Bloom Your Mind

Ep 147: Power Over, Power Under, and Power With

• Marie McDonald

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This week’s episode dives into something we all experience but rarely talk about— embracing all of our weird social reactions. The feelings that rise up when we’re around other people: self-doubt, comparison, superiority, inferiority, grasping, withdrawing, fixing, or trying to prove ourselves.

The idea for this episode came to me at a women’s retreat I attended with my daughter, led by facilitator Katie Dove, whose words always stop me in my tracks. Her insights about power dynamics and emotional patterns sparked a question I couldn’t stop thinking about: What if, instead of rejecting our social reactions, we just noticed them?

When we put our ideas out into the world—when we share, create, or contribute—we inevitably encounter others, and in doing so, we also encounter ourselves. When we have an idea we really care about, we can expect our brains to do all kinds of squirmy gymnastics to avoid judgment. Today we’ll think about how to embrace that wiggly brain, and refocus it on what matters

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

Where our automatic social reactions—feeling superior, inferior, excluded, or judgmental come from.

  • The difference between power over (superiority, condescension, fixing) and power under (people-pleasing, grasping, shutting down).
  • Where you can expect power over, power under, and power with to show up in the Regenerative Design Cycle 
  • Why suppressing or acting out these reactions keeps the power dynamic stuck, looping in our own body and in our interactions with others—and what we can do instead.
  • How to pause, notice, and allow your social reactions to move through you, so you can respond with intention instead of habit, and keep putting new ideas out there without fear that someone’s stink eye will make you throw in the towel. 
  • How this practice leads to regenerative energy—fueling authenticity, empathy, and creativity.

When we stop judging our social power reactions and simply let them move through us, we regain choice. We become more empathetic, more grounded, and more aligned with our true selves. That’s when our relationships strengthen, our ideas flow, and our contributions expand.

Your Invitation This Week

Notice your own social reactions. When do you feel “better than”? When do you feel “less than”? What thoughts create those feelings, and how do you act from them? Just notice—without judgment. Let it all move through you, and then decide how you want to think, feel, and act.

Notice your reactions to putting ideas out there. Are you afraid of what people will think? Nervous they won’t want to be a part of it? Worried they won’t think you can do it? 

When you can pause your reaction and steer it where you want it to go, you become unstoppable. The world needs your ideas—and the authentic, grounded you behind them, more than ever. 

Mentioned in this episode:
Katie Dove — Women’s facilitator and retreat leader in San Diego



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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Blue in Your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it. Well, hello, my friends, and welcome to episode number 147 of the Bloom Your Mind podcast. As I look out my window, I see some creepy spooky ghosts blowing in the wind hanging from my tree in the front yard. It is October when I am recording this. And so we have our Halloween decorations out front. My son is a big fan. He starts wanting them up in September, like September 1st. Actually, he started asking in August. So if you're listening to this in like the springtime or something, I'm sorry. But I want to start with something spooky today, which is a great conversation starter at any time of the year. I was actually on a spring break trip with my friend. My husband and I and our kids were on a ski trip with our good friend. And he asked us this question as we were all making breakfast together in the kitchen of the Airbnb, and we laughed really hard. And I was just laughing about it this morning and thinking you all might like it. So here's the question that he asked us What is one quality or habit that you have that's like a serial killer trait? And you know, if that's too intense, just what's your creepiest quality? What's one thing that you do or a habit that's like normal to you, but maybe creepy to everybody else? He said, my friend who is making making breakfast with us said that he kind of smells people when they walk past, which really made me laugh. And I believe him that he does it. I mean, I kind of smell people too, but like I just pictured Hannibal Lecter or something leaning his head back. But my friend wears Aloha shirts and is super styly with long blonde hair, so it was extra funny to imagine him just smelling people as they walk past. And then I answered it and I was like, oh yeah, I know exactly what mine are. First, I sometimes imagine myself animating other people's bodies, and that sounds so creepy. But like if I can't relate to someone or I don't empathize automatically, which is not natural for me, I like to kind of like put myself in their shoes by thinking about what I would feel like if I had their body language. So I just think like if I were animating their body and I my body language was like their body language is right now, how would it feel? How would I be feeling? And it feels like I can understand them a little bit better or empathize or put myself in their literal shoes. But it sounds so creepy when I say it. Also, I front my fridge food like it's a grocery store. Cause I don't I lose my appetite if food doesn't look good. I don't want to eat it. So I put everything in rows and it's like fronted in jars and it's all fresh looking. And I live with three other people, and two of them are children. So I'm like constantly fronting my fridge. Can you imagine how annoying that is? And we have a lot of house guests too. So I'm fronting things, I'm like fluffing stuff, and it does not annoy me. It delights me. But I was just thinking about how weird it is for my kids to have lived their whole lives so far, thinking it's normal to do that with a refrigerator. And don't even ask about my pantry. It's like the scene from sleeping with the enemy, that 80s Julia Roberts movie, My Poor Kids. Oops. So, what is your serial killer slash just creepy trait? Please, if you have contact information for me, send it my way, whether it is October when you were listening to this or not. That's kind of a fun intro, huh? Random, but fun. All right. So today we're gonna talk about something that I have been thinking about for a long time and that came up this past weekend, and that directly relates to making your ideas real, putting your ideas out there and experiencing the part of that process that feels like a reflection of you. You know, like we have big egos, our brains are constantly making everything about us. We have to stay really conscious to remind ourselves it's not about me. It's not about me, it's not about me when we're doing new things, when we're putting ourselves out there pretty much all the time, actually. But there's a specific way that I want to talk about this showing up for us. So I'll tell you that this past weekend, I took my daughter, who is turning 13 the week after next, to a women's retreat. Now, I have been taking her out to this women's retreat. It's about an hour east, so almost into the desert from where I live. And I've been taking her to this retreat since she was about five or six years old. Because I had my second child when she was four, and it was like a year, year and a half, two years into it, and I just missed her, you know, because the baby was taking all my energy and wanted me all the time. And I just missed my girl. And so I took her out there for this weekend of just she and me time. So she could have all my attention and I could just, you know, reconnect to my girl. This weekend, at 13 years old, she went to the women's only version for the first time. So they have two versions of this retreat every year. One is in the spring and it's mothers, and they can bring children and it's sisters and grandmothers, it's anybody. And then in the fall, no kids are allowed. So it was like a big deal for us. We've been going for so long. When we first went out there, in whatever years that was 2017, 2018, whatever that was, we didn't know anyone, zero people. And now the owners of that land and the directors of that retreat center are some of our best friends, best, best friends. And so it's like very meaningful to us to see her. And to me, it was amazing to see her participate in discussions as a young woman. And she and I being together was so special. It's just amazing. So there's a facilitator there. You know, lots happens. We sit in hot tubs, we go on hikes, we do have discussions, we have meals, we do all kinds of things out there. But there's a facilitator that comes each time to this women retreat. And her name is Katie Dove. She's a woman who speaks at these events and who runs these women's experiences at these events and in San Diego. She's one of those speakers. I mean, you gotta know I love a speaker, right? But she's one of those where when she speaks, I want to write down every word she says and I want to read them over and over. I want to like take a bath in the ideas that she talks about. So weird. You know, like when you hear a speaker that just resonates so much with you, you just want to write down everything they say. I want to remember it. I really have to fight the impulse to take notes the whole time and just kind of be there and let myself soak it up. So she always shares these really powerful ideas about us as human beings. She focuses on us as women and as women, what our social reactions to one another tend to be and how we can become aware of them. And I think all of this, to me, all of this applies to all of us, not just women. Maybe particularly you can apply it to women. You could probably do that to any group, actually. Um, really think about how it applies to you. And what we're talking about today is where the reason we're talking about this is when we are making ideas real, we not only encounter new levels of ourselves, new understandings about ourselves, new adventures with ourselves, right? Like we have to expand our the way that we think about ourselves, our self-concept, we experience new levels of self-doubt. But when we put our ideas out there, we also experience other people in new ways. So if you're looking at the regenerative design process, if you've been with me for a bit and you know that process, there's the vision stage where we're envisioning our idea, and there's all the mental drama that comes in that stage. Will I be able to do it? Who am I to think I can do this? I don't know if anyone will like this idea, that envisioning piece. Do I know how? Why do I think I could do this? I've never done this before. All of the stuff that comes up in that envisioning part of the design thinking process. And then we go into the iteration phase, which is the second phase out of three in the in the regenerative design process. And in that iteration phase, we have all the parts that come out there when we are testing and failing and redesigning. We are failing forward, failing like we mean it, all the things that come up there, which is like I knew it wouldn't work, I should never have tried this. I'm embarrassed to for other people to see my fail. What does this mean about my idea? And we have to be ready as we put ideas out into the world. We have to be ready for our brains to do that. Nothing has gone wrong here. You can study all of the people who have succeeded in making their ideas real, and they all will tell you we have to work through our brains giving us, offering us those thoughts and those feelings. But then when we get through those two initial stages in the regenerative design process, we get to the third stage, which is celebration and sharing. So at that share stage, we are gonna encounter other people. And maybe at the two stages before as well, depending on our idea and how we're handling it. We're gonna encounter others and encounter our reactions to how we just feel by putting our ideas out where someone can see them. So when we put our ideas out there and we're encountering other people's reactions, we're gonna have a response. We might feel inferior. Those types of thoughts come up when we put an idea out there. Those thoughts might sound like do they like my idea? Maybe they don't like it. Do they think it's dumb? Do they not get it? Do they think it's unrealistic? Do they not want me to be a part of whatever this thing is? Are they ambivalent? What does any of this mean about me? Or maybe we feel superior. Maybe our idea is a knockout and everybody loves it and they praise us. They want it. Maybe feelings of superiority come up because of what we're doing, because we're successful. Maybe we feel better than others. Maybe we get really attached to that status of success and we're afraid to lose it after that. So it makes us stay a little bit stuck in the thing that has been successful so far. Well, let's break down what we do with these supernormal human reactions of inferiority and superiority and what we can do with them that's much more helpful than what our natural reaction is. So when we're in social environments, when we're in the same spaces, reactions come up that are often related to power dynamics. We just talked about superiority and inferiority in relation to our idea being out there. But let's just rewind and think about going into any social setting, into a work environment, a social environment, a party, a community, a school environment, whatever it is. We have often have one of two types of reactions. We have a superiority or a power over feeling. That might come in the form of a feeling of condescension or disinterest, or a desire to help and fix instead of seeing the people around us as fully capable and intact in themselves. Even that desire to fix someone is a form of superiority. Or we might have feelings of power under or inferiority. We might feel excluded or left out. We might try to people please. We might have that graspy, grabby energy, or we might shut down and just isolate. We might assume disinterest on the part of other people. And all of that, again, is normal as pack animals. What we do with it though is up to us. Because our natural reaction, whether we're talking about a social situation or we're talking about putting an idea out there, is to do one of two things. It's either to suppress it or to fuse with it. So if we fuse with it, we act it out. We roll with it, we become it, which is one way of not actually feeling it. We're letting it drive the bus. We're letting it drive us. We are not pausing and noticing our reaction. We are becoming the feeling reaction that we have. So that might look like ignoring or overlooking or rejecting someone when in our body language and our actions, if we have that feeling of superiority, turning away. Or trying to swoop in and give advice or to help or to save. Try to tell people what you think that they should do, even when it was unsolicited. Or we push it down because we want to reject it, which is a way of not actually feeling it too. And that might look like rejecting that feeling of inferiority and maybe even judging ourselves super hard for even having the feeling, then acting it out through being graspy or pursuant or aloof and disinterested or really shut down and cold. So you can just take a moment now to reflect when does this show up for you? How does it show up for you? What are the different social environments, work environments that you're in? And what are the automatic feelings that pop up for you? Be really honest with yourself. No judgment. We're pack animals, they show up. When do you experience these elements of inferiority or superiority? Maybe you have an idea that you put out there, something new, something that you've tried to create, an idea you've tried to make real in the world. Maybe it's a habit you try to change in your own body or life. Maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's a tangible idea like a book or community group. When have you put something out there and then had your own feelings of inferiority or superiority? Reflect on that. And here's what I want to offer. I want to offer a different way, a different mode for us to go into when we see ourselves have these reactions. What I want to invite you to try is to literally be with what is there. Without judgment, just notice the power dynamic that comes up in you. The response to others. Just sit with it. You're not wrong for having it, and you're not right. Do you want it? I don't know. Just sit with it. Let it run through your system without judgment. Be with the condescension or the exclusion or whatever it is that comes up in you. And then once you let it run through you without judging it, it is not right or wrong. Only our thinking can make it right or wrong. When we just let it run through us, then what happens? When we stop rejecting our own responses, they run through us like a wave, and then we get our choice back. We get to choose how we want to react. We get out of the trap of fusing with the emotion and acting out our immediate response, which is usually like from old programming and not the way we want to be. Like, I don't know how many people would be like, I want to act condescending, I want to act cold, I want to exclude people, or I want to shy away and people please and be graspy. Like who wants that, right? But we will act them out on ourselves or other people unless we allow them to run through us. So just without judgment, let it run through you like a wave. Then we get to choose how we want to react. We can be with what comes up inside of us, that 95% of what comes up that's automatic. And let it pass through us. And then it opens up the question. Well, how do I want to react? That was the automatic thought. That was the social programming. That was the programming from whenever, probably when I was somewhere between zero and seven years old. But how do I want to act? How do I want to feel? And when we allow that non-judgment in ourselves, we are more empathetic with others who are putting ideas out there. We are more empathetic with others who have some form of superiority or inferiority that pops up in them. We're more clean in our responses. We're more true to ourselves. And most importantly, we act like who we want to act like instead of replaying the old crap. And we have way more energy for our idea to become real, to put into our ideas. Our responses from others are more positive as we try to make our ideas real, because we're managing our own nonverbal communication. Right? Because we are managing our own emotions of inferiority or superiority, letting them pass through us instead of acting them out and having this really like muddy behavior with other people where they're like, something feels off. I don't know, something's getting worked out here. And this, the way this person is acting or speaking, when we can process our own social feelings first, then we come across real clean and we get great responses from other people. We also have more regenerative energy that feeds back to us instead of taking from us because we're not wasting our energy on these social power constructs that are not real. We're more authentic as ourselves out in the world, having authentic exchanges with others, which creates way more connection. And we can iterate way more successfully. And we know that iteration is a prerequisite to making your idea real. Why can we iterate more successfully? Because we're not fearing judgment. We're not in that inferiority cycle or blinded by our own success and unable to let go of the label of being successful, right? We can just let go of those superiority and inferiority feelings, the power over or power under. And instead, we can lean into power with power with other people. We can lean into iteration, to letting feedback come in, not taking it personally, not like letting it break us down or letting us feel like we've just accomplished everything. We don't have to do anything else. That feedback will actually improve our idea through iteration instead of us making it about us. So all these things get us out of our own way. Let us enjoy the process of putting our ideas into the world and just the process of being a human with other humans because we're softer and gentler with our own human selves. And ultimately, that makes us so much more successful at making our ideas real. So this week, notice what your social reactions are to the people around you. What are they? I want to know. When do you feel superior? When do you feel better than? When do you feel inferior or less than? Here's some questions for you. What are the circumstances that make you feel that way? What are the thoughts you're thinking about that circumstance that make you feel inferior or superior? When you have that feeling, how do you act? Do you like it? Do you like how you're acting? What are the results that you get when you act like that? They probably prove the thing that you're thinking. And just accept it. Accept all that. Embrace it. Laugh about it, maybe. Be compassionate with what is there because most of it was socially programmed in, anyways. Let it be what it is. Accept yourself. And then you'll let it pass through you with love and support and compassion and maybe even neutrality. Because you didn't teach yourself to feel that way. You were socialized somehow to feel it, and it's not your fault, but it is your choice now. Do you want to keep feeling and thinking and acting that way? Do you like it? If not, how do you want to act and feel and think? Notice the changes when you just let yourself accept whatever your response is and just be with it. Let it pass, take the reins back. Because when you do, you are unstoppable. I've seen it, I have felt it, I have been it, I have coached it time and time again. You can make anything happen when you can pause and allow these thoughts and feelings to be separate from you. You can create anything when you learn to pause your immediate reaction without judgment and steer it instead where you want it to go. That allows you to make your ideas real, and the world needs your ideas. So let's pause this week and just see what happens when we notice without judgment and allow what is in relation to power over, power under, and making space for power with. That's what I've got for you this week, my friends, and I will see you next week. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you gotta come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts and we apply them to real life in a community where we have each other's backs and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real. One idea at a time.