty into a problem we can solve. We revisit the conversation, examine every possibility, and search for the explanation that will finally allow us to rest.
Anger can bring a sense of strength when we feel exposed or powerless. It may help us recognize a violation and take action. It can also become a way of moving quickly away from feelings that are harder to bear.
Withdrawal can reduce our exposure to disappointment. If we stop hoping, asking, or participating, there may seem to be less to lose.
Even becoming highly capable can carry this history. When help has been unreliable, learning to manage everything ourselves may have felt necessary.
None of this means that generosity, ambition, independence, or anger is inherently a problem. I am interested in what happens when a response becomes something we feel compelled to do—when it is difficult to stop, even though it is exhausting us.
What are we afraid we would have to feel if we stopped?
When Earlier Helplessness Enters the Present
For a child, dependence is unavoidable. Children have limited power over their environment and rely on the adults around them for protection, care, and emotional support.
When those adults are unpredictable, unavailable, or frightening, a child may begin looking for whatever influence is possible. Being exceptionally good. Anticipating someone’s mood. Hiding needs. Becoming useful. Trying not to cause trouble.
These responses can make sense within the circumstances in which they developed.
Later, someone may have far more freedom and still find themselves responding as though connection depends on getting everything right. A disagreement may feel difficult to tolerate. Another person’s disappointment may seem like something that must be fixed immediately.
In therapy, I want to understand the history of that urgency. What once depended on keeping someone happy? What happened when you needed help? What did you learn about having needs you could not meet on your own?
As these patterns become clearer, there can be more room to recognize the choices available now.
Are We Building Agency—or Trying to Become Invulnerable?
This is a distinction I find especially useful.
Agency is our capacity to participate in our lives: to make decisions, respond to circumstances, express needs, set boundaries, and seek support.
Invulnerability would mean never being hurt, rejected, surprised, dependent, or uncertain.
We can develop agency. Invulnerability remains beyond us.
The difficulty is that efforts to achieve the second can resemble efforts to build the first. Preparing for a difficult conversation may help us communicate clearly. Rehearsing every possible exchange for hours may reflect a hope that preparation can eliminate the possibility of being misunderstood.
Setting a boundary gives us a way to respond to a relationship problem. Finding the perfect explanation cannot guarantee that the other person will welcome it.
There is often a painful moment when we recognize that we have done what we reasonably can, and the outcome is still uncertain.
Therapy can help us stay with that moment without abandoning ourselves—or immediately beginning another round of trying to control it.
Where Helplessness Meets Grief and Exposure
This is where the three questions come together.
Grief asks us to encounter what we cannot keep, recover, or undo. We may need to mourn a person, a relationship, an opportunity, or the childhood care we needed and did not receive. Understanding the loss can matter deeply, while leaving us unable to reverse it.
Exposure involves approaching something difficult without first obtaining a guarantee that everything will be okay. We may speak honestly, tolerate uncertainty, allow an uncomfortable feeling, or risk another person’s disappointment.
Both can bring us into contact with our limits.
There may be grief in realizing that we cannot make a parent become emotionally available. There may be exposure in expressing a need without knowing how it will be received. There may be growing agency in deciding what kind of contact we want to have with that parent.
These processes can happen within the same piece of therapeutic work.
Making Room for Vulnerability
The question “Is everything an attempt to feel less helpless?” opens a door. It invites us to look beneath a response and become curious about what it is trying to accomplish.
What feels beyond my control here?
What am I afraid might happen?
Where do I have influence?
What am I asking myself to prevent that no person could reliably prevent?
The answers may point toward action. They may point toward grief. They may reveal a need for support that has been difficult to acknowledge.
Sometimes, therapy helps us discover that we have more power than we thought. Sometimes, it helps us bear the fact that we have less power than we wish.
There is relief in both: in finding a choice where we once felt trapped, and in setting down a responsibility that was never fully ours.
We remain human. We can care deeply, act thoughtfully, and still be affected by what happens. Over time, the work may help us feel more able to meet that vulnerability—with choices, support, and a steadier relationship with ourselves.
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Rebecca Steele | Smart Therapy®
Registered Social Worker, Psychotherapist (MA, MSW, RSW, CCC)
Rebecca Steele is a psychotherapist in Ontario who supports adults experiencing anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), relationship patterns, self-worth, emotional neglect, and high sensitivity (HSP traits). Her work integrates depth psychology, emotion-focused and psychodynamic approaches with evidence-informed OCD treatment to help clients better understand themselves and create lasting change. She may also incorporate the Enneagram as a tool for self-understanding and personal growth.
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