Independence Worth Celebrating!

By Michelle Poff, PhD

As part of human life on Earth, we’re all accustomed to joining forces to celebrate a nation’s freedom from oppressive forces. Yay Country! Let’s also take a moment to shine a light on personal independence. After all, we know that we can’t thrive when under someone else’s thumb. Isn’t that why national independence is such a big deal? Freedom to make one’s own choices and direct one’s own life is fundamental to happiness and fulfillment. Without this power to choose how we live, life becomes an endless list of oppressive obligations, with no opportunities. With freedom, we have a space for joy, purpose, and self-actualization to grow.

Free Will

We are adults living in a free society. We get to do whatever we want! The internal ability to decide for oneself is what drives all meaningful accomplishment. With the exercise of free will, we own our successes and learn from our failures. This sense of ownership over our own lives is deeply connected with self-worth. Fulfillment comes from actively shaping our lives and decisions in accordance with our own personal dreams and aspirations.

Freedom of Choice

As part of free will, we get to choose. We get to live our lives in accordance with our own personal values. With freedom to choose our personal connections, work, lifestyle, and hobbies and interests, we have a chance to live in alignment with our authentic selves. When we lack such freedom, we are living our lives on someone else’s blueprint, leading to dissatisfaction, resentment, and likely much, much worse. Think of the slavery experience just for a second here. Life fulfillment demands we each have the right and responsibility to chart our own life course. People flourish when we have freedom to explore different paths, take risks, and adapt to changing circumstances. Restricting choices in others stifles this growth, creating narrower and less satisfying lives.

Happiness requires self-determination. Autonomy is one of the basic elements for human happiness and well-being. The freedom to make our own decisions about what to do, how, with whom, and when, is linked to higher motivation, better emotional health, and greater resilience. People gain a greater sense of purpose when we get to fully drive our own lives. Without such freedoms, life and success feel hollow because they’re not really our own.

Loss of Freedom through Emotional Manipulation

We each have these freedoms of choice and we all know it. And yet, in the context of relationships, people often like to suppress the freedoms of others for various reasons, usually low self-esteem and lack of mental health. Emotional manipulation tactics such as guilt, fear, anger, tears, blame, insults and assaults, flattery, or other pressures to influence other people’s decisions work to heavily undermine personal freedom. The manipulator is taking control without appearing to do so, resulting in a loss of autonomy that can be deeply damaging.

Emotional manipulation functions through triggering feelings, not appealing to logic or reason, to make the target behave as the manipulator wishes. They may make the target feel guilty or otherwise just bad for having or wanting to assert their own needs, or breed fear of disappointing the manipulator which may rouse violent anger. Over time, this causes the manipulated person to mistrust their own judgment, mistrust their own instincts, and defer to the manipulator’s preferences for making their own decisions. Can you see how this takes away freedom to choose and even free will? Yes, the freedom to choose and free will are still technically there—but it’s not cool when our “freedom” to choose gives us only one possible choice for living a peaceful life. That’s like the “choice” between “do this or die.” It is thinly veiled oppression at its finest.

The erosion of independence through emotional manipulation happens gradually. At first, the manipulated person may prefer to “keep the peace” or “be considerate of the other person’s needs and wishes”. We don’t want to upset them, so we do what they want us to. What we don’t see is that each concession chips away at our ability to make our own decisions for ourselves. Eventually, we lose sight of what we actually want versus what we’ve been conditioned to believe we want, as is comfortable for the other person. This kind of loss of personal freedom is particularly insidious because it leaves no external marks. No one can see it. But the effects can be deeply damaging and downright deadly. Coerced compliance over time will wreak havoc on a person’s core sense of self. Recognizing these tactics and asserting boundaries against them are essential to protecting and preserving our own independence.

We aren’t here to fulfill other people’s needs or to make them feel decent about themselves. That’s their job. Many will make it our job if we let them.

True personal freedom exists in external liberties, yes. It also exists in the internal ability to think, feel, and choose without someone else pulling at our strings to get us to live our lives their way.

So in this time with independence front of mind, let us also consider the deeper personal independence of what freedom to choose and free will actually mean for us as individuals. And let us protect and preserve our personal freedoms and independence, often from those closest to us. We all know that independence is critical to well-being—that’s why we celebrate independence on a national level every year. Let us also turn an eye inward. When you feel your heart or your gut being tugged to satisfy someone else’s wishes, heads up! That’s the mud. The quicksand. Your concession here means you’re giving away your freedom to choose, your free will, and your very independence. And, it will cost you.

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Michele Poff is a professional writer and editor living in the central Pacific. She works primarily in the holistic health and well-being space. Her program The Alignment Portal (www.thealignmentportal.com) strengthens individuals and organizations through healthy internal adjustments. She can be reached at michele@accomplishcomm.com.