Most of us will go through the normal phase of struggling with trials and onslaughts that persistently appear to test our limits to gauge if we can survive or just give up altogether as long as we live. Some individuals are born with high dopamine base, where they are naturally intrinsically motivated on their own without any push from their external environment or from others, while some individuals were wired with low dopamine base such that they need constant spur either by self but often by others or external factors to gain motivation to achieve things in their lives.

What is Learned Helplessness?

Learned helplessness is the term to describe individuals who are unable to resolve difficult situations when the solutions are accessible around them. These individuals are often inclined to complain a lot because they feel overwhelmed and incapable of making any positive difference in their circumstances. The five symptoms of learned helplessness are:

• Low self-esteem
• Frustration
• Passivity
• Lack of effort
• Giving up

How does Learned Helplessness Develop?

There is a correlation between overparenting (helicopter parents) and learned helplessness. Helicopter parents, just like the term helicopters that are hovering overhead, parents oversee every aspect of their child’s life. The parents are overly-involved by strictly supervising their children in every aspect of their lives including their social circles. They will inform and model to the children on the dos and don’ts they are obligated to follow. Hence, children become overly dependent on their parents which results in developing a fear that failure will happen without support if they decided to pursue some new subjects, hobbies or interests. In general, to build mentally resilient children, experiencing a series of failures is just part of growing up to give them exposure on fostering effective problems-solving skills, manage disappointment and in turns, build resilience.

Other risk factors like neglect and trauma can lead to learned helplessness. Psychologist Erik Erikson emphasized on trust and mistrust as a critical and rudimentary stage for individuals’ healthy development. Children who are raised from abusive environments tend to risk internalizing the world as inherently untrustworthy where they find it hard to trust people that genuinely care for them. Eventually, they may form a belief that bad things will happen to them regardless what they do as they grow up. A healthy solution to prevent this is parents/caregivers/mentors provide support in guiding the children to navigate around failure and not to be afraid to fail but reinforce the concept of rebound from failures and being resilience to face adversities with guided strategies so that it can bolster their self-esteem and self-worth as they grow up.

The term adult entitled dependence (AED) refers to adults who are not capable to be independent and self-sufficient which may have traits of learned helplessness. It can be due to having “overly eager to help” parents which led them to be dependent on their parents. Another case is a neglected child may rationalize that their own trauma inhibits them from becoming healthy independent adults. Researchers described AED individuals as adult children who show no interest in pursuing higher education or careers. In general, our brains are wired to panic under pressure to respond in either fight, flight or freeze response. Steven F. Maier, a University of Colorado Distinguished Professor and Director of the Centre for Neuroscience, discovered that there is a part of the brain that activates to regulate this response when it assesses that the situation is under control. When one has learned helplessness, that controllability mechanism never kicks in. When you don’t perceive that you are in control, hence paradoxically, you are less able to exert control.

How to Combat Learned Helplessness

The opposite of learned helplessness is learned optimism where individuals begin to challenge their thought processes that results to changing their behaviours and outcomes. The two ways of adopting learned optimism – affirmations and positive self-talk. It is to start making positive statements about things that you expect to happen or what you can do to produce positive outcomes. Self-talk that you can do well if you practice regularly which is more helpful and optimism-inducing that believing and self-prophesying that you can never measure up.

My Personal Experience with Learned Helplessness

Personally, I cope with trials and stresses by penning down my thoughts including uncensored ones into a safe place like a private blog where I can write down whatever emotions and thoughts I am feeling instead of bottling them up in my mind until they stress my other body parts. Imagine your brain is on the top in your head and when there is too much stress pressing down, your body will feel the weight whether physically or hypothetically because our body can sense each other and built that way. In addition, self-talk is one of my best coping strategies where I would literally say things out and not allow the negative thoughts to overwhelm me wherever I am. Like some of the dramas you see on TV, I do that since young to better manage my thoughts and emotions as though I imagine my brain is reliving out to tell me what is going and how we can collaborate to combat feeling helplessness.

I seek out peer therapy once I am ready to receive support and healing. If I don’t get therapy, how can I encourage my clients to see the benefits of it? Everyone copes differently and for me who had gone through poverty, hunger, loss of loved ones and friends one after another, betrayals, many onslaughts and trials until time to time, I do feel helpless and suicidal. However, to insert positivity, I listen to happy and cheerful songs, treat myself with compassion and appreciate, and celebrate my achievements with myself and loved ones, I slowly get out of that helplessness.

I hope by having a better understanding on how learned helplessness may have affecting you can give you a better understanding on how at times we can be fixated on our issues until we neglect our existing resources that can help us. Alternatively, to practice real self-care and the first step is to seek a helping professional in guiding you to regain your self-autonomy and optimism.