Reclaiming Power: What Kasia Urbaniak's "Unbound" Reveals About Gender, Desire, and Authentic Agency

Kasia Urbaniak's Unbound: A Woman's Guide to Power is one of those rare books that makes you realize how deeply you've internalized frameworks that work against you. Drawing from her unusual background as both a Taoist nun and a professional dominatrix, Urbaniak offers a radical reimagining of power—particularly for women, but with implications that ripple across all gender identities and expressions.

As a therapist, I've found her work illuminates issues that show up constantly in my practice: the inability to ask for what we want, the exhaustion of managing others' emotions, the confusion between niceness and goodness, and the gendered power dynamics that shape our most intimate relationships with ourselves and others.

The Nice Trap: How "Good" Became the Enemy of Powerful

Urbaniak begins with an observation that lands like a punch: many women have been trained to prioritize being "good" (nice, accommodating, non-threatening) over being powerful (effective, clear, capable of influencing outcomes). This isn't about vilifying kindness—it's about exposing how "niceness" often functions as a substitute for genuine connection and a barrier to authentic agency.

In therapy, I see this constantly, though it manifests differently across gender identities. Women socialized into traditional femininity arrive exhausted from managing everyone's feelings, unable to name what they actually want, skilled at reading the room but bewildered by their own interior. They've become human shock absorbers, so attuned to others' needs that their own barely register. The depression, anxiety, and relationship difficulties they present with are often downstream effects of this fundamental self-abandonment.

But this pattern isn't exclusive to women. Men who've internalized toxic masculinity face a mirror version: they've learned that vulnerability is weakness, that asking for help is failure, that emotional needs are shameful. They arrive in therapy disconnected from their feelings, unable to access their own tenderness, and often in relationship crisis because their partners can't connect with someone who won't reveal themselves.

Queer individuals often report navigating complex territory—sometimes freed from traditional gender expectations, sometimes bearing the weight of multiple conflicting messages about how to embody their identity with power and authenticity.

The "nice trap" operates across these identities: we learn to manage our presentation to avoid

consequences, and then wonder why we feel hollow.

The Desiccation of Desire

One of Urbaniak's most striking concepts is the "desiccation of desire"—how people, especially women, become so disconnected from their own wanting that they literally don't know what they desire. This isn't metaphorical vagueness; it's a learned incapacity. When you've spent years monitoring what's acceptable to want, editing desires that might inconvenience others, and performing enthusiasm for what you "should" want, you damage the mechanism that generates authentic desire.

The clinical presentation of this is everywhere. Clients describe feeling empty, going through motions, achieving things that don't satisfy. They're successful by external metrics but internally adrift. When I ask what they want, I often get a long pause followed by what they think they should want, or what would be reasonable to want, or what wouldn't impose on anyone.

For women, this often manifests as difficulty with boundaries and decision-making. They can tell you elaborate stories about everyone else's needs and perspectives but go blank when asked about their own. Their relational radar is highly tuned, but it's only pointed outward. The exhaustion isn't from caring too much—it's from the impossibility of caring for others while being disconnected from yourself.

For men, particularly those raised with traditional masculinity, desire often gets channeled into narrow, sanctioned categories: career success, sexual conquest, competition. The full spectrum of human wanting—for tenderness, for beauty, for rest, for creative expression, for deep friendship—remains underdeveloped or actively suppressed. The result is lives that feel successful but empty, relationships that provide sex but not intimacy, and a persistent sense that something is missing but they can't name what.

Queer individuals often describe a complex relationship with desire—sometimes experiencing more freedom to explore what they actually want, having already broken from some societal scripts, but also facing pressure to perform queerness "correctly" or to embody political positions through their personal desires. The work becomes differentiating between desires that are authentically theirs and those adopted to signal identity or resist oppression.

Power vs. Force: A Critical Distinction

Urbaniak draws a crucial distinction between power and force. Force is what you use when you don't have power—it's exhausting, generates resistance, and often backfires. Power is the ability to influence outcomes while expending minimal energy. This reframe is therapeutically potent because it explains why so many people feel simultaneously controlling and powerless.

Consider the woman who manages her partner's emotions, subtly engineering situations to avoid his anger. She's using enormous force—constantly monitoring, adjusting, performing—but she has no power. She can't directly ask him to regulate himself. She can't express her own needs if they might upset him. Her elaborate system of emotional management is evidence of powerlessness, not control.

Or consider the man who dominates conversations, talks over others, and insists on being right. He appears powerful but is using force. Actual power would allow him to be vulnerable, to not know, to let others influence him without feeling threatened. His aggression masks the terror of not being in control, which is fundamentally a powerless position.

In relationships, this shows up as pursuer-distancer dynamics, passive aggression, martyrdom, and endless cycles of conflict without resolution. People are using force on each other because neither has developed actual power—the capacity to clearly state desires, to hear "no" without collapse, to negotiate from a place of groundedness rather than desperation.

The Attention Economy and Emotional Labor

Urbaniak discusses how women, in particular, are socialized to give their attention freely while men are socialized to command it. This maps onto what feminist scholars call "emotional labor"—the invisible work of monitoring, managing, and maintaining relationships and emotional atmospheres. This labor is gendered, undervalued, and exhausting.

In heterosexual relationships, this often looks like women doing the work of relationship maintenance—remembering important dates, managing social calendars, noticing when their partner is struggling, initiating difficult conversations, researching parenting strategies—while men benefit from this labor without recognizing it as labor at all. The woman experiences herself as nagging or hyper-vigilant while feeling resentful that her partner seems oblivious. The man experiences himself as occasionally criticized for no clear reason and confused about what more is wanted from him.

This dynamic creates what I'll call "intimacy debt"—an accumulating imbalance where one person is doing the work of maintaining connection while the other free-rides, often unconsciously. The person doing the labor becomes depleted and resentful; the other wonders why their partner seems chronically dissatisfied.

But Urbaniak's framework offers something beyond just naming this problem: she suggests women can reclaim their attention as valuable and learn to command attention themselves. This isn't about withholding care—it's about recognizing that attention is a resource, that where it goes matters, and that you get to choose. For men, the work is becoming conscious of the attention they receive as a form of labor someone is providing, and learning to give attention skillfully rather than just receiving it.

For queer relationships, these dynamics can be more fluid but no less present. Without default gendered scripts, couples must negotiate explicitly, which can be liberating but also challenging. Who does which emotional labor? How do you ask for what you need when there's no template? The absence of assumed roles means more conscious choice is required—which is actually closer to what Urbaniak advocates for everyone.

Turn-On as Information

One of Urbaniak's most controversial ideas is treating "turn-on" (not necessarily sexual, but a sense of aliveness and energy) as valuable information. In a culture that teaches women to be suspicious of their desires and teaches men to separate emotional connection from sexual desire, this is radical. She suggests that noticing what enlivens you—what makes you feel more awake, more yourself, more engaged—is essential data for living well.

This challenges therapeutic models that emphasize rationality and appropriate emotions. But I've found it deeply useful. When clients describe situations that "shouldn't" bother them or relationships they "should" be happy in, I often ask: does this enliven you? Does your body relax or contract? Do you feel more yourself or less?

The answers are revealing. The job that looks perfect on paper but makes them feel deadened. The relationship that's objectively good but lacks spark. The friendship where they perform rather than relax. Their rational mind says one thing, but their turn-on (or lack thereof) says another.

For women, learning to value this information means taking their own experience seriously—not just when it can be rationally justified, but as inherently valid. For men, it often means developing the capacity to notice turn-on beyond sexual contexts and to value emotional aliveness as much as achievement. For queer folks, it can mean trusting their own responses even when they don't fit expected narratives about their identity or community.

The Problem of Deferral

Urbaniak identifies a pattern she calls "deferral"—when someone asks what you want and you immediately start considering what would work for them, what would be reasonable, what wouldn't cause problems. The question gets rerouted through an analysis of external constraints before you even check in with your actual desire.

This pattern is deeply gendered. Women are socialized into it from childhood: anticipate others' needs, don't be demanding, consider how your desires affect others first. Men often learn a different form: their desires are primary, but emotional or relational desires get deferred because acknowledging them feels vulnerable. Queer individuals might defer to avoid standing out further or because they're already asking the world to accommodate their existence.

In therapy, breaking the deferral habit is foundational work. It sounds simple: "What do you want for dinner?" "What do you want?" But clients often can't answer without first analyzing what would be easy for the other person, what they had yesterday so they shouldn't be selfish, what sounds healthy, what they can afford. The actual desire—"I want Thai food"—is buried under layers of justification and negotiation with imagined constraints.

The practice Urbaniak offers is deceptively simple: Notice when you defer. Catch yourself doing the analysis. Return to the desire itself, even if you ultimately choose differently. The goal isn't selfish indulgence—it's being in contact with your own wanting as separate from the negotiation process.

Boundaries as Desire, Not Defense

Traditional boundary work often frames boundaries as protective: you set them to defend against invasion, to protect limited resources, to maintain separateness. Urbaniak offers a different frame: boundaries as expressions of desire. You're not defending against connection; you're specifying the terms under which you want to engage.

This shift changes everything. Defensive boundaries carry an undertone of "you're a threat I must protect against." Desire-based boundaries say "I want to engage with you in this way but not that way." The first creates distance and suspicion; the second maintains connection while specifying terms.

For women socialized to be accommodating, this frame makes boundary-setting more possible. You're not being mean or selfish—you're being specific about how you want to connect. For men who experience boundaries as rejection, this frame helps: your partner isn't pushing you away, they're inviting specific kinds of engagement. For everyone, it moves boundaries from a site of conflict to a tool for creating the relationships you actually want.

In practice, this sounds like: "I want to hear about your day, and I want to have dinner first while we decompress together" rather than "I can't deal with you dumping on me the minute I walk in." Or "I want to support you through this difficult time, and I'm not available for daily phone calls—can we schedule weekly check-ins?" rather than "You're overwhelming me, I need space."

The Masculine/Feminine Polarity and Its Limitations

Urbaniak works extensively with masculine and feminine energies—not as biological destinies but as complementary modes of being. Masculine energy is directional, penetrative, focused; feminine is receptive, responsive, expansive. She suggests that power comes from being able to access both, regardless of gender identity.

This framework is useful but requires careful handling. The risk is reinforcing binary thinking or suggesting that certain ways of being "belong" to certain bodies. In therapy, I find it more useful to talk about directional versus receptive energy, about the capacity to both lead and follow, to both hold space and fill it, to both give and receive.

Many women have overdeveloped receptive capacity and underdeveloped directional energy—they can hold space for everyone else but can't say clearly what they want. Many men have the opposite problem—they can state desires but can't receive others' influence, can't relax into being affected, can't follow someone else's lead. Queer individuals often have more flexibility but can also feel pressure to perform their gender in specific ways that limit full access to both modes.

The therapeutic work is developing range—the ability to move between modes as situations require. Can you be receptive without disappearing? Can you be directive without dominating? Can you shift based on context rather than being locked into one mode?

The Cultural Context: Navigating Power in Unequal Systems

None of this work happens in a vacuum. The reason women have learned to be accommodating, men have learned to dominate, and queer people navigate complex negotiations is because of real power differentials in the broader culture. Urbaniak's work isn't suggesting you can simply decide to be powerful in systems designed to disempower you.

But there's a distinction between acknowledging systemic constraints and internalizing powerlessness. You can recognize that patriarchy is real while also recognizing where you've learned powerless behaviors that you could update. You can acknowledge that gender-based violence exists while also learning to access your own power in relationships where you're actually safe. You can understand structural inequity while refusing to perform the powerlessness that's expected of you.

For women, this means recognizing that "niceness" was often a survival strategy in contexts where directness was punished, while also noticing where you're still performing niceness in contexts where it's not actually necessary. For men, it means understanding that emotional suppression was trained into you by a culture that devalues vulnerability, while also taking responsibility for learning emotional literacy now. For queer folks, it means honoring the complexity of navigating systems not built for you while also claiming agency where you have it.

Interpersonal Implications: Relating from Power

When both people in a relationship have access to their own power—can state desires clearly, can hear "no" without collapsing, can negotiate from groundedness—conflict becomes creative rather than destructive. You're not managing each other's emotions or walking on eggshells. You're two people with different desires figuring out how to both get more of what you want.

This requires skills most people weren't taught: How to ask for something clearly without apology or justification. How to say no without explaining it away. How to want something fully while accepting you might not get it. How to receive someone's desire without feeling obligated to fulfill it. How to negotiate without one person disappearing.

In heterosexual relationships, this often means women learning to stop managing their partner's emotions and men learning to actually manage their own emotions. It means women getting comfortable with their partner being temporarily upset and men getting comfortable with not having all their desires immediately met. The relationship becomes about two people with agency relating, rather than one person with agency and one person accommodating.

In same-gender relationships, you lose some of the default scripts—which can be freeing but also means you have to create your own. Who initiates sex? Who pursues emotionally? Who makes decisions? Without gendered defaults, you have to actually negotiate, which is closer to Urbaniak's vision for everyone.

Intrapersonal Implications: The Inner Relationship

Perhaps most importantly, Urbaniak's work suggests a different relationship with yourself. Instead of an internal authority figure controlling unruly desires, you develop what she calls "dominion"—a grounded sense of having yourself, being able to direct yourself, not through force but through actually being in relationship with all your parts.

This means the part of you that wants to stay home isn't "lazy" and the part that wants to push yourself isn't "mean." They're both trying to give you information. The work is listening to all of it, weighing it, and making conscious choices rather than being pushed around by whichever internal voice yells loudest or bullying yourself into compliance.

For people socialized as women, this often means befriending the parts they've exiled—the angry part, the selfish part, the sexually desirous part, the ambitious part. These aren't demons to control but aspects of themselves with valid information. For people socialized as men, it often means befriending the vulnerable parts—the scared part, the tender part, the uncertain part, the part that needs support. For everyone, it means developing internal democracy rather than internal tyranny.

The Question of Manipulation

A common concern with Urbaniak's work is whether it's teaching manipulation. She draws on dominatrix skills, which explicitly involve influencing others. Isn't this just learning to manipulate more skillfully?

Urbaniak's distinction is crucial: manipulation happens in service of hidden agendas. Power is being clear about what you want and skilled at creating conditions where others might choose to give it to you. The difference is transparency. Manipulation involves deception; power involves clarity.

In therapy terms, manipulation is passive-aggressive communication, guilt-tripping, playing victim, creating situations where the other person feels they have no choice. Power is saying directly what you want, creating invitations rather than obligations, being willing to hear no, and accepting that others have their own agency.

This distinction matters enormously for mental health. Manipulation creates anxiety—both for the manipulator (who's never sure if they really got what they wanted or just coerced compliance) and the manipulated (who feels controlled but can't name how). Power creates clarity—even when you don't get what you want, you know where you stand.

Practical Integration: Working With These Concepts

So how do we actually work with these ideas therapeutically? Here are some starting points:

Desire Practice: Regularly check in with what you actually want, separate from what would be acceptable or reasonable. Practice saying it out loud, even if just to yourself: "I want Thai food." "I want to cancel plans tonight." "I want more affection." "I want to be alone." Don't justify or explain—just notice the desire itself.

Attention Audit: Notice where your attention goes habitually. Are you constantly tracking others' moods? Do you edit yourself based on perceived reactions? Where are you giving attention freely that you might want to reclaim? Where are you demanding attention in ways that create resistance?

Deferral Detection: Catch yourself when someone asks what you want and you immediately start analyzing what would work for them. Practice pausing, checking in with your actual desire first, and then deciding how to respond. The goal isn't always stating your desire—it's being in contact with it before negotiating.

Boundary Experiments: Try framing boundaries as desires rather than defenses. Instead of "I need space from you," try "I want connection with you in shorter doses with recovery time between." Notice how this changes both your experience and others' responses.

Power vs. Force Assessment: In areas where you feel exhausted and ineffective, ask yourself: am I using force (lots of effort, little influence) or power (clear influence, minimal effort)? Usually exhaustion indicates force—you're pushing where you have no actual power.

Energy Tracking: Start noticing what enlivens you versus what depletes you, separate from whether things are "good" or "bad." Your body's responses are information. A "good" situation that deadens you is telling you something. A challenging situation that enlivens you is also information.

Conclusion: Power as Birthright, Not Privilege

Urbaniak's work invites us to reimagine power—not as something some people have over others, but as something available to everyone. Not as domination or control, but as the capacity to influence your own life, to state desires clearly, to negotiate from groundedness rather than desperation. This kind of power doesn't require others to have less; in fact, it works better when everyone has access to it.

The mental health implications are profound. So much suffering comes from the exhaustion of using force instead of power, from being disconnected from desire, from managing others' emotions instead of our own, from trying to be good instead of effective. The anxiety, depression, and relationship difficulties that bring people to therapy are often downstream effects of these fundamental disempowerments. Reclaiming power—in Urbaniak's sense—isn't about becoming dominant or selfish. It's about coming back into relationship with yourself, learning to state your desires clearly, developing skill at creating conditions where you get more of what you want while allowing others their agency. It's about being able to hear "no" without collapse and say "no" without guilt. It's about moving through the world as someone who matters, whose desires are valid, who has the right to take up space and influence outcomes.

This work is available to everyone, regardless of gender identity. But the specific challenges differ: women unlearning accommodation, men developing emotional literacy, queer folks navigating without default scripts. The destination is similar—authentic agency, genuine connection, the capacity to want clearly and ask directly—but the paths there vary based on what you were taught and what you must unlearn. The question Urbaniak leaves us with isn't "How do I get power over others?" but "How do I stop giving my power away?" That's fundamentally a therapeutic question, and answering it might be some of the most important work we can do.