Have you ever gone through periods where you got the sense that nothing you do has much impact on what's going on in your life? Did you feel ready to give up?
When bad things happen to us, we all would like to believe that we'd do anything in our power to change things for the better, but it's not easy to stay strong when you're relentlessly subjected to challenging circumstances. We try to hold on, but at some point, we get tired of struggling.
If all of this sounds familiar, you may have experienced what psychologists call "learned helplessness", a concept that's been observed in both humans as well as other animals and which we will explore in this article. We will discuss what learned helplessness is, its causes and what you can do to overcome it.
The concept of "learned helplessness" emerged in 1967 after a series of experiments on animals carried out by psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven F. Maier. They conditioned dogs by administering a mild shock whenever they heard a bell ring. Right now, you're probably thinking of ethical concerns regarding the use of animals in this type of research, but you need to keep in mind that these were different times.
After the dogs were conditioned, they were put in a large crate divided in two by a low fence. One side of the crate was wired to give mild shocks while the other side wasn't. To escape the shocks, the dogs would only have to hop the low fence and get to the safe side, but they didn't. They stayed put and simply took the chocks. The psychologists attributed this behaviour to the dogs having been conditioned that there was nothing they could do to stop the shocks because when they did the test on dogs that had not been conditioned, they easily jumped over the fence.
Since then, the concept of learned helplessness has been demonstrated on different animal species, including humans.
When it comes to people, learned helplessness often stems from childhood experiences. For example, children raised in institutionalized settings or by unreliable and unresponsive caregivers often exhibit symptoms of this behavioural pattern.
In this sort of environment, children go through repeated experiences that reinforce feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. They may grow up with the belief that there is nothing they can do to change their problems, and they have to accept them as if these problems were their fate.
Common signed of learned helplessness in children include:
Learned helplessness in children is also strongly linked to academic struggles. If a child makes efforts to do well in school and get good grades, but despite his or her efforts, they still do poorly, they might reach the conclusion that their performance is out of their control which will affect their self-worth.
They'll start to believe that they simply don't have what it takes to succeed, lose motivation, stop trying, and their grades will suffer even more. This learned helplessness regarding academic performance can, in turn, negatively impact their career prospects and affect their confidence and sense of self-worth as adults.
In adults, we see signs of learned helplessness when a person doesn't learn or use adaptive responses when faced with difficult situations. They fail to resolve an issue despite there being a potential solution because they believe that bad things will happen no matter what they do, and since they have such little control, they should just accept it.
To give an example of learned helplessness in adults, victims of domestic abuse often hesitate to leave their abuser even if help and support are available because they develop a belief that they cannot escape this type of situation.
However, not everyone that goes through this type of experiences develops patterns of learned helplessness, and it appears that an individual's explanatory style plays a key role. The explanatory style, as the name suggests, is the way someone explains events to themselves. Individuals with a pessimistic explanatory style are more likely to experience learned helplessness because it causes them to view negative events as an unavoidable result of their shortcomings.
Learned helplessness may lead to higher levels of anxiety and can influence the persistence and severity of mental health conditions such as generalized anxiety disorder or depression. Moreover, learned helplessness might cause people experiencing anxiety and depression to see their symptoms as unavoidable and untreatable, so they refuse treatment.
They enter a vicious circle where their feelings of helplessness and hopelessness intensify symptoms of anxiety or depression which in turn intensify their feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, convincing them that there's nothing they can do to improve their quality of life.
In reality, people can overcome learned helplessness and the most common and effective form of treatment is therapy, in particular, CBT or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
Throughout their therapy sessions, a person with patterns of learned helplessness can:
Ultimately, learned helplessness is a conditioned response – a response learned via associations between past experiences and current ones. If a behaviour is rewarded or reinforced, we are likely to repeat it, and if we are punished for the same behaviour, we will avoid it in the future. This means that the key to breaking out of this pattern of learned helplessness is to unlearn the associations that made us believe that our efforts are futile and we should just accept whatever negative factors are decreasing our quality of life.