When Agency Begins, But Systems Say No

If you’ve ever struggled to make decisions without asking someone else,
If you overthink whether you’re being liked, understood, or "too much"...
If you feel guilty saying no, or anxious when you disappoint people...

This isn't a personality flaw.
It’s a survival strategy you never got to outgrow.

Because school—like many of our childhood systems—didn’t teach us how to develop our own sense of self.
It taught us how to please. How to perform. How to behave.

Missed Part 1?
Read The Childhood Code: Watch, Please, Survive to understand why approval-seeking starts early and why it's so hard to shake, even now as an adult

What Is Agency, Really?

Agency is your ability to make choices based on your own thoughts, feelings, and values.

These choices are usually not just out of fear, guilt, or approval.

It’s the inner knowing that says:

I can choose.
I have power.
I am responsible for my life.

Agency doesn’t mean to have defiance or be selfish.
To have agency is to have self-trust.
Agency means you no longer wait for permission to make choices.

Adolescence is where Agency should Blossom but the System Resists It

Around age 12 or 13, our brains begin a different developmental stage.

Adolescence.

Here, you start questioning rules.
You stop caring about gold stars (approval).
You begin noticing your own thoughts more than older people’s expectations.

That’s a healthy developmental stage.

Psychologists describe adolescence as a time of consolidating the social self. This means you begin figuring out who you are in relation to others (Coleman & Hendry, 1990). The brain begins restructuring itself for decision-making, emotional regulation, and independence.

Teenagers aren’t being “difficult.” They’re becoming aware.

I began to notice this clearly in my years teaching Grade 6. Every year, the same pattern :

In the first semester, most students were still highly responsive to adult approval.

They followed instructions, stayed relatively quiet, and seemed eager to get their work done for the gold stars.

But after the holiday break.....? Ugh Everything would change.

Students would start talking more during lessons, forming tighter peer groups, laughing at the back of the class, and even openly arguing with me. In my first years of teaching Grade 6, I took it personally. I thought they were becoming disrespectful. I got frustrated. I got harsher in my punishments.

But while researching adolescence for a unit, I learned:

This was a healthy hallmark of adolescence.
They weren’t trying to defy me
They were trying to define themselves.

They were learning how to build relationships with each other. They were trying to create their own rules, not just live by mine.

This is biology. This is social development. And it’s normal.

Missed Part 1?
Read The Childhood Code: Watch, Please, Survive to understand why approval-seeking starts early and why it's so hard to shake, even now as an adult

Safe Homes Encourage Healthy Expression

And I noticed something else too:

The students who had more supportive, encouraging homes where they could express themselves without being punished or controlled tended to be more at ease in this stage.
They still talked back sometimes. They still got silly occasionally.

But they didn’t need to dominate the room to prove themselves.

On the other hand, the students who came from more controlling or emotionally unsupportive homes. Who faced silencing or shame were more likely to express their identity through disruption.

They weren’t “bad kids.”
They were kids without a safe place to become who they were.

In places like Jamaica, where many families are under economic and emotional strain, there often aren’t systems in place to support this important phase of self-definition.

So adolescents fight for that space in the only way they know how through loudness, defiance, and refusal.

The next time you see some loud and noisy teenager...

Remember.. They are trying to become themselves in a system that tells them to stop trying.

Because they’re not lost.
They’re searching.

You were searching...

When You Never Get to Choose,
You Stop Believing You Can

If your agency wasn’t honored in your teens, it doesn’t disappear completely.

It goes into hiding.

It turns into:
Passivity masked as politeness
Overthinking masked as responsibility
People-pleasing masked as professionalism

You might become an adult who:
Can’t make decisions without input
Says yes to things that make you sick inside
Looks successful, but feels invisible in your own life

Why?
Because your brain was primed in adolescence to develop autonomy but your environment told you it wasn’t safe.

According to neuroscience research, the adolescent brain undergoes massive restructuring, especially in areas linked to executive function, risk evaluation, and decision-making (APA Monitor, 2022). During this time, teens are naturally driven to test limits, assert independence, and explore their identity through choice and consequence.

But when those choices are constantly overridden or punished; “thinking for yourself” gets shamed, ignored, or excluded..

Your inner voice learns a very different lesson:

“It’s safer not to decide for myself. It’s better to wait for someone else to tell me who to be.”

This is where it gets tricky.
It's not just emotional. It becomes neurobiological conditioning.

So even as adults, we find ourselves deferring. Performing. Seeking permission.

We think people-pleasing is kindness.

We mistake anxiety for intuition.

And most heartbreakingly we think self-abandonment is maturity.

You didn’t learn how to choose.

You learned how to comply.

And that learned helplessness runs deep until you start choosing anyway.

.It’s Not Too Late to Reclaim That Voice

Agency isn’t the same as rebellion.
It’s not about pushing people away or always fighting out the system.

Agency is saying, “This is my path. This is what feels right. And I trust myself to walk it.”

That trust takes practice.

And it starts with awareness of how your voice got quiet in the first place.

Reflective Assignment

When was the first time you felt punished or silenced for speaking up?
How does that moment still shape your choices today?

Want help hearing your voice again?

My workbook Finding Your Clarity was designed for this exact work.
Listening to your inner voice after years of performing, pleasing, or doubting yourself.
Gentle prompts. Deep questions. Realignment with you.

Get the workbook here.

Up next: Post 3 – Especially Girls: The Gold Star Trap (coming soon)

Missed Part 1?
Read The Childhood Code: Watch, Please, Survive to understand why approval-seeking starts early and why it's so hard to shake, even now as an adult

Citations

1. Coleman, J. C., & Hendry, L. B. (1990).
   The Nature of Adolescence (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.

2. Steinberg, L. (2005).
   Cognitive and affective development in adolescence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(2), 69–74.

3. Blakemore, S. J. (2022).
   The neuroscience of the teen brain: Developmental changes offer new insights into behavior and decision-making. APA Monitor, July/August 2022.
   https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/07/feature-neuroscience-teen-brain