False Empowerment and Trauma Healing: 5 Patterns to Watch Out For

In my 20s, like many young professionals, I went to talk therapy hoping to shift a pattern of painful relationships. Instead of finding peace, I emerged angry. Rather than connecting to others with more ease and understanding, I felt implicitly superior because of my newly gained “empowerment.”

At the time, I believed I had “found my voice.”

But what I thought was empowerment was actually grandiosity in disguise. My “take it or leave it” approach was more about self-protection than trauma resolution. And for all the money and time I invested in talk therapy, I had the skill of a flamethrower when it came to healthy connection.

In the name of empowerment, I strengthened my emotional armor and hardened my heart. Looking back, it’s no wonder I didn’t have many fulfilling relationships. My anti-relational stance made it impossible to get close.

The Lure of False Empowerment when Healing Trauma

It took me a long time to figure out that real empowerment is relational. It happens in the brave space between asking for something and not getting what you want. We forge it in the hard conversations held with love and positive regard for our partners.

This is new, for many of us. For those of us with complex trauma from childhood, we didn’t grow up with healthy relationships modeled for us.

Modern culture sells us a version of empowerment that is implicitly isolating. “I was weak, now I’m strong. Go screw yourself,” as one of my teachers says. Self-help books and talk therapists encourage us to “stand up” and “stand strong,” but don’t teach us how to heal in relationship and repair what isn’t working. 

It's easy for those of us with trauma to mistake protective patterns for empowerment, with devastating cost. 

False empowerment can look like healing, if we don’t know any better. We might feel “better than” others — more “enlightened” or “awake,” rather than connected as equals. We might believe our newfound voice gives us the right to treat those we love with thinly disguised contempt.

It's obvious that this isn’t healing.

All we’ve done is move from feeling shame to shaming others. “I’ve had enough. I don’t have to take it anymore!” we might announce to our friends, as they nod in unquestioning agreement and affirm how inadequate our partners are.

This kind of false empowerment can seduce us into trashing perfectly fixable relationships. If we’re not careful, we can easily discard the people we love — all the while telling ourselves that they’re to blame.

5 Signs of False Empowerment — and What to Do About Them

Here are five common ways that false empowerment shows up in the trauma healing journey — and what to do about them.

1. The "I Don't Need Anyone" Pattern

It’s easy for independence to become armor, when we’ve been betrayed by closeness and connection. Maybe we learned early that depending on others meant disappointment, and we protect ourselves from ever needing help or support. Although we crave connection, we preemptively push it away.

It’s all but impossible to deepen relationships when we refuse care or support. This kind of isolationism isn’t empowered or independent – it’s lonely.

The way out is to practice receiving in small ways that feel safe. Try saying “thank you” to a simple compliment or an offer of a held-open door. Replace “I’ve got this,” with “I appreciate it.” See what happens when we allow ourselves to be cared for.

2. The "Taking Control" Pattern

For those of us with unresolved trauma, maintaining control can feel like the only way to create safety. We might insist that things be done “our way” and have little tolerance for the needs and preferences of others.

By trying to avoid feelings of helplessness, we unconsciously move into rigidity and the joy drains from our lives and relationships. False empowerment makes us think we’re the only ones qualified to lead, but that’s just grandiosity hiding behind competence.

Loosening this pattern starts with curiosity. Notice that beneath the control is fear. That’s trauma, longing to be healed — rather than managed and controlled.

3. The "I'll Leave First" Pattern

Threatening to leave torches healthy attachment patterns in relationships. It’s a bid for control, but a destructive one with great cost. By trying to avoid feelings of abandonment, we retaliate and inflict the same abandonment on others. Mistaking our threatened departure for healthy boundaries, we keep one foot out the door.

To heal this pattern of false empowerment, we need to repair trust and lead with vulnerability. Rather than threatening to leave, we must dare to speak the feelings driving the urgency to run. When we’re honest about our fear and commit to building safety and connection, we can turn to healing together through couples work, like the kind I offer in my practice.

4. The "Perfect Achievement" Pattern

The perfectionism of high achievement is another way we hide in false empowerment. For many of us, complex trauma from childhood taught us we must earn the right to be loved.

Behind the shield of accomplishment lurks the lie that we're loved for what we do, not who we are. What looks like ambition is often a desperate attempt to outrun shame, a pattern from learning love was always conditional.

It can be hard to take off the armor of perfectionism and realize we’re loved not in spite of, but because of our imperfections. The path into relational health means risking vulnerability and seeing what happens.

5. The "Emotional Invulnerability" Pattern

Trauma tells us that to avoid future pain, we must live behind a wall of emotional invulnerability. No one can hurt us if they can’t get to us, we reason.

We've often pretended to be “strong” for so long, we might not even remember that we have emotional needs.

This pattern of false empowerment creates profound loneliness and isolation. But intimacy requires vulnerability and real empowerment means being strong enough to risk being vulnerable. 

*

The rush of reclaiming our power often carries us too far, and we mistake grandiosity for strength.

It’s normal for us to get lost in false empowerment, as part of trauma healing, but it’s essential we recognize and shift the pattern.

Healing from false empowerment means coming back into right relationship with others. We let go of the rush of entitlement. We release feeling resentful of the past and begin to welcome in connection — with all its challenges.

Rather than isolating us even further, true empowerment brings up closer together. This is the true and trusted path to healing.

Elie Losleben supports individuals and couples internationally through trauma resolution and embodied healing. She brings extensive training in somatic approaches and a deep understanding of how the nervous system shapes our capacity for connection. To learn more about working together, you're welcome to reach out.