Victimhood Is Trendy. Agency Is Powerful. Which One Will You Choose? (Episode #52)

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Agency is one of the most countercultural concepts right now. And, yet, it is the foundation of everything Jess believes about health (and life).

In this episode, she makes the case for personal agency -- from the founding fathers to Viktor Frankl to Martin Seligman's learned helplessness research -- and then brings it directly into the context of health, the healthcare system, and what it actually looks like to stop waiting for someone else to heal you or blaming someone else or something for less than ideal results. 

In this episode, Jess addresses:

• How the Declaration of Independence references human agency — and why the founders' premise is more radical and more relevant than ever
• Martin Seligman's learned helplessness experiment — what dogs taught us about what repeated powerlessness does to the brain
• Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning — the last human freedom, and why agency is possible even in conditions of total external powerlessness
• Why our culture actively promotes victim mentality — and why that transfer of power is so dangerous
• The healthcare system critique — an honest look at a structure that doesn't promote patient agency, and why that's an explanation, but not an excuse
• What agency actually looks like in practice when it comes to your health — the belief shift, the behavioral changes, and Jess's own story

 Connect with Jess:

• Instagram: @vitalbalancewithjess 
• Website: jessicatrone.com
• Email: vitalbalancewithjess@gmail.com

DISCLAIMER: The content shared in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, is not a substitute for the advice of medical doctors or practitioners and should not be used to prevent, diagnose, or treat any condition. Consult with a physician prior to beginning any fitness, health, or wellness regimen or routine.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to Vital Balance with Jess, the podcast for women who want real life strategy, no BS conversations about women's health. I'm your host, Jess. While building my career as an attorney, I struggled with hormone imbalances, anxiety, metabolic dysfunction, and a healthcare system that left me with more questions than answers. So I took matters into my own hands. And here's what I discovered. The real magic happens when you get curious, start asking questions, and listening to your body like it actually knows what it's doing. This podcast isn't about weight loss, physical appearance, or rigid wellness routines. It's about agency. I want you to know just how much control you have over your everyday well-being. And I want you to experience stable energy, predictable moods, a sharp yet calm mind, and a body you can trust. Because when women are well, our homes and communities thrive too. Let's get started. Welcome to Vital Balance. I'm Jess. So this Saturday is July 4th, one of my favorite holidays. And it's not just any July 4th. This year marks the 250th anniversary of American independence. 250 years since a group of men signed a document that changed the course of human history. And I've been thinking about that a lot as we prepare for our annual July 4th party, about what the founding of this country actually represents, what those men actually believed, and how much of that belief system has been lost, unfortunately, in my opinion. Because at the core of the American founding is a concept that seems counter-cultural right now. And that concept is agency. The Declaration of Independence doesn't just declare freedom from a monarchy, it declares something about the nature of human beings, that we are endowed with unalienable rights, that among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not the guarantee of happiness, the pursuit of it. The word pursuit implies effort, right? In fact, the definition is an effort to secure or attain a quest. That phrase in the Declaration of Independence assumes that the individual is doing the pursuing, right? That our life, our choices, our efforts, those things matter, that we are not a passive recipient of whatever circumstances life hands us. The founders built a republic on that premise. Not a system designed to take care of you, but a system designed to protect your freedom to take care of yourself. That was foundational. And I think about this often because I think we are living in a time where that foundation is cracking, where the dominant cultural message from politics, from the media, from institutions is increasingly the opposite. That our circumstances are beyond our control, that forces larger than us have determined our outcome, that the appropriate response to difficulty is to identify who is responsible for it and demand that they fix it. And I would argue, and this is what today's episode is about, it is not the path to a well-lived life in any domain, but especially when it comes to our health and wellness. So as you've probably already guessed, today I'm gonna be talking about agency, what agency is, why it matters, why our culture is actively working against it, and what it specifically means when it comes to our health. This is something I talk about a lot on this show and in my coaching work, but I've decided to dedicate a full episode to it, and I think this is the perfect week to do that. So, what is agency? Agency is the capacity to act or exert power, it's having the ability to make choices. And why should you choose to exercise agency? Because what you do, how you live, how you manage stress, how you eat, how you respond to difficulty has a meaningful impact on your health and your life. And part of embracing this concept is also acknowledging that you are not simply a product of your genetics, your diagnosis, your circumstances, or your past, that you have the capacity to influence the trajectory of your own life. It might sound simple, but I can assure you it's not simple because the opposite of agency, which is learned helplessness, is something the human brain slides into very naturally. And there is fascinating research on exactly how that happens. In the 1960s, psychologist Martin Seligman conducted a now famous experiment with dogs. He divided them into groups. One group received electric shocks, but could stop those shocks by pressing a lever, and they learned very quickly that their actions produced a specific result. Another group received the same shocks but had no control over them. No lever, no off button. The shocks just came regardless of what the dogs did. And after enough exposure to that uncontrollable situation, something shifted in the dog's behavior and demeanor. When those dogs were later placed in a new environment where escape was completely possible, where all they had to do was jump a low barrier to stop the shocks, they didn't do it. They just laid down and accepted the pain. They had learned that their actions didn't matter, so they stopped acting. Seligman called this learned helplessness. And the most striking detail of the entire experiment, perhaps, is what it took to reverse it. Not encouragement, not showing the dogs the open door or the way that they could escape the shocks. The only thing that worked was physically picking the dogs up and moving their legs through the motions of escape again and again until they began to believe that movement was possible. They needed a new experience of agency. Now think about how directly that transfers to human beings. Think about how many people you know, maybe yourself at some point, who have been told by doctors, by the medical system, that their situation is not something they can meaningfully change, that it is just how their body is, that the best they can do is manage symptoms, but that whatever chronic condition they may have, will likely last a lifetime. I mean, how many doctors tell their patients that their thyroid condition is permanent and that they will need to take medication indefinitely? When I was diagnosed with PCOS, now called PMOS, my doctor told me there was nothing I could do other than take three or four different medications and to come back to her when I wanted to get pregnant because my condition would prevent that from occurring on its own. She didn't tell me anything I could personally do other than take those medications. It makes sense then that enough of this messaging will make women believe they're helpless, that they have no control over whatever condition they might have. And so they essentially lie down and accept the pain. Not because healing isn't possible, but because they don't believe it is, and many times understandably so. That is learned helplessness. And unfortunately, it is an epidemic in our culture right now. Okay, so we've discussed what agency is, and now I want to address why it's important, but also why this concept is seemingly lost on our society. I want to start by saying that I am not trying to be dismissive of real hardship. There are real circumstances beyond an individual's control. Systemic barriers exist. There are real biological factors that make some things harder for some people than for others. I acknowledge all of that. But here is what I also know, and what the research consistently shows. The belief that your choices matter is one of the strongest predictors of whether your life goes well, independent of circumstances. Victor Frankel wrote about this in his book, Man's Search for Meaning, which, if you have not read it, I highly recommend it. Victor Frankel was a Holocaust survivor, but his entire family, his wife, his brother, his parents, were all killed. He lost everything. He had no control over almost anything that happened to him while he spent several years in Nazi concentration camps. And yet he observed in himself and in the other prisoners around him that the last human freedom, the one that could never be taken away, was the freedom to choose your response to your circumstances. The people who survived, he wrote, were often not the physically strongest, but rather they were the ones who retained a sense of meaning and agency, even in conditions of almost total powerlessness. But notice the word almost. Frankel still chose to exercise agency over what he could, even though it wasn't much. He chose his mindset amidst unimaginable circumstances. He chose not to be a victim, even though by all accounts that's exactly what he was. If agency is possible in his circumstances, it is possible anywhere. So why has it been lost? Why don't Americans value agency like they should? There are likely many reasons, but I want to focus today on three. The first is cultural. Unfortunately, victimhood has become, as one commentator recently put it, the most fashionable identity available. From both sides of the political spectrum, the dominant message is that you are the product of forces beyond your control, whether it's economic, systemic, conspiratorial, whatever the framing is, it's that the appropriate response is grievance rather than action. And that belief, that mindset is toxic. And here's why. When you adopt a victim identity, you are voluntarily relinquishing your power to whoever or whatever you've identified as responsible. You hand the keys of your own life to someone else. And now your well-being is contingent on their choices, not yours. That is an extraordinarily vulnerable position to be in. And it is one that certain voices, like politicians and the media, have a vested interest in keeping you in. Because a person who believes they are powerless is a person who keeps clicking, keeps watching, and keeps consuming whatever is being sold to them as the explanation for their suffering. Outrage and despair are a business model. An agency is bad for that business. But there is also something much darker and much scarier than a business model. Helplessness is not just profitable, it is politically useful. A population that believes it is powerless, that its circumstances are determined by forces too large to fight, that the system is rigged, that nothing they do individually matters, is a population that is desperate. And desperate people are controllable people. They are looking for someone to tell them who is responsible for their suffering and what to do about it. They are primed to hand their power to whoever speaks to their grievance most convincingly. And that is an extraordinarily convenient situation for anyone who wants power. This is not a new observation. It's actually one that the founders understood very well. They were not naive about human nature or about the tendency of governments to expand their power at the expense of individual liberty, which is exactly why they built a system premised on the opposite, on a citizenry of self-governing individuals who did not need to be managed because they were capable of managing themselves. The minute a population stops believing that, the minute learned helplessness becomes the dominant cultural posture, the balance of power shifts. That is what is at stake in the agency conversation. Not just individual well-being, though that matters enormously, but the kind of society we are. A free people, in the truest sense, are people who believe their choices matter and act accordingly. Because freedom without agency is just a permission slip you never use. There is also a psychological dimension to this. Victimhood feels like relief in the short term. Think about it. When you've been struggling, when things haven't gone the way you wanted, when you're in pain, when you're exhausted, being told that it's not your fault feels good. It feels like a weight has been lifted. And that feeling is real and understandable, but it's temporary. And what it costs you in the long run is your sense of efficacy. Research consistently shows that people with an external locus of control, meaning they believe their outcomes are determined by outside forces rather than their own actions, have worse health outcomes, worse mental health outcomes, and lower life satisfaction across the board. Okay, so that was number one. That was a long explanation. So the first reason was cultural. So now moving on to the second reason, which is the current structure of the American healthcare system. Now, I'm not interested in bad-mouthing physicians or any other healthcare practitioners because most of them are doing the very best with the cards they've been dealt. What I am interested in is being honest about a structure that does not, by design, promote agency in patients. The standard model is you come in with a symptom, you leave with a diagnosis and prescription. The root cause of that condition is rarely investigated. Lifestyle factors are rarely discussed in any meaningful depth. You are handed a solution that requires nothing from you except compliance. And over time, patients learn, just like those dogs, that their actions don't matter, that health is something that happens to them and is managed by someone else. And the structure goes deeper than physicians, much deeper, right? Insurance companies reimburse for procedures and prescriptions, not for how long a doctor might spend with a patient discussing lifestyle changes that could address the root cause of their condition. Large health systems are businesses with financial incentives that do not always align with patient outcomes. The pharmaceutical industry profits from ongoing treatment, not from patients who no longer need treatment. Now, while this may be a structural deformity, it shouldn't be an excuse. The existence of a system that doesn't promote agency does not mean you are powerless within it. It just means you have to work harder to exercise agency than you might otherwise have to. When you understand how the system operates, you can stop being surprised that it isn't giving you what you need, and you can start being more intentional about getting it yourself. It means you have to ask more questions, seek more opinions, do more of your own research, advocate more loudly for yourself. That may not sound ideal or even fair, but unfortunately, it's the reality we live in. The third reason is that agency is hard. Taking responsibility for your health and for your life, it means accepting that your choices have consequences, including the ones that have led you to where you are right now. That's uncomfortable, sometimes terribly so. It is much more comfortable to believe that your circumstances are beyond your control. Blaming someone or something else is soothing in the short term, but it is catastrophic in the long term. There is also somewhat of a relationship between agency and identity. When you have been sick for a long time or struggling for a long time, that struggle can become part of how you see yourself. That diagnosis becomes part of your identity. And while that makes sense and is understandable, really, it is also one of the most insidious ways we lose agency. Because if being unwell is who you are, then getting well threatens something fundamental about your self-perception. Unconsciously, you may resist the very changes that would help you because they require you to become someone different from who you've known yourself to be. Recognizing that dynamic is often the first real act of agency. Deciding that your diagnosis is something you have, not something you are, and that who you are is someone with the capacity to change. There's a passage in the Gospel of John that I think exemplifies this issue really well. In John chapter 5, there's a man who has been crippled for 38 years, lying near a pool that was believed to have healing properties. And Jesus came to him and asked what seems on the surface like a strange question. He asks, Do you want to be healed? Uh, why would Jesus ask a crippled man if he wants to be healed? Of course he wants to be healed. Who would choose not to walk? But like so much of what Jesus said and did, the question requires us to pause and reflect on why he would ask that question. Surely Jesus didn't ask frivolous questions. And if it's recorded in the Bible, it's in there for a reason, right? I think the answer lies in the man's response. He doesn't say yes. He gives an explanation, or an excuse, really. He says he has no one to help him get into the pool, and that when he attempts to get in, someone else passes right in front of him. He answers a question about desire with an excuse about logistics, essentially. This man had been crippled for 38 years. That wasn't just his condition. By that point, it was very likely his identity. And healing, actual healing, would have required him to become someone he had never been in his adult life. Maybe he was fearful to take action or to be a different person. Or maybe just the emotions associated with such a drastic change produced resistance in him. Now, I somewhat expected Jesus to comment on the man's excuse or to tell the man to get up and get in the pool. But the instruction from Jesus is actually more simple than that. He says essentially, get up, pick up your mat, and walk. In other words, the healing was available, but it required the man to act, to exercise the very agency he may have spent 38 years assuming he didn't have. I think the question Jesus asked is worth asking ourselves. Do we actually want to be healed? Or has our condition or conditions become so familiar, so identity shaping that some part of us resist the action that healing would require? Now I want to spend a moment on why this actually matters before I move into what it looks like in practice. But I mean, if Frankel's conclusion wasn't enough, then I'm not. Or anything else is really gonna register. But I do want to dive a little more into the research so I can hopefully convince you of just how important this concept is, not just for our health, but for our lives in general. Agency is not just a mindset tool. It is, according to the research, one of the most powerful determinants of health outcomes we know of. Studies consistently show that people who believe their health is within their control, engage in more health-promoting behaviors, recover more quickly from illness, manage chronic conditions more effectively, and live longer. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest-running studies of human flourishing ever conducted, found that the people who aged best were not necessarily the ones with the easiest lives or the best genetics. They were the ones who maintained a sense of control over their choices and their responses to circumstances. For women specifically, and for women navigating hormonal and metabolic health conditions, this matters enormously because the medical system tells women with conditions like PMOS, hypothyroidism, Hashimoto's, chronic fatigue, and any number of autoimmune conditions that there is not much to be done beyond medication management. And most women internalize and believe that message. And why would they not? The message comes from a seemingly trusted source. Women have learned helplessness around their own health. And that is what I am trying to change. One conversation at a time, one episode at a time, trying to help women understand that they have more power over their health than they have been led to believe. And then showing them specifically, practically, in the context of their own body and their own life, what exercising that power actually looks like. That is my mission. And it starts with agency. So what does agency actually look like when it comes to health? Here is where the concept goes from interesting and conceptual to actionable. First, it starts with a belief shift. Before any behavior changes, something has to change in how you see yourself in relation to your health. Not as a passive recipient of whatever your body decides to do. Not as a victim of your genetics or your diagnosis or your doctor's limitations, but as the primary agent of your own health. The person with the most information about how your body feels. The person with the most consistent access to the choices that shape it. The person who ultimately has more power over your health outcomes than anyone else in your life. That shift is not naive optimism. It is evidence-based. The research on lifestyle interventions for chronic disease is unambiguous. Nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management, and reduction of toxic load move the needle on conditions that medicine often treats as fixed and permanent. And I am a living example of that. I had three chronic health conditions at the age of 26: PCOS, hypothyroidism, and prediabetes. I was handed prescriptions and told it was a lifelong issue with no personal ability to change it. But I decided that I was not going to accept that as my destiny. I did my own research. I made numerous and even drastic lifestyle changes, significant, sustained, difficult changes. And now my symptoms are in remission and they have been for a long time. Not because I found a miracle supplement or the perfect protocol, but because I exercised agency over the things within my control consistently over time. That is available to you. Not a guarantee of the same outcome or a perfect outcome. Bioindividuality is real, and I'm never going to promise a specific result. But the capacity to show up differently for your own health than you ever have before, that is available to everyone. So first is a mindset shift. Second is more of the practical approach. Practically, exercising agency over health is asking your doctor why, not just what. Or even when it does. I did that for my ACL. I knew it was probably fully torn and that I was gonna need surgery, but a second opinion made sense to me when I was looking at a surgery that was gonna require a year-long recovery. I mean, why not get a second opinion? If anything, just for peace of mind. Agency is doing your own research and going to appointments as an informed participant rather than a passive patient. It's making lifestyle changes and choices consistent with that research, or maybe engaging in trial and error to see what works best for you as an individual. Agency is refusing to adopt the victim narrative when it comes to health. Yes, the food system is not designed to make us healthy. I would argue it's the complete opposite. Yes, the healthcare system is not designed to address root causes. Yes, there are real barriers. And yet, none of those things change the fact that you still have choices available to you right now that you may not be making. That gap between the choices available and the choices being made is where agency lives. So I want to close with a quote from Frankel. I basically already summarized this quote, but everything can be taken from a man but one thing. The last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. Think about that. A man who lost everything, and what he identified as the one thing that could never be taken from him was the freedom to choose his response to his circumstances, not his comfort, not his safety, his response, his actions. That freedom exists in you right now, in what you choose to eat today, in whether you choose to move your body, in whether you accept a diagnosis as a life sentence or a starting point for investigation, in whether you decide that your health is something that happens to you or something you can actively shape. In every moment, in every choice, however small, that freedom is yours. Nobody can take it away from you unless you give it away. 250 years ago, a group of men chose that freedom. They looked at their circumstances, which were what many of us would consider quite dire. And they decided that their choices mattered, that they had agency, and that they were willing to act on it regardless of the cost. And fortunately for us, we are the inheritors of that decision. We are living on the coattails of their bravery. Let's not relinquish our freedom. I encourage you to choose agency. I hope you and your loved ones have a wonderful and memorable Independence Day weekend. Happy 250th birthday, America. I am so humbled and grateful to live here, and I am so proud to be an American. Thank you so much for being here today. Until next time. Thanks so much for tuning in to Vital Balance with Jess. If you loved this episode, it would mean the world if you would leave a review, share it with a friend, or hit subscribe so you never miss a dose of real talk on women's health. Remember, you have more control over your health than you've been told, and sustainable change is possible. Keep listening to your body and showing up for yourself. I'll see you next time.