[Learned] Helplessness

A little about the psychological phenomenon known as “Learned Helplessness”.

Back in 1965, psychologist Mark Seligman was experimenting on dogs for a special variation of Pavlov’s famous “classical conditioning” experiment. He put the dogs into restraints and relayed a small electrical shock, every time a certain sound was played.

After some time, he took the dogs out of their restraints and put them into a box in which they could easily jump out of in order to escape the shocks. But what surprised him was the animals’ unwillingness to avoid the pain by simply getting out of the box. They remained stagnant. They felt so helpless due to their previous scenario that they no longer even made the attempt to put an end to what was hurting them, but instead, expected Seligman to remove them himself. Even though the opportunity of immediate escape was clearly presenting itself.

Seligman then decided to test a control group of dogs who were not exposed to the first set of restrained circumstances, and as soon as he relayed the shock, much to his surprise, the dogs within the control group all jumped out of the wooden box so that they could avoid the electricity.

The same kind of behavior has been shown in humans over the years, who have experienced traumatic personal or career events, especially if the events seem to be, or are unavoidable.

Today this phenomenon that Seligman discovered is known as “learned helplessness”. And it’s thought to be one of the underlying causes of major depressive disorder, as well as other personality disorders.

It doesn’t want you to win. So you’re gonna’ win.

To me personally, learned helplessness is the refusal to give any effort or take any opportunities in order to make a bad situation better. It’s in my opinion: the addiction to the feeling of sadness. More specifically: the need for attention, gained from consistently having the feeling of being sad or depressed due to a life event or series of events. And the pure laziness of refusing to do something difficult by ourselves and expecting someone to feel for us.

It’s when you choose to be sad about something or someone and reach out for help, but refusing to make any actual progress in order to function happily and efficiently again. Then sitting and wondering why nothing seems to work out. I see this all too often. Especially with adolescents. And yes, it pretty well pisses me off.

You see, friend, in our modern world, everything is provided for us. We never are required question things, we only know they are what they are. We refuse to try and fix things ourselves, but instead, we expect that everything is handed to us: money, happiness, love. And when we don’t get those things, the awful feeling of not being able to do anything about our situation overtakes us. And we give up on even the hope of things getting better.

The only thing we desire is the consolation of others because we’ve told ourselves the lie that something is wrong with us, and that we are different than others because of our sadness resulting from our negative situation. I’ve seen this far too many times with my peers. They cling to grades, social acceptance, and relationships in order to give themselves a sense self-worth. And of course, these things are guaranteed to fail!

And when those things really do begin to negatively decline, we choose to remain still, afraid of making any changes or doing anything effective about the actual problem at hand. Then we become so used to our dead, stagnant, and awful situations that we can’t possibly imagine anything different. We settle. We settle for something or someone that’s mediocre, or in a lot of cases, just plain sucks.

And when you think about it, learned helplessness forms through a combination of fear and laziness. We’re afraid of what will happen if we change what we’ve long been used to. It’s ridiculous. It’s the fear of taking a risk and actually working for something to get better.

“Adventure without risk is just Disneyland” — Doug Coupland

You don’t treat me no-good-no-more.

I see this learned helplessness frighteningly often, especially in romantic relationships, specifically in people my age. Small things within relationships are taken entirely too seriously, and god knows Christian Roston is guilty of this. We consume ourselves with another person who is just as human and as prone to failure as we are. But we expect them to be somehow magically better than us and our expectations.

But when our significant other doesn’t do what we feel they should, we allow them to have an influence on how we feel. When that happens, we've relinquished control of ourselves over to them. Don’t get me wrong, I am completely for being loyal to another person.

But after a while, when that person refuses to step aside from their own ego care for your needs (and vice versa), then the relationship isn’t worth the strife it causes you personally. The problem is that people, especially young adults, refuse to see that in our day and age. They look at commitment as something that is difficult and mature. What ever happened to dating someone simply because they were fun to be with and you actually liked the person they were? I mean, physical appearance aside, what happened to being compassionate about someone, simply because they make you happy? Not because they make you feel helpless with their actions.

We have once again as a generation, believed pop culture’s lie that you’re without a doubt going to grow up and marry your high school or college boyfriend or girlfriend. Even if that person is just plain abusive and mean at times.

American pop culture will tell you if you decide to leave someone because of something you don’t like then you aren’t committed. But as often as society already tells you to embrace yourself, they seem to get caring about your own well-being confused with being uncommitted and selfish.

Learned helplessness is especially prevalent in long-term relationships because we can become so used to another person that the thought of them not being with us specifically frightens us to no end.

With that said, you must realize that if you’re not willing to compromise yourself for your significant other, then you should probably take some serious consideration into re-evaluating your own stubborn and self-centered willpower.

When we allow ourselves to become helpless to another person or event, we relinquish our own right to be happy. We make it impossible to see the bright side of anything because of our blatant blindness to the possibilities of things getting better in our lives when presented with opportunities to make them better.

Sounds kinda’ risky.

I believe that actual underlying cause of learned helplessness is as humans, we simply don’t like change. We more specifically, have the fear of risk. Especially if it involves something personal.

Of course, it’s our instinct as human beings to avoid all possible risk, but why should we remain stagnant in something when we already possess the ability to move it, to make it better, to make progress? I mean, isn’t that the point of everything? To explore? To move mountains with concepts? To push the human race forward?

When you find that you have the guts to stand for something, more specifically yourself, even against everything your mind and desires scream at you in order to convince you to stop, then you've been counted for. And you’ve defeated your helplessness.

I encourage you to the utmost of sincerity to be a problem solver within your own personal life. Take a risk, and solve things yourself that seem risky, and may even scare you a bit, without the expectation of others’ condolences.