A couple sits outside a wine bar on a Paris street, glasses in hand, while a fire burns in a pile of debris just behind them. Georgie Collinson, an anxiety and nervous system teacher who also offers hypnotherapy, saw that clip in the middle of unrest in France and kept returning to it, because it held a question she thinks most of us face when the world feels out of control: where does your power actually come from? In her video "Watch This When You Feel Powerless (& Want To Take Your Power Back)," she argues that helplessness is a state we can move out of, and that the way out runs through three places most people don't look first. The first is their own feelings, which need to be felt rather than bypassed. The second is the direction of their belief about what comes next, which she frames as a choice. The third is the people around them, where she argues power is never found, and where boundaries and a willingness to let others be themselves do the real work. Her line, given in the video's description, sums up the argument: "Your power is where you put it, so you may as well place it in yourself." This article works through her reasoning, the examples she uses, and the questions she leaves her audience with.
Collinson starts with a feeling most people will recognize: the slide from concern into helplessness. "It's really easy to get into that place of helplessness there, too, and think there's nothing I can do to change this, or what can I do, or there's no point me doing anything," she says early in the video (around 0:29). The news, in her telling, does not just report events. It invites a stance, one in which you are a spectator to forces too big to touch.
Her answer is not to look away. She reads the wine bar scene as an example of something she calls rebellious joy. "Is there a way that I can almost express rebellious joy in the face of so much that feels the opposite?" she asks (around 2:27). She is careful about how this sounds. She acknowledges that it "can feel ignorant, it can sound naive, it can sound out of touch" to suggest a positive approach when the truths in front of us are painful. But she is not asking anyone to stop caring. She is pointing to a small, concrete act of staying human inside a chaotic moment, and suggesting that this is itself a way of reclaiming agency.
That distinction matters. Powerlessness, as she describes it, is a conclusion your mind reaches: nothing I do matters, so I may as well not act. Joy, care, and ordinary pleasure are evidence against that conclusion. They tell you that your life still belongs to you, even while the world around you is loud.
The order of Collinson's argument is deliberate. Before she gets to any question about power, she insists on emotional honesty. "Yes, there's a need to process our real feelings. Don't ever bypass what you're feeling," she says (around 3:00). "If you feel grief, if it's shocking, if it's scary, let yourself feel that. There's nothing wrong with that." She describes the pull toward despair and overwhelm as something she feels too, and she refers listeners to an earlier episode in which she interviewed Sarah Wilson about the idea of systems collapse, and a follow-up in which she talks through her own reaction to those realities.
This is one of the most useful things in the video, and it corrects a common misreading of "positive thinking." Hope that skips over grief tends to be brittle. It breaks the first time something hard lands. Collinson's sequence is different: name what you feel, let it move through you, and only then ask the question that shifts you out of helplessness. "And then at some point we have to ask ourselves this question, where actually is my power though?" The feeling comes first, and the question comes after.
"The power isn't there. Yes, we may need to feel those feelings and work through them."
(Georgie Collinson, in her video, around 3:40)
The phrase "the power isn't there" is the hinge. She is saying that the fear-driven story about the future is not the place where agency lives, even if that story is compelling and widely shared.
This is the part of the video that will challenge many viewers most, and Collinson is candid about that. Her claim is that where we place our attention and belief matters, both for us personally and for the world we build together. She asks: "Can you be one of the ones believing and seeing the best possible outcome?" (around 4:20). She admits this is not easy. "I personally do feel challenged by it myself at times," she says, "and yet I keep coming back to it because that's where our power is."
Her reasoning rests on a collective dynamic. "If we all collectively believe in the fear and the worst-case scenarios, we start to create more of that together," she says (around 5:10). In her account, shared belief shapes how people show up, how they treat one another, and eventually the large-scale events that flow from those choices. The reverse is also true. She lists the things she wants people to keep picturing: how medical advances, including those involving AI, could save lives; how humanity could live more in harmony with nature; how we might learn from the toxins that are harming health and fertility.
It is worth reading this carefully. Collinson is not promising that visualization guarantees outcomes, and she does not claim that belief alone solves problems. What she describes is a shift in what we ask for, what we desire, and what we are "calling in." Each person, she suggests, adds a voice to that. You may not be able to stop an injustice in another country, but you can decide what you are contributing to the emotional and moral climate around you, and she frames that contribution as real power.
One of the more original threads in the video is her use of contrast. She draws on a familiar saying about only knowing what you've lost until it's gone, and the idea that you may only realize how much you love someone when you break up. She is quick to qualify it. "I don't know that that's necessarily the best, you know, truth or the healthiest behavior," she says, "however, I think it rings true in many ways" (around 6:20).
Her point is that painful experience often sharpens desire. "Often we have an appreciation or we can learn from what we've done wrong or what we didn't want to help us see what we actually do want to choose," she says. The current moment, in her reading, is full of examples of what people do not want: a world where people treat each other with contempt, where the environment is disrespected, where bodies and health are compromised. The fact that so many people look at this and say "I don't want that" is, for her, the raw material of a different direction.
The practical implication is that your reaction to bad news can be information rather than just distress. Ask what the situation shows you that you don't want, then ask what you would choose instead. That turns a passive scroll into a clarifying question.
The video shifts from the global to the domestic at around the eight-minute mark, and here Collinson gets very specific. She describes wishing her husband would stop walking through the house with muddy shoes. "I wish my husband would just not walk through the house with muddy shoes or whatever it is, right?" she says (around 8:20). Her argument is that this wish, however reasonable it feels, leaves us powerless.
"We are going to lose that argument every time if we just want to fight and debate and will our way through to other people following our will and what we think is the best way."
(Georgie Collinson, in her video, around 8:44)
Her conclusion is blunt and, for many people, freeing: "The only place your power is is in yourself." The alternative is letting people be who they are, and being fully yourself in response. This is not resignation. It is a recognition that you cannot control another adult's habits, and that every attempt to do so becomes a struggle that you are bound to lose.
Collinson's answer to the muddy-shoes problem is boundaries, and she separates them from control. You can state a boundary, she says, and you can work on being less disturbed by what other people do. The second half of that is where the real shift lies. She notes that we often add a story on top of someone else's behavior, such as the belief that they are doing it on purpose to upset us. She says that this story is "probably not true," even when it feels true, and suggests that examining it is part of getting your power back (around 9:41 to 10:10).
Collinson also applies this to what we take in. She asks whether the ideas and media we consume are adding something to our lives, and she suggests that you can choose not to engage at all with material that keeps you in fear. She reminds viewers that they can seek out more positive, uplifting ideas, and that a steady diet of alarming content shapes how powerless you feel. This is the same logic as the boundary with a partner, applied to the screen: you decide what comes into your space, and you are not obligated to absorb everything.
Taken together, these moves describe a kind of power that is quiet rather than combative. You stop trying to win the argument, you name the boundary you need, you release the story that others are against you, and you choose where your attention goes.
Collinson's video is a short, personal argument rather than a complete program, and it is worth treating it as a set of questions you can return to. When you notice the slide into helplessness, start by naming the feeling honestly, without rushing to fix it. Then ask where your power is in this particular situation, and whether it is being spent on trying to change someone else. Look at the story you are telling about what other people are doing to you, and test whether it is true. Consider what you are taking in, and whether it is adding anything to your life. Finally, ask what the difficulty shows you that you want to create.
If you want to go further, the video's description points to two programs from Collinson: a hypnotherapy challenge and a 90-day anxiety reset program. Both are her own offerings, and they are a different thing from the reflective practice she describes in the video. If anxiety feels persistent or overwhelming, talking with a qualified professional is a sensible step alongside any self-reflection.
The video's most durable idea is simple. Power is not something the news hands you or takes away. It is where you choose to place your attention, your honesty, and your boundaries, and Collinson's invitation is to place it in yourself.
