Exiting Power-Impotence Spirals

This is about dealing with a negative, dominant power that ranges from power limitation to power abuse. Depending on the situation, your personality, and that of your male counterpart, I would like to give you some tools that can be used both on the job and in a private relationship. However, some of the strategies will not fully unfold their effect in a private relationship because you have a completely different closeness to the partner, physically and emotionally. A partner can also give much more space to his aggression in the private environment than he can do at the workplace.

The boundaries are fluid. How strongly the power-impotence spirals rotate, you can now co-determine. How you react to the exercise of negative power depends on several factors, including the type of power demonstration, the context in which it occurs, and your personality and that of your counterpart. The following tips are therefore of a general nature.

Physical Distance. Power seeks proximity. Whoever wants to exercise power needs people who let themselves be commanded—and are therefore within reach. This means, first of all, to establish a physical distance. For example, avoid physical proximity by no longer sitting directly opposite each other at meetings, but instead establishing a spatial distance within the seating arrangement. Then, maintain this distance consistently: no extra conversation, no accidental meeting at the coffee machine. Make yourself scarce. Disappear from your boss’s field of vision.

Body Language, Facial Expressions, Appearance, Voice: Not with me! Power recognizes its victim. Anyone who signals submissiveness on a non-verbal level through body language, facial expressions, and appearance could be perceived as a potential victim. You must counteract this. Start with your inner attitude and tell yourself: Not with me! An insecure, less confident attitude becomes visible to an outsider. You could stop tilting your head and smiling, which is a gesture of submission. In this way, you become more powerful and visibly leave behind your victim status. This makes you uninteresting for some power holders, as the power game no longer works.

Reduction of Contact. Power seeks control and lives from the number of contacts in which power can be lived out. So reduce contact with the power holder to a minimum, so that the control mechanism over you can no longer fully unfold its effect. Only participate in those meetings and events that are actually necessary and where your presence appears indispensable. Or leave the room during private discussions with the partner — just stand up and leave when you realize that you are not getting through with your arguments.

Reduction of Attention. Power always demands full attention. Reduce this bond of attention by, for example, changing the subject, interrupting monologues, or introducing other disruptive variables. Go to the toilet or make yourself a coffee. Disrupt their system.

Breaking Eye Contact or Fixation with Gaze. Power seeks eye contact, through which you are supposed to be controlled—or power avoids it, because through the control of eye contact, power is demonstrated. Both variants are possible. Women tend to fixate on an opposite in order to hold onto the other’s gaze or to ensure that they are seen. Thus, a woman may already be subjugated through eye contact or also through its opposite—when power avoids it to irritate them. You can easily counteract the game by changing the seating arrangement. From now on, no meeting with confrontational eye contact directly opposite.