Learned Helplessness: Psychology, Examples, Causes, and Help
John felt his entire body freeze. All thoughts in his head seemed to halt. The energy drained from his body. He felt like he wasn’t inside his body. The sheer intensity of the fear he felt caused him to disassociate immediately. He wanted to say something to his angry boss. He wanted to stand up for himself as his boss raised his boss. But it felt like he could do nothing. John’s story is an example of learned helplessness, a condition many of us struggle with in a variety of ways.
Learned Helplessness: Examples From Psychology.
According to the American Psychology Association’s dictionary, learned helplessness is “a phenomenon in which repeated exposure to uncontrollable stressors results in individuals failing to use any control options that may later become available”. It is heavily associated with posttraumatic stress disorder.
One of the most common learned helplessness examples from psychology is the studies of Prof. Martin Seligman in 1965. He would expose dogs to electric shocks. Dogs that could not control the shocks would eventually develop depression and anxiety. This became the basis of learned helplessness which eventually morphed into what we know now as PTSD.
Learned Helplessness From Childhood
While it’s quite clear that exposure to prolonged trauma completely outside of someone’s control can create this behavior, what’s also overlooked is it can develop from mild traumatic events in childhood. Most of the clients I work with on this issue as a self-improvement hypnotherapist are from this category. They had a significant traumatic event with an overbearing parent figure which created an aspect of helplessness in their personality.
Perhaps, it was their mother berating them ruthlessly when they made a mistake. This leads the client to fall into states of depression where they beat themselves up repeatedly for making small mistakes, unable to take any positive action to improve. Maybe, they had overbearing narcissistic parents who rigorously controlled them and invalidated their decisions. This would create a subconscious self-concept filled with self-defeat, self-sabotage, and lack of initiative.
John’s Story and Example
In the case of John, John had an abusive father who would raise his voice and berate him endlessly for his mistakes and failures. John’s father did this to John at a very early age. As a result, his subconscious mind developed an association between shutting down helplessly and aggressive feedback from authority figures. This is the reason, John, even as an adult, shuts down when his boss, an authority figure, begins to raise his voice at him.
This is a learned helplessness example created from childhood. I have helped John and many people like him by utilizing trauma desensitization techniques and memory regression to change this association. By having John re-experience the childhood events which created this subconscious belief structure with an adult mind, he can change the lessons he internalized from his overbearing father.
If you found this post on learned helplessness helpful, you may also enjoy these posts on self-limiting beliefs, moving forward, and negative self-talk.
