‘Power & Relationships’ from my BBC Radio 4 Lent Talk
We enter the world empty-handed, crying, unable to lift our own heads. We are utterly helpless in the sense that we don’t yet know how to help ourselves. But we quickly learn that we have some power. Power to change our circumstances. When we cry we get fed. When we yawn we get put down for a nap. When we smile our caregivers smile back. This is how secure attachment is formed. At the same time as we learn new ways to enlist others to meet our needs, we also learn to rely on the consistency of their responses. This is empowering.
If you observe a securely attached toddler, you will notice how they are independent, curious, and confident. This is called the ‘dependency paradox’. I often reflect on how securely attached children seem to have borrowed their power from their parents.
As a psychotherapist, childhood attachment forms the foundation of much of my work. Every family has a story, and each story forms what I call our ‘emotional blueprints’. Many psychological approaches converge on the notion that we form our unconscious life plans by the time we are aged 7. Whether we view ourselves as ‘winners’ or ‘losers’, depends on our experiences up to this point. Whether we continue to follow this ‘life script’ depends on our experiences from this point. For example, if we fail to securely attach to our caregivers in early childhood, our lives aren’t pre-determined by our emotional blueprints. Like an Architect, we can update them. What psychologists call ‘earned attachment’ can be achieved through self healing, self development and supportive relationships. This shift towards self reliance and self agency, is, I believe, a form of power.
At birth, power is already uneven. A child’s sex can determine their value, safety, and future. In many societies, girls are welcomed with less celebration, fewer resources, and lower expectations. Even in societies that equally value the arrival of both sexes, from the earliest years, power is exercised through socialisation: boys are often encouraged to assert, dominate, and explore, while girls are taught to comply, accommodate, and stay small. What looks like nature is in fact training - laying the groundwork for who is entitled to power and who is expected to yield it.
In the Gospels, the Passion of Christ is a poignant reversal of how many of us consider power. Jesus’ power doesn’t manifest in domination. Even at the height of his ministry, he shares his powers. With the blind and with the hungry. Rather than hoard power, Jesus spends it. And when the hour comes, he refuses to defend himself with force. In Gethsemane he says he could call down legions of angels. But he does not. In that refusal, the Gospels reveal a startling truth: power is not lost in surrender; it is revealed.
For survivors of sexual violence, power does of course manifest in domination. A perpetrator has more power than the victim and unlike Jesus, the perpetrator exercises that power over their victim. This takes away the victims’ power, not just in the act of the assault; but also subsequently.
Having trained and worked with Rape Crisis, I have supported hundreds of women in disclosing sexual assault to the police, and occasionally in court. The power dynamic throughout this process is imbalanced. When telling their stories, women often describe going through this process as ‘the second rape’. Inevitably, this deters the majority of women from reporting incidents in the first place.
Whilst the symptoms of sexual trauma are often the same, every survivor story is unique. In the early stages of disclosure, women are usually in a heightened state of vulnerability. Sexual violence also exposes how power operates unevenly across intersections of race, class, disability, immigration status, and sexuality. A woman without legal status, for example, will be even more vulnerable because reporting abuse risks detention or deportation. Here, power is layered: the abuser’s control is amplified by state authority and social exclusion.
Yet power is not fixed. Resistance can emerge in small, quiet acts: reaching out, documenting harm, staying alive. Collective power grows through solidarity, advocacy, and survivor-led movements that challenge silence and reshape narratives. When survivors are believed, resourced, and protected, power shifts: from domination toward autonomy. What this reveals is that power is not only about who can harm, but about who is seen. About who is heard, and ultimately about who is valued.
The power of being seen and heard is a core tenet of the therapeutic relationship. Research shows that the act of being an ‘empathic witness’ improves client experience across many different therapy approaches. As therapists, we don’t need to offer solutions or intervene to help our clients heal. The act of being alongside them and saying: “I see the distress this is causing you”, “I hear the impact this is having on you” and crucially “I believe you” is sufficient.
In vulnerability we find connection: with ourselves and with others. But vulnerability is also exposing. When I hear stories of women avoiding going for a run in the dark, or parking their car in an unlit street. Of decisions on how to dress before attending a party, or being photographed. I recognise how it is not just direct violence where power is enforced. That it is also enforced through fear. The fear of being followed, judged or harmed. Powerlessness here is not passive. It is imposed, shaping the way women think, feel and behave.
This shows us that addressing the power imbalance imposed by acts of sexual violence requires more than punishing perpetrators. It demands dismantling the conditions that allow power to be weaponised and transforming power into something shared, accountable, and just.
The Passion shows us how Jesus is vulnerable and exposed at the hands of perpetrators who use their power to dominate and control. In his decision to stretch out his hands to be nailed on the cross, he is choosing vulnerability. It is easy to imagine how onlookers might have felt as though they were witnessing weakness: a relinquishing of power. But Jesus’s actions can also be seen as an act of strength.
Jesus does not escape pain, betrayal, or death; he inhabits it. In doing so, he sanctifies powerlessness itself. He shows that love can endure without leverage, that truth can stand without protection, that meaning can exist even when all visible power is stripped away.
Power and powerlessness in the context of sexual violence can be traced across the entire human lifecycle, revealing how inequality is learned, normalised, and resisted. Yet across every stage of life, power is not only something taken. It is something contested. A child who questions unfairness, a teenager who names harassment, an adult who leaves, an elder who finally speaks: each act disrupts the script. Survivorship itself becomes a form of power, especially when it connects with others.
Reflecting on Rumi’s words: ‘the wound is the place where the light gets in’, I can see the parallels between the literal wounds of Jesus on the cross; and the psychological wounds of trauma for survivors. As a survivor of sexual violence myself, my own trauma healing has required me to look at power in all of its forms: societal, systemic, and individual. But it has also required me to look at myself. To consider how I use power coming from a place of powerlessness. Whilst I cannot know, I suspect that I would have had less insight on this if my lived experience had been different.
Survivors often talk about the power of sharing their stories in a collective setting: in churches, in therapy, and in survivor-led groups. This makes sense given that much of the indirect power over survivors is conveyed by keeping them silent. Breaking the silence breaks the hold of oppressive power and control. This shared strength derived from community is then paid forward, forming a chain of generosity and kindness. The effect is that more women feel empowered.
My own experience of the power of community came not just from working at Rape Crisis - an organisation that is largely staffed by volunteer survivors - but also with other therapists. In 2018 The British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy - the UK’s largest governing body for therapists - published an article in its members magazine. The title of the article was ‘Let’s talk about rape’, and the authors identified themselves as both therapists and survivors, and invited other therapists to do the same. This psychological permission felt to me, both empowering and freeing. In the space of just a couple of years, I was fortunate enough to connect with two communities where sharing my own story was actively encouraged.
There is a lovely word in person centred therapy called ‘congruence’. This means genuineness or authenticity. Generally speaking, when we seek therapy it is because we are feeling incongruent. This is usually because there is a gap between our self concept - who we see ourselves as now - and our ideal self - who we would like to be. As a therapist it’s important for me to strive for congruence so that I can support my clients towards the same. Sometimes I tell my clients that they can borrow my congruence as a way of scaffolding them whilst they build the foundations of their own. Part of my congruence is feeling empowered to bring my whole self to work. This has come through the power of feeling seen and heard, and supported in my personal and professional relationships.
When I reflect on my own trauma healing, finding congruence has been one of the biggest gifts. A therapist once told me that we don’t need to say everything we think and feel to remain congruent. I experience this in so many aspects of my life now. This is in stark contrast to my 20s and 30s, a time when everything was a struggle. Not being heard in sharing my story of sexual violence led me to experience feelings of intense shame, self doubt and isolation. As a result I would often seek out situations to prove myself to others. Oversharing, overperforming, overstaying my welcome. It is painful to look back on this wounded version of myself. But I also feel compassion for her. Her powerlessness caused her to feel desperate enough to seek out power in acceptance from others.
Self acceptance is the first step towards congruence. I was speaking with my therapist recently about how I recognise the difference between experiencing powerful emotions that are commensurate with a situation such as death or illness, and the emotions that are activated through a trauma response. Life is challenging sometimes, but now my emotions are something for me to experience. They do not overwhelm me, because I am not powerless.
When I think about my children and their relationship with power, I am mindful of the embodied differences between them and how this, as well as their individual experiences of nurture, have formed their emotional blueprints. I hope that they feel the benefits of both borrowed power from when they were young, and shared power as they continue to grow.
I am confident to a point.
But I also worry about the impact of the power that was wielded over me through my experiences of sexual violence - whose clutches it took me decades to recover from - and the imprint it might have left on them. Intergenerational trauma stemming from experiences of war, systemic oppression and abuse, is far from being widely understood. But what we do know is that the symptoms of trauma and powerlessness can be passed on through families.
So what can we learn from how survivors reclaim their power through post traumatic growth? I think it’s this. That no-one ever truly owns power. We all arrive and depart in the same fragile bodies. Power is something for us to pass through our hands carefully. We should strive to share power rather than to use it to dominate. Because what lasts is not the force we hold, but what we choose to give while we have it.