Kristen Finlayson

The thesaurus lists nineteen synonyms for the word "empowered": accredit, allow, capacitate, charge, commission, delegate, entitle, entrust, grant, invest, legitimize, license, okay, permit, privilege, qualify, sanction, vest, and warrant.

So often victimization, especially when it happens early in life, steals the ability to come across with any sense of strength. How can empowerment occur once it has been stolen? I think the answer is really quite simple. We become passionate and led by our convictions using the same process involved in losing our sense of direction. Dysfunctional families model helplessness. Positive people exude purpose and power. I've developed a four pronged approach to developing empowerment.

Spiritual addiction is when you are addicted to the feeling of being in connection with the Divine, whatever that means to you. It is a physical feeling that is similar to the high that drugs or alcohol gives you, and it is very easy to get addicted to. Society also celebrates someone who lives an outwardly "good" life, and so the addiction can be less easy to identify.

They are the vegans, the vegetarians, and the people who strive for the ideal. They are all about the positive and swear by the laws of attraction and the power of intention books. They are the ones who walk around with "lets make peace not war" t-shirts.

A person who is in spiritual addiction will come to be unable to live without the spiritual high. This is to the detriment of their normal life, and they begin to allow chaos into their life around work, relationships and life as their addiction becomes the most important thing to them. This is the opposite of spirituality where a person embraces life, its challenges and obstacles and works through them to find peace.

Spiritual growth is very much an experience that is had through the body. It also involves learning to control the mind. Whereas spiritual addiction will allow the person to check out as often as they can, spiritual growth encourages people to own their journey, pain and emotions and work through it in order to grow and learn. We chose the lessons that we are being faced with, and we were also given the exact physical body that we needed to learn them. Consequently, a mystic who goes to sit in a cave for decades is very much in spiritual growth. Whilst he is seen to be apart from society as he works his lessons through the experiences of the body and mind, his communion with the Divine is from a very human stance. He remains in his body and works through his issues and emotions and discovers the Divine without leaving his body or mind.

So we need to talk to our committees. Before I wrote "Cry Depression, Celebrate Recovery," my committee said, "What makes you think you can write a book?" Then I heard, "What makes you think you can speak publicly?" Yes, there have been obstacles; there have been times when I thought I couldn't go back to those dark times; and there have been times when so many tears were shed that I had to put it down. But I did finish it! Dear readers, feel free to share your stories of developing empowerment.