Not all people decide to change unsatisfactory living conditions. Someone is lazy, someone is afraid to leave the comfort zone, and someone is hampered by the syndrome of learned helplessness. Let’s talk about the latter in more detail.
What is learned helplessness
Learned helplessness is a person’s passivity, unwillingness to change life for the better, based on the negative experience of the past. A person is so accustomed to a poor standard of living that he does not try to change it, even if he sees attractive opportunities. Previous experience suggests that the result will again be disastrous, and therefore it is not worth trying.
Learned helplessness syndrome was discovered in 1966 by Martin Selingman. True, the discovery happened by accident. The scientist wanted to study conditioned reflexes, to repeat Pavlov’s experiment. Only instead of food, he used electric shocks, and instead of light – a sound signal. The psychologist wanted to form fear in response to sound.
The dogs were divided into two groups and placed in cages:
- The first group could stop the electric shocks by pressing the lever.
- The second group did not have access to the lever, they had to endure.
According to the hypothesis, when moving to a free enclosure, the dogs would flee as soon as they heard the signal. But the experiment gave different results:
- The second group of dogs gradually began to show signs of depression, resignation to the inevitable, passivity. Even in the free enclosures, the dogs continued to be impacted. They did not try to get out, although the passage was open. Selingman began training dogs, teaching them to leave the enclosure. Over time, they were able to do it.
- The dogs from the first group looked for a lever, did not stop until they found a way out.
The scientist suggested that this behavior is typical for people. Individuals who fail in one thing stop fighting in all areas of life.
Later Julius Kul conducted an experiment on students. He gave them an assignment without an answer, but did not say so. Students could not solve the problem, their self-esteem fell, and anxiety grew, a healthy state was replaced by despair. At the end of the experiment, Kuhl proposed a simple problem with an answer, but none of the students could solve it.
Repetitive stress, life difficulties and failures, negative conditions that a person cannot influence, make him stop struggling even in other conditions. The personality develops a strong belief in its own inferiority, inability to cope with problems.
Learned helplessness syndrome is a person’s conviction of their own powerlessness, failure, inability to do anything. At the same time, an individual can have all the necessary resources, but he does not see this in himself, does not believe in himself, cannot reveal his potential and achieve the desired goal.
Causes
As Kuhl’s experiment shows, the syndrome can form at any age and under any circumstances. A similar effect can have:
- prolonged illness;
- paralysis;
- prison;
- slavery;
- captivity;
- unemployment and failure in hiring, refusals without explanation;
- a boss or husband who is inconsistent in reactions and is guided by his own mood;
- any traumatic situation can shackle a person’s hands, but stress is perceived subjectively, and therefore it is impossible to identify the general factors of the syndrome.
A common prerequisite for all people for the onset of the syndrome is the lack of choice. It is important for each person to feel control over the situation, life, and oneself. This is what a choice is for. It gives self-confidence, acts as a prevention of the development of helplessness.
If the syndrome of learned helplessness was formed in childhood, is part of the victim’s thinking, then the reasons are as follows:
- Authoritarian or overprotective style of family education, suppression of independence, initiative, individuality of the child.
- An example of parents. Learned helplessness is inherited. If parents are afraid of life changes, go with the flow, are used to suffering and endure, it is likely that the child will learn this scenario.
- Criticism, censure, punishment, focusing on the child’s shortcomings, frequent repetition of phrases like “you don’t know how”, “you will not succeed”.
- Comforting praise, good lies. Children understand when their parents sincerely praise them and when they comfort them. The result of consolation is the same: the attitude “I’m stupid”. Constructive criticism and help in correcting mistakes are more useful than pity.
- Comparison of the child with other children, parents at this age. Inflated requirements and expectations of parents, a fictional image of an ideal child.
- Education based on gender stereotypes. Girls grow up convinced of their weakness, and boys do not know how to serve themselves in everyday life. Gender stereotypes deprive a person of psychological flexibility. This is an additional factor in the development of helplessness syndrome.
- Chaos, conflicting educational positions of parents, frequent changes in developmental conditions, inconstancy and instability of parental demands.
With such an upbringing, a child at the age of 8 will be convinced of his own worthlessness, helplessness. This attitude will persist for life. Only a psychotherapist will help to get rid of it.
Signs
The presence of the syndrome can be suspected by the person’s speech. This will be indicated by the phrases that the individual uses more often than others:
- “It’s family.”
- “I was born a failure under an unlucky star.”
- “I can’t …” or “I don’t want to …” (the latter is an attempt to convince oneself and others that the unattainable was not really desired).
- “I never succeed.”
- “I always fail.”
- “Something always happens to me.”
- “I still won’t succeed”, “yes, as always, I screw up.”
People with learned helplessness syndrome believe in bad luck, unhappy fate, bad horoscope, curse, and other external factors that a person cannot influence. And if they succeed in something, then they see this as the merit of other people, chance, luck. The thinking of such people is programmed to fail. They become victims of addicted relationships, scammers.
What to do
Just as Selingman taught dogs new behaviors, humans must correct theirs. The learning method is characteristic of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy.
If a person sees the world in black tones, is waiting for the next blow and a series of suffering, then this is what he finds. This further strengthens his faith in evil doom. But we’re really just looking for confirmation of what we believe.
This should be the basis of psychotherapy. What is included in it:
- Change from negative thinking to positive.
- Self-esteem correction, self-confidence increase.
- Acquaintance with oneself, self-acceptance, formation of an adequate image of “I”, awareness of one’s own potential.
- The return of control over life through the use of the abilities of the individual, the differentiation of what is amenable to human control and what is not. Training in the practical use of personal potential.
To get rid of learned helplessness, you need to reanimate the will of a person, eliminate apathy, in especially severe cases – PTSD. The syndrome is always preceded by psychological trauma. It is necessary to find what affects a person from the inside, and eliminate it.
You can try to do it yourself, rethinking the disturbing situation and the current conditions, your capabilities:
- Do what you can do. Anything, most importantly, give yourself at least some choice, a sense of control. Take a walk, read a book, do some push-ups, brush your teeth, decide what to cook for dinner, rearrange the room. This method is used in prisons: do something. But do not use this method in isolation, it can lead to obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- Change your self-perception with positive memories. Our brain concentrates on the negative, but each person can remember at least a couple of situations in which he was a winner. Remember to create situations of success in the present tense and collect more of these memories. Do you need to call someone or clean up your closet for a long time? It’s about time. This will be another reminder that a lot in life depends on you. Make a plan, keep a diary of goals and achievements. Look there, celebrate your successes, reward yourself and form a new belief: “I am building my own life,” “my actions are important.”
To rethink the situation, use the reframing method suggested by Selingman:
- Pick a negative situation from the past that makes you feel helpless.
- Write down your vision of the situation: what happened, how you perceived it.
- Now write down your responses to that situation, your behavior and how you felt about it.
- Further, from the point of view of current experience and perception, find facts that call into question the perception of the current situation as negative, exclude your guilt in what happened.
- Imagine an alternative reaction to events. What emotions and feelings are you experiencing now?
Analyze each stressful situation in a similar way. Over time, you will notice that they repeat themselves. People change, circumstances change, but you have the same experiences, and the responses are similar. Change your attitude to the situation, think over new patterns of behavior. Over time, you will learn new coping strategies.
If, in the process of working on yourself, the feeling of helplessness has intensified, negative self-perception has strengthened, or you cannot get out of bed and start working on yourself, your hands literally drop, and you rate the traumatic experience higher than 7 points in a 10-point school, then immediately see a psychotherapist.
