Healing Through Self-Empowerment

This blog explores the profound meaning of empowerment through the lens of healing from abuse and personal recovery. Drawing on lived experience and professional insight, it defines empowerment, contrasts it with disempowerment, and shares an intimate journey of reclaiming self-worth, autonomy, and justice. It highlights the challenges and triumphs of learning to empower oneself and emphasizes empowerment as a vital, ongoing process in healing and living authentically.

Table of Contents

• What Is Empowerment

• What Is Disempowerment

• What It Feels Like To Be Empowered

• Healing Through Empowerment

• Conclusion

What Is Empowerment

Empowerment has diverse interpretations and definitions depending on the source and context of using the word. The Oxford English Dictionary defines empowerment as, “the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights.” In the context of physical health, The WHO defines it as, “a process through which people gain greater control over decisions and actions affecting their health.” In the context of peer support, SAMHSA defines empowerment as, “supporting someone to take control of their own recovery journey, recognizing their strengths and encouraging self-determination.” Although there are nuances in each definition per context, they all have common themes; personal control and autonomy, a process or ongoing experience, building strength and confidence, self-determination, and a focus on one’s well-being and rights.

Empowerment, to me, is the full recognition of my own worth and value. It is self-validation, knowing that I do not need outside acknowledgement to recognize my own accomplishments, positive characteristics, and believe in myself. It is having secure confidence in my own capability, regardless of if I know how I will accomplish something. Empowerment for me is claiming and maintaining total authority over my life: my feelings, my actions, my health treatment, my relationships, my healing and recovery, and the truth of my story. Empowerment is no longer asking myself, “is healing from this even possible?” but knowing for fact “I AM healing and I WILL heal.” Throughout my personal experience of being empowered and learning to empower myself, it is both a mindset, a movement, and a lifestyle within me.

What Is Disempowerment

As a victim of abuse, I felt incredibly disempowered. All control, autonomy, and self-determination were taken from me. My feelings and needs were not taken under consideration. I was unable to establish or maintain boundaries, personal decisions, or begin the process of healing. My decisions weren’t my own, decisions based solely on survival, fear, and secrecy. My thoughts and feelings weren’t my own, manipulated or impacted by others causing harm. Any feelings that were my own, were disregarded, criticized, or dismissed.

This experience and ongoing impact of disempowerment by survivors of violence is not the only way someone can experience disempowerment. Disempowerment is to lose control or be denied control over one’s life, stripped of confidence or sense of identity, dehumanized, invalidated, disregarded, and silenced or denied a voice. Disempowerment is not always caused by acts of violence; it could occur when someone dismisses or criticizes another’s emotions. In professional service treatment, this could happen when a provider makes decisions without the feedback, collaboration, or consent of the patient or client. Disempowerment also occurs when someone minimizes or invalidates another’s experience or emotions, especially those of a sensitive nature. A disempowering environment is one where individuals must put on an act or pretend to be someone they are not due to judgment or lack of safety if they are their authentic selves.

Disempowerment is painful and has lasting effects. When someone is disempowered, they feel a wide variety of painful and upsetting emotions. Invisibility, because their voice and needs do not matter. Small, because the other person has taken control and authority. Uncertain or confused, as they may doubt their own thoughts, feelings, choices, or truth in their experiences. Disempowered people feel trapped psychologically, as options and autonomy have been taken away or were never offered. Disempowerment causes someone to feel shame and worthlessness, believing that something is wrong with them and they are not good enough. Disempowerment can also lead to a loss of motivation or hopelessness, as they are unable to envision a future where things are positive and different from their current circumstances. And lastly, being disempowered can deteriorate someone’s sense of self due to all the negative feelings and experiences combined.

What It Feels Like To Be Empowered

The initial experience of feeling empowered—whether it comes from within or is offered by someone else—can be life-altering. Experiencing empowerment after abuse is like discovering an oasis after walking hundreds of miles through a desert without water or protection from the sun. At first, you can’t believe it’s real. How could it be, when you’ve gone so long without it? How could it possibly be genuine, when you’ve encountered mirages—people who pretended to empower you while hiding harmful, ulterior motives? And how could it heal you, when the burning sun—like the abuse—has already done so much damage to your fragile body and spirit? And even if it is real, how could the water possibly taste good—when you’ve been poisoned before, when your body and mind has learned to prepare for harm even in moments of happiness or hope?

Some people who are empowered by someone else for the first time might be suspicious, feel shocked, or unworthy. These initial responses are natural for someone who has experienced abuse. Yet, someone who is first empowered and believes it is genuine, may truly feel the validation they desperately need and deserve. Being empowered also allows them to reconnect with themselves, beginning to recognize that their voice, needs, and boundaries matter and are respected. When a victim of abuse is empowered, it can be one of the most liberating experiences in their healing journey. 

Whether someone is being empowered by another person, or someone empowering themselves; empowerment is an ongoing process. Ongoing empowerment builds a strong sense of identity, self-advocacy, self-efficacy, hope, confidence, and autonomy. Individuals who experience ongoing empowerment develop strong skills in resiliency, learning the coping skills and mental thought patterns to navigate and overcome difficult life experiences. Ongoing empowerment helps individuals build healthy boundaries and skills in self-determination. Safety is a key aspect of empowerment that we often overlook. When working in an empowerment environment, socializing with empowering people, and giving empowerment to ourselves, we are creating a sense of safety internally and externally. Safety is significantly important in creating environments where people not only heal within themselves, but thrive in their environment. 

Empowering other people comes far more naturally to people than empowering ourselves. For many, we are our worst critic—focused on our failures and mistakes, remembering embarrassing things we did days or even years in the past and feeling ashamed or disappointed about ourselves. Empowering ourselves is difficult because society teaches us to conform to rigid standards and expectations, rather than embracing who we truly are. We’re taught to invalidate our strengths because someone else might be more talented, more experienced, or more successful in comparison. Especially with social media, we end up comparing ourselves to people who are only showing their highlights—carefully edited photos, curated moments, and filtered versions of their lives. It can feel like everyone else has it together, even when much of it is performance. Setting unrealistic expectations or standards for ourselves becomes second nature. Or maybe we grew up with family members or community members who disempowered us. Regardless of the reason, many people find it easier to empower their loved ones than to empower themselves.

Learning to empower yourself is life-changing. It is a huge step on your own healing journey. It is a transformative experience that will alter the way you navigate all areas of your life. First and foremost, self-empowerment is liberating—realizing that you don’t need the validation of others to recognize your own worth and value. You don’t need praise to recognize the quality of your work or to celebrate your own accomplishments and successes.

For me, learning to empower myself was a deeply emotional and challenging process—but it became one of the most defining parts of my healing journey.

I had an excruciating experience learning self-empowerment. I could not possibly imagine that I was worthy and deserving. I didn’t feel like anyone around me actually saw me—or wanted to see me. I treated myself with such harsh criticism, insult, neglect, and hate. I caused harm to myself, whether through self-sabotage, physical violence, negative self-talk, or denying myself care and compassion. I was always thinking negatively of myself. And whenever someone bullied me, insulted me, invalidated me, or dismissed me, they were reinforcing the thoughts and feelings I already had about myself. I said this in counseling years ago when I was struggling with self-worth and internalized shame, and the statement still resonates with me today. It was truly a tragedy the way I severely mentally abused myself. I had learned to disempower myself from those who had disempowered me.

The first time I fully recognized that I had empowered myself was an incredibly emotional experience. To give you perspective, consider the following visualization:

You are a child who has just done something awful—the worst thing you can imagine. Your knees and elbows are bleeding, scraped raw and stinging. You have a pounding headache, a bruised rib from falling, and your hands are shaking. You feel guilty and ashamed for doing something bad. You believe that what you did will cause everyone to be hurt, upset, angry, or even in danger because of you. The shame is so overwhelming, you feel nauseated by yourself—like something inside you is rotting—and you constantly have to fight the urge to vomit just from being in your own body. And if you try to get help for your injuries, that means people will know what you did—and it will affect everyone else, too. So, to avoid getting in trouble and causing more pain, you hide the injuries, blame yourself, and carry the pain alone.

That is part of what my experience being disempowered felt like.

Now go back to that image of being the child. An adult you’ve never met before comes to you. They say they know you’re hurt and they want to help you feel better. They tell you it’s okay to share what happened—they won’t be mad, and you won’t get in trouble. So, with anxiety, you tell them the awful thing you did.

To your shock, they don’t yell. They don’t flinch. They don’t look at you with disgust. They don’t scold you or criticize you. They don’t bury your quiet voice under their own loud and controlling one. Instead, they kneel down to your level, wrap you in a warm, steady hug, and softly place their hand on the back of your head. They rock you gently in their arms, letting you cry if you need to. They tell you they love you. They tell you that you did nothing wrong. That there is nothing wrong with you. That you didn’t actually do an awful thing. And that they are proud of you—so deeply proud, in ways you can’t even comprehend. They speak to you with compassion, calm, and care—like they’re protecting you not just from the world, but from the lies you’ve been forced to believe about yourself.

Then they say: “You never have to be silent again. You are safe. And you deserve to speak as loudly as you need to.”

But here’s the twist.

You are the child... and you are also the adult.

That was my first experience of self-empowerment.

Healing Through Empowerment

After that, empowering myself came easier. Instead of reciting positive affirmations in a disconnected monotone, I began genuinely connecting with the statements emotionally, saying them with more authority in my voice. When I made a mistake, did something awkward, didn’t accomplish something I was working toward, didn’t get the opportunity, or felt rejected or embarrassed, I stopped criticizing myself. Even minor insults were no longer acceptable. I wouldn’t say insulting or hurtful things to my best friend. I wouldn’t say those things to a child. So I didn’t want to say those things to myself. 

Self-empowerment requires self-compassion. At first, I couldn’t imagine being compassionate to myself. When my support group facilitator had us practice a self-compassion visualization, I cried. I cried because I couldn’t do it. So instead, I had to imagine it was my closest friend giving me compassion. Over time, I learned to make this practice more personal. Giving myself the patience, gentleness, and compassion I would give to a child. Then I imagined myself as the child I was being compassionate to. And this is when everything changed.

Reclaiming my story was a big step in empowering myself. Refusing to believe the lies, manipulations, denial, or beliefs of others. Recognizing that I know the truth and facts of my own experiences. Creating an impenetrable wall between other’s beliefs and what I knew as fact. Reclaiming the truth was self-validating. 

Setting boundaries became significant to my self-empowerment. I learned to set boundaries in platonic relationships with friends and family. Determining how I would accept being treated and what was unacceptable. Then taking action if the other person did not respect my boundaries. This caused me to separate from many people throughout my life, which has sometimes been painful and difficult, causing me grief for the loss of the relationship. But the ability to distance myself from people who disempowered me has brought a type of freedom I never had when they were disempowering me. 

Making my own decisions about my healing, recovery, treatment, and pursuit of justice was crucial. Autonomy and self-determination were a huge part of self-empowerment as a survivor of abuse. Being able to say what helps me and what doesn’t, and having my providers respect my perspectives, gave me control that I never had before. Identifying what recovery looked like for me and setting unique, realistic goals made me feel confident in achieving them. And lastly, justice. Every victim of abuse deserves justice. Not everyone feels they have gained justice or that it is possible. Not everyone has the same definition or concept of justice. In my healing, I had someone criticizing my personal perspective of justice and deliberately telling me not to pursue justice the way I believed was right. They reiterated this in many different ways over several years. It became so disempowering and mentally took me back to the silence I had been forced into as a child. One day, I decided that I refused to let their opinions determine my own experience of healing and pursuit of justice. I finally took action to pursue the justice I rightfully deserved. That was the most difficult and terrifying, yet overwhelmingly liberating and empowering, action I took in my journey of learning self-empowerment.

Conclusion

Self-empowerment is not a destination but a continuous journey—one that requires courage, patience, and compassion for oneself. My healing and recovery were deeply intertwined with learning to reclaim control over my life, my story, and my sense of justice. Self-empowerment transformed me from feeling invisible and silenced to standing firmly in my truth with confidence and strength. While the path was painful and challenging, each step toward self-empowerment brought freedom, resilience, and hope. I share my experience to encourage others that no matter where you start, the power to heal and reclaim your life lies within you.