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Family Troubles : Learned Helplessness: You may NOT even know you have it... EXCELLENT Article!!!
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From: MSN NicknameSilken2004  (Original Message)Sent: 7/18/2006 12:31 AM
 Helplessness: An Introduction to Symptoms

Imagine that you are a passenger on an ocean liner in the North Atlantic. The ship strikes an iceberg and begins to sink. There are not enough lifeboats to accommodate everyone. And there is a shortage of life preservers. Shortly, you find yourself forced to jump off of the deck into the freezing water. You know that unless you are picked up, and this is unlikely, you will survive only a few minutes. Nothing you do in the water will make the slightest difference. You will almost certainly die. This is what it means to be really helpless.

Briefly, helplessness exists when an individual’s actions have no positive effect on outcomes. However, it is important to make a distinction at the outset of this chapter between actual helplessness and a sense of helplessness. The first is real; the second is imagined to be real. The first is an objective process; the second is subjective in nature.

Seldom in life is anyone as helpless as an individual would be in the disaster situation described above. Nonetheless, many individuals act as if they are as helpless as the victim of the liner disaster. A sense of helplessness is not a specific mental disorder. Rather, it is a symptom of a general process underlying various other symptoms and difficulties such as depression, various failures, lack of assertiveness, and even physical illness.

A sense of helplessness can be specific or general. A person can feel helpless in various important roles in life, such as lover, spouse, parent, child, student, professional, and employee. Also, helplessness can be related to certain kinds of situations and demands, such as shopping for clothes, buying presents, chatting at a party, making repairs, and so forth. Although these kinds of specific helplessness are important, the focus on this chapter is on general helplessness. General helplessness is the conviction that one is helpless most of the time in most social roles and in most situations.

Some of the other signs and symptoms frequently associated with a general, pervasive sense of helplessness are:

  1. The idea that one’s life is out of control
  2. The feeling that one is just a pawn of fate
  3. A loss of a sense of personal power
  4. An inability to initiate plans and set goals
  5. Episodes of depression
  6. Lack of self-confidence and self-reliance
  7. A negative outlook on life
  8. Passive behavior when confronted with a challenge
  9. Learning blocks
  10. Brooding about whether or not there’s any sense in being alive
  11. The impression that other people and situations, not decisions and actions, control the events in one’s life

Helplessness: Causes and Explanations

In order to understand helplessness as a psychological process, it is essential to introduce a concept termed learned helplessness. The concept of learned helplessness was proposed, and introduced into the literature and language of behavioral science by the research psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman about 20 years ago. Since that time, both he and others have conducted a number of studies and experiments designed to clarify how the process operates in both animals and human beings.

Here is a descnption of a typical expenment with rats that is designed to demonstrate how learned helplessness works. A large group of rats—say, 60—are assigned to two smaller groups, Group A and Group B. The rats are assigned at random to the two groups�?0 to each group—to eliminate biases that might arise from individual differences. The rats in Group A, one at a time, are subjected to escapable shock. The rats are trained in a device called a “shuttle box.�?The shuttle box has an electrified floor on both Side 1 and Side 2 of the box. A low hurdle separates the two sides. If a rat is in Side 1 of the box, a buzzer sounds as a warning. Then, 20 seconds later, a shock is administered. Soon, the rat learns to jump to Side 2. After a suitable time period, the buzzer sounds again. If the rat is resting in Side 2, it will soon jump to Side 1. Eventually, no matter what side of the box the rat is in, it will jump to the other side as soon as it hears the buzzer. The rat has learned, through a process called operant conditioning, to avoid shock when it hears the buzzer. Notice that the rats learn to do more than just escape from shock; they avoid it by jumping when they hear the buzzer and not waiting 20 seconds to be shocked. Therefore, they seldom are shocked.

The important point is that the rats in Group A are not helpless. Their actions have a positive effect on outcomes. Put another way, their behavior has meaningful consequences.

The rats assigned to Group B are not so fortunate. A transparent plexiglass barrier separates Side 1 from Side 2. When the buzzer goes off and the shock is administered, they at first try to escape, of course. However, they soon learn that all attempts are futile. After several pairings of the buzzer with the shock, they simply give up and huddle helplessly while they endure pain. The important point here is that rats in Group B are actually helpless. They are, so to speak, “victims of fate.�?/P>

What has just been described concludes the training phase of the experiment. The next phase, the test phase, will elucidate the concept of learned helplessness. During this second phase, the rats are tested individually in a deep tank of water. Rats are good swimmers. Rats in Group A generalize their sense of control from the training phase, and they will swim vigorously until they are rescued. Rats in Group B generalize their actual helplessness in the shuttle box to the tank of water in which they are not helpless. They will quickly give up—enduring the water for only a few minutes—and they will drown and die if not rescued. This is learned helplessness.

In brief, learned helplessness exists when a behavior pattern acquired in a first situation where there was actual helplessness is generalized to a second situation where the individual is not helpless.

Perhaps you are thinking, “But this is rats. What is the human comparison? People are not subjected to inescapable electric shocks.�?True. But people are sometimes subjected to the psychological equivalent—situations that doom them to failure. Take this example: Amelia B. was unfortunate enough to have a cold, unfeeling teacher when she was in the fourth grade. The teacher made Amelia feel stupid when she had trouble learning some of the basic concepts in arithmetic. In the eighth grade, she had a similar experience. A teacher treated her as if she were stupid and openly referred to her as a “hopeless case�?in front of other children. Amelia decided that she was “no good at math.�?This became what George Kelly, a clinical psychologist and personality theorist, called a personal construct, a well-defined conscious idea about oneself. The idea that she was no good at math was an important factor in what became an attitude of learned helplessness in this particular area of human abilities. Today Amelia is 20 years old, a college student majoring in history. Amelia avoids all math courses. She is even afraid that she will never graduate from college because she goes to a school that requires one basic math course in order to receive a four-year degree.

Is Amelia actually helpless? The odds are very high that the correct answer is, “No.�?She is not the same person that she was when she was in the fourth grade or the eighth grade. But she believes she is helpless. She has generalized early failure experiences to the present and is a victim of learned helplessness.

This is the way learned helplessness works. A series of early failure experiences is generalized to the present. In the present, the individual is not helpless. Nonetheless, the generalization interferes greatly with effective behavior.

A predisposing factor that may play a role in creating a general sense of helplessness in some individuals is a history of abuse. This may have been a pattern of abuse in childhood; or it can even be a history of abuse relatively recently, for example, in a marriage. Keep in mind that abuse need not be physical; it can be verbal. The individual—child or adult—who is made to feel over and over again that he or she is worthless, unimportant, incompetent, and unlovable will often respond by developing a self-image that is defined by these very traits.

If it seems to you that you suffer excessively from a feeling of general helplessness, you may find value in the following list of practical coping strategies.

Say to yourself, “I want to think clearly about my feelings.�?The first step in coping with learned helplessness is to introduce an element of rational thought, of logic, into your responses to situations. You want to practice taking a psychological step back and reflecting on yourself and your behavior in objective terms. Feelings of learned helplessness come from a wounded child self. Your wounded child cannot solve your emotional problems—it can only feel hurt. You have to elevate your psychological processes to the adult level where you can become an effective agent of your own change, not a victim.

Recognize that learned helplessness is basically a generalization phenomenon. This means that situation B is confused with situation A because of some perceived similarity. Generalization is a basic aspect of learning. Pavlov, the Russian physiologist who first studied classical conditioning, discovered that if a dog is trained to salivate at a tone of a given pitch, it will also salivate at tones of a slightly lower or higher pitch. On a less formal level, the humorist Mark Twain once noted that his pet cat had been burned by a hot stove and was now afraid not only of hot stoves but also of cold stoves. Say to yourself, “This situation today is not the same as yesterday’s situation. This college math class is not the math class I had in the fourth grade.�?Candace E., a woman who had been abused in a marriage says, “I had to learn to say to myself when I began dating again that this man is not Constantine, my first husband. I was treating all men as if they were identical.�?You have to learn to discriminate “hot�?stoves from “cold�?ones.

Recognize that personal constructs about the self do not necessarily reflect reality. They are ideas that guide behavior, and people often act as if they were absolutely true. However, it is both sensible and correct to adopt the viewpoint that personal constructs should be open to new information and gradual modification. Personal constructs such as, “I’m not popular,�?“I’m too shy to ever have a good time at a party,�?“I could never be a life insurance salesperson or a real estate broker because I don’t meet people easily,�?“I am no good at English composition,�?“I have no musical ability,�?or “I can’t draw�?may all be proven incorrect in the long run. Betty Edwards describes in her book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain how students in her art classes—students who thought they could not draw—learned to draw effectively through the use of special techniques.

  • Be aware of the important difference between actual helplessness and learned helplessness. Unnecessary suffering is caused by learned helplessness, not by actual helplessness. Yes, there are times when a person is really helpless, and they may be a cause of unavoidable anguish and suffering. However, in many, many cases, you mistakenly act helpless when you are not. This is learned helplessness. Work on your ability to recognize learned helplessness in yourself. Ask yourself, “Am I really helpless? Or do I just think I am?�?
  • Value the power of human consciousness. The experiments described with learned helplessness in rats presented them as helpless victims—and they were. But rats do not possess human consciousness. They cannot understand the concept of learned helplessness. You can. Rats are doomed, trapped by their own limited psychological processes when they acquire learned helplessness. You, on the other hand, are set free by your understanding. You can break free from learned helplessness.
  • Actively reject the idea that you are just a pawn of fate. Memorize the last two lines of William Henley’s inspiring poem Invictus (Invictus means “unconquered�?: “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.�?Voluntarily “run the tape�?of these lines through your conscious mind when you begin to feel helpless.
  • Recognize that there is a psychological phenomenon that opposes learned helplessness. It is called learned optimism. Recently, Martin E. P. Seligman, the psychologist who first studied learned helplessness, has been studying learned optimism. In the same way that human beings can acquire a set of self-defeating generalizations and personal constructs, they can acquire a set of self-enhancing generalizations and personal constructs. One of the key factors in learned optimism is how you explain your own behavior to yourself. Suppose Milton H. earns an A on a history test. He says to himself, “I studied hard and it paid off.�?George J. also earns an A on the same test. He says to himself, “I lucked out. The teacher is an easy grader.�?Milton’s explanatory style reflects learned optimism. George’s explanatory style reflects learned helplessness. If this seems dubious, consider the following. If in a future test both students receive a low grade, Milton is likely to think, “I need to burn the midnight oil—study a little harder.�?George is likely to think, “I’ve had it. The teacher has decided to lower the boom on me.�?In brief, you can cultivate optimism by your own efforts. The coping strategies presented in this section describe some of the ways to do it.
  • Focus on the word learned in the phenomenon of learned helplessness. What has been learned can be unlearned. Acquired behavior can be given up. Psychologists define learning as “a more or less permanent change in behavior, or a behavioral tendency, as a result of experience.�?Note that learning is “more or less�?permanent. Yes, it resists change—has an inertia all its own. But it can, and does, change. Learned helplessness is acquired because of a history of maladaptive experiences. It can be modified with a new, self-directed history of adaptive experiences.

Professional Help

If you find that you cannot cope adequately with a general feeling of helplessness, there are a number of ways in which the professions of psychiatry and clinical psychology can help you.

Taking a psychodynamic approach, a therapist may help you to identify the maladaptive experiences in your childhood or in recent years that gave rise in you to a sense of helplessness. You will discover that in these situations you probably were actually helpless. You were abused, unloved, misunderstood, discounted, criticized, bossed around, and presented with impossible situations. By identifying these situations, labeling and remembering them, you will find that they have less of a grip on you. To some extent, you can find freedom from them by understanding them and your emotional reactions at the time.

Behavior therapy is a particularly important approach in the case of learned helplessness because behavior therapy is based on principles of learning and conditioning. Taking a behavioral approach, your therapist will look for ways to help you decondition and extinguish your maladaptive learning. This can be done in various ways. One way is through systematic desensitization. The therapist can desensitize you by painting word pictures and inducing guided fantasies in which you see yourself coping effectively with situations in which you would normally feel helpless (e.g., giving a talk, taking a test, asking for a date, chatting with strangers at a party). You can also be desensitized by the in vivo method. This involves “homework assignments�?in which you cope with mildly threatening situations at first and work your way up to more demanding ones.

Taking a cognitive approach, your therapist will help you to examine your conscious ideas about yourself and helplessness. Ideas such as “I’ll never make any of my dreams come true,�?“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,�?“You cannot get anywhere unless you get some lucky breaks,�?or “I’m a victim of Murphy’s law—whatever can go wrong, will�?reveal a victim’s outlook on life. Every one of them says beneath the surface, “I’m helpless.�?In therapy, your self-defeating ideas will be closely examined and discussed for their irrational content, and you will discover that they are irrational. Then they will stop controlling you.

Taking an interpersonal approach, your therapist may help you to detect ways in which you respond to overcontrolling, authoritarian personalities in your social world in a helpless, self-defeating, passive way. You will be helped to discover ways in which you can become more assertive and stand up for your rights. Assertiveness training is often used in which you are helped to acquire a set of social skills that enable you to function in more effective and adaptive ways.

Taking a humanistic approach, your therapist may help you to realize that one of our uniquely human attributes is the power of the will. William James, the dean of American psychology, held that the human will is one of the prime mental faculties. A belief in the capacity of the will to make real choices, to go forward in life, is an important feature of mental health. James himself said that he often felt depressed and victimized until he asserted both the reality and the importance of the human will. Humanistic psychologists tend to agree with James. Again, this is a part of learned optimism and should play an important part in your recovery from the ravages of learned helplessness.

Drug therapy plays little or no part in the professional treatment of learned helplessness. It is true that learned helplessness and depression are often connected. Therefore, in some instances an antidepressant might be prescribed. But this is for the symptom of depression, not the process of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness, in and of itself cannot, be overcome with a drug. It must be overcome by the coping strategies and the approaches to psychotherapy already described.

Helplessness: Key Points to Remember

  • It is important to make a distinction between actual helplessness and a sense of helplessness.
  • A sense of helplessness can be specific or general.
  • Some of the other signs and symptoms frequently associated with a general, pervasive sense of helplessness are the idea that one’s life is out of control, a loss of a sense of personal power, episodes of depression, and a negative outlook on life.
  • Learned helplessness exists when a behavior pattern acquired in a first situation where the individual was actually helpless is generalized to a second situation where the individual is not helpless.
  • According to George Kelly, a personal construct is a well-defined conscious idea about oneself.
  • A predisposing factor that may play a role in creating a general sense of helplessness in some individuals is a history of abuse.
  • The first step in coping with learned helplessness is to introduce an element of rational thought, of logic, into your responses to situations.
  • Recognize that learned helplessness is basically a generalization phenomenon.
  • Recognize that personal constructs about the self do not necessarily reflect reality.
  • Actively reject the idea that you are just a pawn of fate. The psychological phenomenon called learned optimism opposes learned helplessness.
  • A therapist may help you to identify the maladaptive experiences in your childhood or in recent years that gave rise in you to a sense of helplessness.
  • Taking a behavioral approach, your therapist will look for ways to help you decondition and extinguish your maladaptive learning.
  • Taking a cognitive approach, your therapist will help you to examine your conscious ideas about yourself and helplessness.
  • Like William James, assert both the reality and the importance of the human will.

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