Agency, The Art Of Being Masters Of Our Life
To refer to the feeling of being in charge of our lives we use the term “agency”. Being agents of our life means knowing where we are, knowing how to tell what happens to us, feeling the ability to shape circumstances …
Physical agencies, such as travel agencies, are responsible for offering services that help people meet certain needs, and that is why they go to them. We also have internal needs of various kinds that are only met by our own agency in the first instance, despite the fact that other aids or services are also involved. Hence the importance of our agency working in the best possible way.
Agency begins with interoception
We speak of interoception to refer to the perception that each person has about the internal state of their organism; information that helps us maintain body balance (homeostasis). Body, mind and brain are closely related so interoception is not something merely physiological, it is also linked to subjective sensations, such as emotions.
The greater our knowledge at the interoceptive level, the more capacity and potential we will have to manage our life. That is, if we are aware of the changes that occur in our environment, exterior and interior, we will be able to adapt better.
The effects of loss of agency
In the wonderful book The Body Takes the Score (Bessel van der Kolk, MD) describes the loss of agency that occurs in many war veterans. Many of these men remained anchored to the past, somehow attached to an environment in which they learned to function based on certain norms that only work in a context of conflict.
Also, for different reasons, people can feel insecure within their own body. For example, reliving the past in the form of constant internal discomfort. Let’s think that we are beings of habit, and many people learn to ignore their instincts and numb their conscience. In this sense, ignoring our interior increases the loss of control.
Many health problems, such as chronic pain, fatigue, headaches and / or migraines are examples of internal screams that need urgent attention and that can be the consequence of ignoring our inner wise. Actually, not being agents of our life carries a price: ignoring or not detecting what is really dangerous or harmful for us or, on the contrary, not detecting what is safe or empowering.
How can we be more agents of our life?
The medial prefrontal cortex (CPFM), known metaphorically as “the watchtower” is in charge of supervising our bodily sensations. Today we know that mindfulness meditation and yoga can help us regulate ourselves and be more aware of our bodily sensations, and therefore powerfully control the helm of our life.
To this day, the effect of somatic or body work on the release of energy has been proven, especially in those people who are blocked, such as war veterans caught in terror. Working on interoception through physical exercise is a good training to better understand the messages that our body sends us about our needs.
In short, talking about agency is talking about knowing and trusting what our hunches, our body, our feelings, our self tell us. This agency understands that taking charge of our life – in the face of other forces that want to govern them – is not an easy task, and it begins with knowing ourselves, accepting and understanding ourselves and from there elaborating a personal life project. Some questions can be very useful to reflect on our agency capacity: What do you expect from life? What are your dreams and aspirations? Who or what can help you promote a small change starting from where you are?
Bibliographic references
Quirós, P., Grzib, G. & Conde, P. (2000). Neurophysiological bases of interoception . Psicolo Magazine. General and App., 53 (1): 109-129
Van der Kolk, BA (1994). The body keeps the score: Memory and the evolving psychobiology of posttraumatic stress . Harvard review of psychiatry, 1 (5), 72-73.
