Learned helplessness: Seligman's theory

The concept of learned helplessness is the cornerstone of many important theories and ideas in psychology, as well as the basis of several fundamental concepts in positive psychology.

It provides an explanation for some people's behavior that may seem strange or counterproductive, and an understanding of learned helplessness provides ways to eliminate or reduce its negative consequences.

What is learned helplessness? Psychological definition

Learned helplessness is a phenomenon observed in both humans and animals where they have been conditioned to expect pain, suffering or discomfort without the ability to avoid it. Eventually, after sufficient training, the animal will stop trying to avoid pain altogether, even if it is possible to actually avoid it.

Important! When people or animals begin to understand (or believe) that they have no control over what happens to them, they begin to think, feel and act as if they are helpless.

This phenomenon is called learned helplessness because it is not an innate trait. No one is born believing that they have no control over what happens to them, and it is futile to even try to gain control. It is a learned behavior, conditioned by experiences in which the subject either truly has no control over his circumstances or simply feels that he has no control.

Methods for overcoming the syndrome

Take action

Even if you don’t believe in a successful outcome, still take some action, just don’t lose heart. Otherwise, then nothing really good will happen.

One psychologist named Bruno Bettelheim invented a wonderful way that allows you to feel in your hands the power over your life and freedom of choice. Do you know under what conditions this method came to his mind? In the camps.

The guards abused the prisoners as much as their imagination allowed. And they often punished them just like that, coming up with completely ridiculous rules that they had to adhere to.

This broke the spirit of the unfortunate, they quickly lost the will to live and obeyed unquestioningly, if only the torment would end as soon as possible.

Then Bruno proposed his own rule: do everything that is not prohibited. That is, to regain at least a little control over your life. For example, instead of discussing rumors with other prisoners, you can go to bed. Or don’t sleep, but dream when the all-clear sounds.

When a person has a choice, he feels like a person, significant and significant. After all, the result will depend on how he decides.

The best remedy for combating forced helplessness. Act within your freedom, even if it is very limited. And then gradually you will regain your faith in yourself and decide to make changes.

Change your lifestyle

American psychologists Ellen Langer and Judith Rhoden conducted a study on people with limited freedom to test Bettelheim's theory. The subjects were prison inmates, residents of a nursing home, and visitors to a homeless shelter.

So, the first category was allowed to choose a menu and arrange the furniture in the cell in the way they liked best. They subsequently turned out to be less aggressive than others who were deprived of this right.

Seniors could choose a movie or television show, have a houseplant, and decorate the room the way they wanted.

Due to such freedom of action, their vitality increased, and Alzheimer’s disease, in which cognitive skills suffer, in particular, memory is gradually lost, stopped its development.

Homeless people who were given the right to choose a menu and a bed in a shelter adapted faster and found work.

So, try to rearrange the room, think about what exactly you would like to do on the weekend and what kind of dinner to cook? Start with small changes, and then gradually you will move on to more significant changes in your lifestyle.

Increase your self-esteem

Forced helplessness is a private companion with low self-esteem. Therefore, first of all, start working on yourself. Remember when you managed to achieve your desired goals? What qualities did you rely on? What skills do you have?

Don’t be lazy and write down each point on a piece of paper. When you have a whole list of advantages in front of you, it will be more difficult for you to devalue your own efforts and qualities.

Martin Seligman's experiments that led to the theory

The first experiments that formed the basis of this theory were conducted in the late 1960s and early 1970s by psychologists Martin Seligman and Stephen Mayer.

Seligman and Mayer were working with dogs at the time and testing their reactions to electric shocks. Some of the dogs received electric shocks that they could not predict or control.

For this experiment, dogs were placed in a box with two chambers separated by a low barrier. One cell had an electrified floor, but the other did not.

When the researchers placed the dogs in the box and turned on the electrified floor, they noticed something strange: some dogs didn't even try to jump over the low barrier to the other side.

To further study this phenomenon, Seligman and Mayer collected a new batch of dogs and divided them into three groups:

The dogs in the first group were tied to a harness for some time and were not subjected to shocks.
The dogs in the second group were tied to the same harnesses, but were subjected to electric shocks that they could avoid by pressing the panel with their nose.
The dogs in the third group were placed in the same harnesses and also received electric shocks, but were not given the opportunity to escape them.

Once the three groups had completed this first experimental manipulation, all dogs were placed (one at a time) in a two-chamber box. The dogs in the first and second groups quickly realized that they only had to jump over the barrier to avoid the shocks, but most of the dogs in the third group did not even try to avoid them. Based on their previous experience, these dogs concluded that there was nothing they could do to avoid shock.

Once these results were confirmed in dogs, Seligman and Mayer conducted similar experiments in rats . Rats in the group that received avoidable shocks were able to avoid the shocks by pressing a lever in the box, while those who received unavoidable shocks were able to press the lever but still received the shocks and did not try to avoid them.

The rats were later placed in a box and given electric shocks. Inside the box was a lever that, when pressed, allowed the rats to avoid being hit.

Again, the rats that were placed in the inescapable shock group usually did not even attempt to escape , while most of these rats in the other two groups managed to escape.

Rats that did not try to avoid exhibited behavior that is classic learned helplessness: even when given the potential opportunity to escape pain, they do not try to accept it.

This phenomenon can also be seen in elephants. When an elephant trainer begins working with a baby elephant, a rope is used to tie one of the elephant's legs to the stand. The elephant will struggle for hours, even days, trying to escape the rope, but eventually it will calm down and accept the situation.

Important! When the elephant grows up, he will be more than strong enough to break the rope, but he will not even try - he has been taught that any struggle is futile.

Part 2. Subsequent experiments.

During the experiment, it was concluded that troubles themselves do not affect the psyche. An animal, like a person, becomes helpless precisely from its inability to influence the situation. Later, Seligman conducted a similar experiment with people, but instead of current, he used noise. And most people just as quickly became helpless in front of the experimenter and did not try to do anything to change anything.

But in fact, not only troubles can deprive us of willpower and make us helpless. You don't have to use electric current or noise to do this. It is enough to simply limit a person’s choice. A very clear experiment was conducted in 1976 in a nursing home.

To conduct the study, Langer and Rodin randomly selected two floors of a nursing home, the residents of which became participants in the experiment. Thus, the experimental group included 8 men and 39 women (fourth floor), the control group included 9 men and 35 women (second floor), a total of 91 people.

The experimenters agreed with the administration of the institution on two types of experimental conditions. Briefly, they can be described as follows: residents of the fourth floor were given increased responsibility for themselves and their lifestyle, residents of the second floor were given the opportunity to lead a normal lifestyle for patients at home, surrounded by the attention and care of the staff.

Residents of the second floor were given standard instructions at the first meeting:

We want your rooms to look as comfortable as possible and we will try to do everything for this. We want you to feel happy here and we hold ourselves responsible for making sure that you can be proud of our nursing home and be happy here... We will do everything in our power to help you... I would like to take the opportunity to give everyone of you is a gift from Arden House (the employee went around everyone and handed each patient a plant) now these are your plants, they will stand in your room, the nurses will water them and take care of them, you yourself will not need to do anything
— Rodin J., Langer E. Long-term effects of a control relevant intervention with the institutionalized aged

Residents on the fourth floor were told the following:

You yourself must decide what your room will look like, whether you want to leave everything there as is or want our employees to help you rearrange the furniture... You yourself must tell us your wishes, tell us what exactly you would like to change in your life. In addition, I would like to take advantage of our meeting to present each of you with a gift from Arden House. If you decide that you want to have a plant, you can choose the one you like from this box. These plants are yours, you must maintain them and care for them as you see fit. Next week we will be screening the film on two evenings, Tuesday and Friday. You need to decide what day you will go to the cinema and whether you want to see the film at all.
— Rodin J., Langer E. Long-term effects of a control relevant intervention with the institutionalized aged

Please note that essentially everyone was given the same conditions, but with one difference. Conditions were practically imposed on some, while others were given the right to choose. However, the results were very different. Thus, the average level of happiness of a negative value of −0.12 in the “second floor group” was contrasted with an average score of +0.28 in the “fourth floor group” (according to personal reports from patients). The improvement in the condition of patients, as assessed by nurses, in the experimental group showed +3.97 versus −2.39 in the control group. There was also a significant difference in time spent communicating with other patients, talking with staff, and passively observing staff (the latter criterion showed −2.14 in the experimental group versus +4.64 in the control group).

Six months after the study, Langer and Rodin returned to Arden House to take another measurement and find out whether the experimental effect was continuing. Nurses' ratings showed that subjects in the increased responsibility group continued to perform better, with an overall mean score of 352.33 versus 262.00 for the control group. There were also slight improvements in health in the experimental group and deterioration in the control group. Finally, during the time interval since the first study, 30% of the participants in the control group died, while 15% of the participants in the experimental group died. Based on the results obtained, the administration of Arden House decided to further encourage patients’ desire to control their own lives.

Examples of learned helplessness in humans

Experiments conducted on humans yielded similar results. While a person's response to such situations may be more complex and dependent on several different factors, it is still similar to that of dogs, rats, and other animals.

One study of learned helplessness in humans was conducted in 1974. In this study, participants were divided into three groups: one group was exposed to a loud and unpleasant noise but was able to stop the noise by pressing a button four times, a second group was exposed to the same noise but the button did not work, and a third group was not exposed to any noise at all. .

Later, all participants were exposed to a loud noise and given a box containing a lever that, when manipulated, would turn off the sound. As in animal experiments, those who did not control the noise in the first part of the experiment usually did not even try to turn off the noise, while the remaining participants usually figured out how to turn off the noise very quickly.

Seligman and colleagues proposed that three disadvantages arise as a result of exposing participants to situations over which they have no control: motivational, cognitive, and emotional. Cognitive deficit refers to the subject's perception that his circumstances are beyond his control. Motivational deficit refers to a subject's lack of response to potential methods of coping with a negative situation. Finally, emotional deficit refers to a depressive state that occurs when the subject is in a negative situation that he feels is out of his control.

Important! Based on his research, Seligman discovered an important connection: the link between learned helplessness and depression .

Who is guilty?

Learned helplessness occurs due to a failure in the stimulus-response system. To some extent, it is the opposite of the “pigeon superstition” that we have already written about. But if Skinner's pigeons had the illusion of control over the situation, then the helplessness of Seligman's dogs was precisely caused by the lack of this control. It was as if their reflexes were telling them: “You won’t change anything anyway. So don’t be nervous, don’t waste your energy.”

In humans, learned helplessness usually occurs in the following situations:

A series of failures

No matter how much we would like to believe otherwise, chance plays a very significant role in our lives. This means that every person can fail again and again, no matter how hard he tries. And if some are able to grit their teeth and wait for the “white streak”, then others, after several failures, forever lose the desire to do anything.

Force majeure

There are situations in which we really have no influence on anything. These include natural disasters, unexpected grief in the family, accidents, difficult political or economic conditions in the country, and much more. When people find themselves in such situations, they feel like a chip in a stormy ocean, which is not so far from the truth. This feeling of helplessness can linger and over time develop into a habit.

Game without rules

Sometimes we have to face chaos in the form of society or individuals. And in this case, our actions do not lead to the results that we expect.

A game without rules, in turn, has several options:

- No consequences. Example: the management of an enterprise that ignores all initiatives coming from employees.

- Same consequences. Example: employees receive scolding from their superiors, regardless of the quality of work (as in our case with a tyrant boss).

- Unpredictable consequences. Example: an employee may receive a fine after quality work and a bonus after outright idleness.

People who have to regularly play games without rules eventually become passive and give up.

Learned helplessness and depression

To understand the proposed link between learned helplessness and depression, we need to understand the two types of learned helplessness as outlined by Seligman and colleagues.

General helplessness is a feeling of helplessness when the subject believes that nothing can be done about the situation in which he finds himself. He believes that no one can ease the pain.

Personal helplessness , on the other hand, is a much more localized feeling of helplessness. The subject may believe that others can find a solution or avoid pain, but the subject believes that he is personally incapable of finding a solution.

Both types of helplessness can lead to a state of depression , but the quality of this depression may differ. Those who feel completely helpless will seek to find external causes for both their problems and their inability to solve them, while those who feel helpless will seek to find internal causes.

In addition, those who feel helpless are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem because they believe that others can solve problems that they perceive as incapable of solving.

Although cognitive and motivational deficits are similar for people suffering from both personal and general helplessness, people experiencing personal helplessness tend to have larger and more intense emotional deficits.

In addition to this differentiation between types of helplessness, learned helplessness can be determined by two other factors : generality (global or specific) and stability (chronic or transient).

When a person suffers from global helplessness , they experience negative consequences in several areas of life, not just the most significant area. They are also more likely to suffer from severe depression than those who experience transient helplessness .

Additionally, those who suffer from chronic helplessness (those who have felt helpless for an extended period of time) are more likely to experience the effects of depressive symptoms than those who experience transient helplessness (a short-term and non-recurring feeling of helplessness).

However, depression will vary depending on the type of helplessness. The range of depressive symptoms will depend on the generality and stability of the helplessness, and any impact on self-esteem depends on how the person explains or attributes their experience (internally or externally).

This proposed framework identifies the cause of at least one type of depression—that which stems from helplessness—and provides a path to a cure for it. Researchers have described four strategies for treating helplessness-related depression:

Change the probability of an outcome . Change the environment, increasing the likelihood of desired events and decreasing the likelihood of negative events.
Reduce desire for preferred outcomes. This can be done either by reducing the negativity of events that are beyond the individual's control or by reducing the desirability of events that are highly unlikely.
Change a person's expectations from uncontrollability to controllability when the desired results are achievable. In other words, help the depressed person understand when the outcomes they desire are actually within their control.
Change unrealistic explanations for failure to ones that are external (not due to some inherent flaw in the depressed person themselves), transitory (not chronic) and specific (due to one specific problem, not a larger picture of problems ). Likewise, change unrealistic explanations for success to ones that are internal (due to some inherent strength of depression), stable (chronic), and global (due to general competence rather than a specific area of competence).

How to get out of a vicious circle?

In real life, there are no laboratory assistants who can tell you a way out of a situation that seems hopeless (as was the case in the experiment with dogs), so you need to find a way out yourself

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All situations are individual, but there are several universal steps that can help you overcome learned helplessness and make sure in practice that your life is only in your hands
.

If you feel that you cannot cope with this condition on your own, seek professional help from psychologists or psychotherapists

Step 1. Don't expect a miracle

Understand that if you remain in your current state and do not make any efforts to change the situation, then the situation itself is unlikely to change, and you will miss out on many opportunities

. Instead of just waiting, think: what made you decide to stop controlling what happens in your life? The answer to this question is the first stage of getting rid of learned helplessness.

Step 2: Remember a positive experience

They say there are no hopeless situations. We would not be so categorical, but the truth is that in many cases a person is really capable of changing a situation that does not suit him, but he does not believe in it and therefore does nothing. It is important to change your own self-image, get rid of habitual thinking patterns
, and increase self-esteem. To do this, you first need to focus on positive experiences.

Remember often (or better yet, write down and re-read periodically) all your achievements

, from small to large. Place special emphasis on those cases when literally everything was against you, but you still achieved what you wanted, even if the final goal was something not entirely significant.

Step 3: Get rid of mental gum

For people with learned helplessness syndrome, the so-called rumination - fixation on painful thoughts, constantly turning them over in the head

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This process wastes a lot of internal energy, and as a result the person is too exhausted and depressed to do anything useful. To stop the unpleasant internal monologue, you need to write out the tormenting thought and ask yourself: “Why do I think about this all the time? What good does this do me?” This way you can transform the monologue into a dialogue and debate with yourself
- this will allow you to better understand the problem, and perhaps find a way to solve it.

Identify the triggers that start an unconstructive cycle of thoughts. Is there any specific situation when it occurs? Or maybe it is caused by attitudes that were instilled in you as a child or teenager? Usually this is done by some person who is authoritative for the child: from parents to teachers. It is important to understand what thoughts and attitudes drag you into rumination and make you feel helpless.

Affirmations and reframing, which we will discuss below, are effective in combating obsessive thoughts.

Step 4: Reduce Feelings of Helplessness

To reduce feelings of helplessness and feel in control, it is important to recognize and practice that you can make the changes you want in your life.

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At first, put aside Napoleonic plans and start small. Set small tasks every day and be sure to record their completion
. Nail up a shelf in the bathroom and buy yourself some new jeans. Wash the tablecloth and watch your favorite movie. Bake some buns and eat them.

Keep a list of planned and completed tasks and re-read it from time to time. You will soon realize that your goals are becoming larger and your ability to achieve them is also growing.

Step 5: Think about what you want

It is important to have concrete plans for the future. Set global goals for yourself for several years ahead, break them down into specific tasks and actions

that need to be implemented for this, think about what, how and when you can do it.

Remember, by steadily moving step by step towards your goal, you can go very far. The main thing is to move.

What could be the cause of helplessness?

Learned helplessness is, unsurprisingly, associated with many negative characteristics, including:

Age: The older a person is, the more likely they are to change or lose their roles.
Especially the stress associated with poverty.
Anxiety and worry , especially regarding tests for students.
Greater negative response to expected pain.

Not only is learned helplessness often associated with other negative conditions, but it also causes a variety of negative consequences, including:

Negative symptoms, as well as negative emotions about the disease.
Maladaptive perfectionism.
Burnout or emotional exhaustion and cynicism.
Worsening depression, anxiety, phobias, shyness and loneliness in those already suffering.

Learned helplessness in education

The topic of learned helplessness comes up quite often in education. It is a very interesting question about how early academic failure or low academic self-esteem can affect later success, and how relationships can be influenced to increase the chances of success.

Learned helplessness in students creates a vicious cycle. Those who feel that they cannot succeed are unlikely to put much effort into academic work , which reduces their chances of success, leading to even less motivation and effort.

This vicious cycle can end with the student having little to no motivation to study the subject and no competence in the subject. Worse, it can lead to a more general feeling of helplessness, in which the student does not believe in his or her abilities and is not motivated to study any subject at school.

The reasons students give for their failures or successes are critical. If a student believes that he failed because the teacher hates him or he is simply stupid, he blames factors beyond his control and is likely to develop a feeling of helplessness. If a student believes that they failed because they did not study hard enough, they will blame factors that are under their control, which is much less likely to lead to an overall feeling of helplessness.

Fortunately, there are several strategies that can prevent students from learning to be helpless, including:

Teachers need to provide praise and encouragement based on a student's ability (e.g., "You are good at math" or "You have a knack for this subject") to help them believe that they are good at those tasks or subjects.
Teachers need to provide praise and encouragement based on student effort (e.g., “Your hours of hard work paid off on this test!”) to help them believe that their efforts will make a difference.
Work on individual goal setting with students to help them understand that goals can be achieved and that results are often within their sphere of influence.

There are several very important strategies for teachers and parents:

Curate and create learning resources to help students become comfortable with not knowing an answer and looking for the answer in the right places.
Use questions to guide learning (e.g., use questions that encourage the student to think about their own learning patterns rather than just thinking about what they know).
Don't give students the answers. Instead, help them learn it at their own pace and using their own methods - they'll be more likely to remember it that way!
Let them fail. Failure and trying again are vital - as long as you support them when they fail.

Helpful Tips for Overcoming Learned Helplessness

Don't miss your chances

In most cases, it is better to try than not to try at all.

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If you don't try and continue to wait for a better opportunity or a more reliable option, you run the risk of never changing something that doesn't suit you. Of course, it is important to think through the risks and potential negative consequences, but make it a priority to “ Use all available opportunities
.”

Don't give up after the first failure

Adopt another principle for yourself: “ Failure is a reason to try again.”

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It is important not to deviate from the path after the first obstacle or defeat. Keep moving towards your goal, even if things aren't going according to your plan. Remember the NLP presupposition: “There are no failures, there is feedback
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Thus, if something doesn’t work out for you, this is not a reason to get upset and stop acting, it’s just a reason to reconsider your current actions. For example, you want to change your boring and low-paying job.
To get started, set yourself a regular time (say, every three days) when you review job openings and submit your resume. Even if no one responds the first time, you will begin to move towards your goal. By reviewing company requirements, you'll get an idea of what skills are most relevant right now and what you need to work on. You will also update your portfolio and resume, and gain experience communicating with recruiters. In other words, even if you have already sent your resume to several dozen companies and have not yet received a job offer, this does not mean that you need to stop looking. Don't be afraid of defeats - everyone loses in one situation or another, but that doesn't mean you have to give up.

Don't focus on how small the odds are

With acquired helplessness, a person often does not take advantage of available chances and opportunities, because it seems to him that a successful outcome is too unlikely. This is probably true in some (but only some!) cases, but instead of judging the odds of success, think about something else. How likely are you to change something if you do nothing?

What bad will happen if you try and fail? What do you have to lose if you try? What happens if your attempt does lead to the desired result?

In the vast majority of situations, when you refuse to act, you lose the chance to make the changes you want.

. Remember this if you once again have a thought like “This is pointless, because I won’t succeed.”

Don't discount your past successes, even small ones.

Remember situations when you achieved what you wanted. If you could do it before, you can do it now

Do you think that pure chance helped you then, and in general such chances only come once in a lifetime? In fact, many people are helped by a successful combination of circumstances (although not everyone is fully aware of this). But it’s not even this that’s important, but the realization that no amount of luck will help if you don’t look for and use the available opportunities

Develop an optimistic outlook on life

An optimistic outlook gives many people more energy for different things.
Acquired optimism is a great help in the fight against learned helplessness. This concept was developed by M. Seligman. He believed that optimistic people were not only happier, but also healthier. Read our advice in the articles “Positive Psychology” and “NLP Presuppositions: Why They Are Useful Even for Those Who Don’t Like NLP.”

An optimist sees failure as an opportunity to try something again, rather than taking it personally.

Get rid of guilt

The habit of blaming yourself for everything that happened takes a lot of energy and demotivates. Moreover, it is often not true.

, since many things in life happen due to circumstances beyond our control (this applies to both good, as we talked about above, and bad).
Focus not on the past, which cannot be changed, but on the future, which can and should be influenced
.

For many, working to improve self-esteem is also important. Adequate self-esteem will help you use existing opportunities and chances much more effectively.

Get out of your comfort zone

Leaving your comfort zone is difficult for almost everyone. With acquired helplessness, leaving the familiar cocoon, which gives a feeling of stability and security (not always justified, however), is even more difficult. Check out our tips on learning to leave your comfort zone.

Don't let past problems ruin your future

Learned helplessness can be associated with one's own negative experiences or a transmitted pattern of behavior. In such cases, it can be useful to reflect on the fact that you have changed, and the world around you has also changed. Consequently, your previous experience, and especially the experience of your parents, will not necessarily be repeated now
.

Ask yourself questions: what is the difference between the situation that traumatized me and the current state of affairs? Why did I decide that in the present everything would follow the same scenario? What will I lose if I don't change my behavior now? Don't forget that you live in the present, not in the past.

Learned helplessness in relationships and domestic violence

In addition to education, people who focus on domestic violence often develop learned helplessness. This is often seen in relationships and among victims of domestic violence.

In fact, this phenomenon has helped us find answers to some of the questions people ask about victims who stay with their abusers, such as:

Why didn't they tell someone?
Why didn't they try to get help?
Why didn't they just leave?

Important! It is difficult to explain the impact of abuse on the victim's behavior. Ultimately, observers may think that there is no point in staying with someone who hurts them.

However, in cases of domestic violence and abuse, abusers often use a series of "electric shocks" (that is, a form of violence to which they subject their victims) to acclimatize victims of abuse and teach them that they have no control over the situation. Abusers remain in complete control, while victims understand that they are helpless in their circumstances.

In such cases, it is easy to see how abuse can lead to learned helplessness , which can subsequently lead to a lack of motivation to rescue on the part of the victim. Just as the dogs in Seligman and Mayer's experiments learned that no matter what they did, they would be shocked, victims of domestic violence and abuse learn that no matter what they do, they will always remain powerless and under the control of their abusers .

Important! These perceptions are incredibly difficult to change and often require intensive therapy and support.

Based on learned helplessness, a specific theory has been developed for victims of domestic violence called the theory of cyclical violence, a cycle that is sometimes called battered women syndrome . In this theory, relationships in which domestic violence has occurred are likely to continually involve violence that occurs in a predictable and repetitive pattern.

This pattern generally follows this structure:

Stage One: A period of increasing tension in which the abuser becomes angry, communication breaks down, and the victim feels the need to give in and submit to the abuser.
Stage two: the role-playing period in which the abuse occurs.
Stage three: the honeymoon period, during which the offender can apologize and show remorse. The abuser may also promise to never abuse the victim again or, alternatively, blame the victim for instigating the abuse.
Stage four: a calm period when the abuse stops, the abuser behaves as if it never happened, and the victim may begin to believe that the abuse has stopped and the abuser will change.

From this perspective, it is not surprising that many victims of domestic violence become scientifically helpless. When they are abused in a continuous cycle , no matter what they do, they are likely to feel completely helpless and unable to escape the abuse.

The theory of cyclical violence suggests that victims of violence not only feel helpless, but also:

Re-experience the beating.
They try to avoid the psychological impact of the beating by avoiding actions, people and emotions.
Experience hyperactivity or hypervisibility.
Breakdown of interpersonal relationships.
Experiencing somatic problems.

Important! It is clear that learned helplessness is a serious and pressing problem for victims of domestic violence and other abuses. Fortunately, there are several ways to treat learned helplessness.

NO CONSEQUENCES

A woman once approached me whose adult daughter “doesn’t want to do anything at all.” The family is very wealthy, and the daughter is not denied anything. A chain of nail salons was registered under her name in the hope that she would manage and develop her business herself. But she let everything take its course and does anything but work: meets with friends, disappears into the fitness club. In general, she continues to lead an idle lifestyle and has no interest in the work entrusted to her. Parents are perplexed: “No responsibility! She doesn’t care about anything!” – and don’t understand why their child is so helpless. Since childhood, they have accepted absolutely everything - “ups” and “downs”, high and low results - as a given, calmly and neutrally: no matter what she does, there is no reaction. Without any reference points, the girl felt like she was in an airless space, so she learned: her parents would understand everything in any case and sort everything out, and she shouldn’t worry about anything.

Learned helplessness: book

Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Personal Control was written by psychologist Christopher Peterson along with pioneering helplessness researchers Mayer and Seligman.

It highlights the research that inspired the theory of learned helplessness , and provides compelling and comprehensive research. It describes the connection between learned helplessness and depression, as well as exploring other aspects such as cognitive and biological aspects.

Important! If you are looking for a deeper dive into this topic, this book will provide you with an informative overview of learned helplessness.

Treatment for children and adults

Important! Although learned helplessness can be difficult to overcome, there are ways to combat it.

One potential treatment based on neuroscience research is the connection between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (a part of the brain that plays a role in suppressing emotional responses) and the dorsal raphe nucleus (a part of the brain stem associated with serotonin and depression) and learned helplessness.

This potential treatment could be aimed at stimulating the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and inhibiting the dorsal raphe nucleus through medications, electrical stimulation, transmagnetic stimulation, or psychologically through therapy.

In particular, recent studies have shown that transmagnetic stimulation (TMS) is quite effective in treating depression . Given the link between learned helplessness and depression, it makes sense to think that treating one might be an effective treatment for the other.

Speaking of effective treatments for depression, therapy is also a good choice for people struggling with learned helplessness. Those who feel helpless may benefit from working with a mental health professional to explore the reasons for their helplessness, replace old and harmful beliefs with new and healthier beliefs, and develop a sense of self- compassion .

A study conducted by psychologist Carol Dweck (the researcher who proposed the growth versus fixed mindset ) found that there is another extremely effective way to alleviate learned helplessness: through failure.

In Dweck's 1975 study on the subject, participants (all of whom were experiencing an extreme reaction to failure) were divided into two groups: one received intensive training in which they did not perform their tasks, and they were instructed to take responsibility for their failure and attributing it to a lack of effort while the other group underwent intensive training. The results showed that the group that received training alone showed no improvement in their extreme reactions to failure, while the group that received failure showed a marked improvement.

Important! This experiment was one of several studies conducted in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s that laid the foundation for a new theory of human behavior related to failure, learned helplessness, and resilience .

Seligman's model of optimism

Seligman, one of the researchers who helped discover the phenomenon of learned helplessness, later found his attention drawn to what may be the exact opposite of learned helplessness: optimism .

Although Seligman's name had been synonymous with learned helplessness for many years, he knew he had much more to offer the world. His work on this topic led him to think about what other perspectives could be learned and whether people could develop positive traits rather than developing feelings of helplessness.

Seligman's research led him to create a model of learned optimism. He found that through resilience training, people can learn to develop a more optimistic outlook. This ability has been observed in children, teachers, military personnel and many others.

It may not be as easy to learn optimism as it is to learn helplessness, but it can be done . If you want to learn more about optimism and how you can learn it, check out Seligman's book, Learned Optimism: How to Transform Your Mind and Your Life . In addition to a brief overview of the research on the subject, you'll also read about several simple techniques you can use to develop a more positive and compassionate explanatory style .

How learned helplessness ruins life and how to deal with it