Wikipedia has an excellent article on the subject of Learned Helplessness that applies to many of us. One of the things that struck me most was
the idea that you can be fully competent and even confident of yourself in some
areas of your life, but exhibit learned helplessness in others. I reproduce
excerpts of the article below and, as usual, my comments are shown in violet:
TRIGGER
WARNING: The article makes reference to animal testing which involved the
injury (via electric shock) and emotional abuse of dogs.
Learned
helplessness is a mental state in which an organism, forced to endure aversive
stimuli, or stimuli that are painful or otherwise unpleasant, becomes unable or
unwilling to avoid subsequent encounters with those stimuli, even if they are
escapable, presumably because it has learned that it cannot control the
situation. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical
depression and related mental illnesses may result from a perceived absence of
control over the outcome of a situation. Organisms that have been ineffective
and less sensitive in determining the consequences of their behaviour are
defined as having acquired learned helplessness.
In learned
helplessness studies, an animal is repeatedly exposed to an aversive stimulus
which it cannot escape. Eventually, the animal stops trying to avoid the stimulus
and behaves as if it is helpless to change the situation. When opportunities to
escape become available, learned helplessness means the animal does not take
any action.
Have
you ever been to a zoo and saw an elephant restrained only by an iron cuff around
one leg and a length of chain connected to an iron stake in the ground? I
remember seeing that and wondering how, considering how strong an elephant is,
that flimsy chain didn’t snap the moment the elephant gave a yank. Well, the
answer is childhood conditioning, just as you and I were conditioned by our
narcissistic parents.
You
see, the trainer places a cuff and chain around the baby elephant’s leg and
attaches the other end of the chain to something too big for the baby to move,
like a tree. At first the baby will fight the chain but eventually it will
decide that it is stronger than he is and stop fighting. From that day forward,
the elephant will believe the chain is stronger than he is and he will not
challenge it. The chain restrains an adult elephant not because of its
intrinsic strength, but because of the strength of the elephant’s belief.
In [an] experiment, three groups of dogs were placed
in harnesses. Group 1 dogs were simply put in the harnesses for a period of
time and later released. Groups 2 and 3 consisted of “yoked pairs.” A dog in
Group 2 would be intentionally subjected to pain by being given electric
shocks, which the dog could end by pressing a lever. A Group 3 dog was wired in
series with a Group 2 dog, receiving shocks of identical intensity and
duration, but his lever did not stop the electric shocks. To a dog in Group 3,
it seemed that the shock ended at random, because it was his paired dog in
Group 2 that was causing it to stop. For Group 3 dogs, the shock was apparently
“inescapable.” Group 1 and Group 2 dogs quickly recovered from the experience,
but Group 3 dogs learned to be helpless, and exhibited symptoms similar to
chronic clinical depression.
I
have been suicidally depressed several times in my life. In all cases I was
trapped in an untenable situation from which I could see no viable way out. The
first time I was only nine years old, the last time I was in my mid-thirties.
In each case, I believed myself to be helpless to change the situation and that
the situation could only be resolved in a way that would make matters even
worse for me. In hindsight, there actually were other resolutions available,
but I either could not see them or, if I could see them, I was unable to take
advantage of them. For example, I was trapped in a terribly emotionally abusive
marriage with a narcissist. I was unemployed and too depressed to find and hold
down a job. I was very clear on the fact that he was emotionally abusing me…I
even pointed it out to him in one of our many rows. His response was to
increase the abuse. I refused to consider divorce as an option: I was in my
late 20s when I became clear on his abusiveness and I had already been married
and divorced twice…I could not bear the humiliation of three divorces at such a
young age and so I stayed, becoming more depressed with each passing day. A feeling
of helplessness, whether actual or learned, leads to depression.
There seems
to be only one cure for the helplessness in dogs. …the dogs do not try to
escape because they expect that no instrumental response [nothing that they can do] will produce shock
termination. To change their expectation
and to recover the dogs from helplessness, experimenters had to physically pick
up the dogs and move the legs in a close replication of the physical actions
the dogs needed to take to remove themselves from the electrified grid. This
had to be replicated at least 2 times before the dogs would exhibit the
functional response of jumping over the barrier to get away from the electrified
grid. Threats, rewards, and observed demonstrations had no observed effect in
helping the dogs to independently move away from the shocks. (Emphasis mine.)
This
is really important…no amount of threats, rewards, or observed demonstrations
helped with the recovery: the animals had to actually take the steps...they had
to make an effort, even though the initial efforts were guided…before they
could begin recovery. Those of us who sit back and read the books and the
websites and join support and discussion groups are just spinning our wheels
because until we actually make an effort…and make the effort more than once…we don’t even have a shot
at recovery. In practical terms, this means that you can read, write, and talk
all you want about your situation, but until you actually do something…and keep
doing it…you will remain stuck right where you are.
Other
experiments were performed with different animals with similar results. In all
cases, the strongest predictor of a depressive response was lack of control
over the aversive stimulus. So, basically, if you
are depressed, it is because there is something negative in your life over
which you feel you have no power. So how do you become UNdepressed? You find a
way to empower yourself and use it to regain not only your own personal power,
but to overcome the situation that is depressing you.
There
is a strong caveat in that, however: we must not empower ourselves at the
expense of the well-being of others. Our GCs are people who found a way to feel
empowered by joining forces with and even adopting the personas of our Ns,
giving themselves permission to hurt others en route to getting what they want.
Aileen Wuornos was an abused child who grew into a woman who believed herself
powerless and who tried to take control of her life in the most devastatingly
negative way possible: she became a serial killer. We have to recognize that we
must take control of our lives and empower ourselves without exploiting other
people in the process.
Does
that mean it is not ok to hurt our Ns and GCs and their flying monkeys in the
process? No. Your Ns and GCs and their Flying Monkeys have no right to hurt you
in the first place, no right to impose their wants over your needs, no right to
dictate your life, violate your boundaries, or hurt or shame you. The law does
not allow you to steal from others, nor does it allow you to keep that which
has been stolen by another…even if you did not steal it. The law will not come
into your house and take from you legal items that you acquired
legitimately…they do not have the right to do that. But they do have the right
to reclaim, over your objections, property to which you have no right. And so
it is with Ns, GCs, and Flying Monkeys: whatever parts of you they have laid
claim to, you have every right to take back, over their objections if
necessary. And I doesn’t matter if those objections are framed as anger, hurt,
outrage, or defensiveness, your right to reclaim the stolen and co-opted parts
of your Self is absolute and the only rights they have over you are those you
allow them to take.
Fighting
with the humans, biting, attacking, might have felt good to the dogs but it
would do nothing to heal them. The only path to healing was to go through the
guided motions of the right way to escape the electrified grid and then to do
it on their own.
In 2011, an
animal study found that animals with control over stress exhibited changes in
the excitability of specific neurons within the prefrontal cortex…Animals that
lacked control failed to exhibit an increase in excitability and showed signs
consistent with learned helplessness and social anxiety. In other words, it is a physiological response…your brain
synapses and your brain chemistry are altered by being in a situation of forced
helplessness. But when you take
control of those things that stress you, your synapses and brain chemistry alter
again. You can fix it…but you can’t
do it by sitting around thinking, reading, and talking about it.
Later
research discovered that the original theory of learned helplessness failed to
account for people's varying reactions to situations that can cause learned
helplessness. Learned helplessness sometimes remains specific to one situation,
but at other times generalizes across situations. This
is what I found most interesting: your learned helplessness you may not even
recognize because it is confined to one area of your life, one situation. Or,
it can be pervasive and your entire life is an exercise in learned helplessness
of which you may or may not be aware.
An individual's attributional
style [attributional style: a person's
characteristic tendencies when inferring the cause of behavior or events, that
may be based on three dimensions: the internal-external dimension (whether they
tend to attribute events to the self or to other factors), the stable-unstable
dimension (whether they tend to attribute events to enduring or transient causes),
and the global-specific dimension (whether they tend to attribute events to
causes that affect many events or just a single event)] or explanatory
style is the key to understanding why people respond differently to adverse
events. Although a group of people may experience the same or similar negative
events, how each person privately interprets or explains the event will affect
the likelihood of acquiring learned helplessness and subsequent depression.
So,
if your tendency is to blame yourself, see negative events as long-term (rather
than of brief duration) and view negative events as having an over-arching cause,
such as bad karma, an evil government, a punishing god, cursed with bad luck,
or an evil, controlling person in your life rather than discreet, individual
events with equally discreet, individual causes, you will have what is known as
a “negative attributional style” or “pessimistic explanatory style.”
People with pessimistic
explanatory style—which sees negative events as permanent (“it will never
change”), personal (“it's my fault”), and pervasive (“I can't do anything
correctly”)—are most likely to suffer from learned helplessness and depression.
Cognitive behavioral therapy…can often help people to learn more realistic
explanatory styles, and can help ease depression.
Apart from
the shared depression symptoms between human and other animals such as
passivity, introjected hostility [to turn against oneself the hostility
felt toward another…in other words, the unacknowledged hostility you feel
towards your parents or other abusers you turn onto yourself], weight
loss, appetite loss, [I believe weight gain and
comfort eating should be included here] social and sexual deficits, some
of the diagnostic symptoms of learned helplessness—including depressed mood,
feelings of worthlessness, and suicidal ideation—can be found and observed in
human beings but not necessarily in other animals. In non-human animal models,
control over stress conveys resilience to future uncontrolled stressors and
induces changes in the function of specific neurons within the prefrontal
cortex.
Regardless
of origin, people who see uncontrollable events…who
see events as uncontrollable by themselves…reliably suffer disruption of
emotions, aggressions, physiology, and have difficulties with problem-solving tasks.
These helpless experiences can associate with passivity, uncontrollability and
poor cognition in people, ultimately threatening their physical and mental
well-being.
Learned
helplessness can contribute to poor health when people neglect diet, exercise,
and medical treatment, falsely believing they have no power to change. The more
people perceive events as uncontrollable and unpredictable, the more stress
they experience, and the less hope they feel about making changes in their
lives.
Stressor
controllability is one factor that contributes to physical health when it comes
to learned helplessness. Learned
helplessness occurs when an animal or human is exposed to stressors that they
cannot control. If these stressors are
controlled, the phenomenon of learned helplessness does not occur. [Emphasis mine.]
Too
often we who grew up in rigidly controlled environments go to the extreme other
end of things: where we were controlled too much by our parents, we control our
own children too little, making them feel adrift, unanchored, and entitled. My
mother bought my clothes for me until I took a summer job while living with my
grandparents and spent the entire proceeds on school clothes before NM could
get her hands on it…I took control. I was 16 and entering my senior year and up
to that point, I had no control over my wardrobe whatsoever. But rather than
turn me loose in town with a fist full of cash, my grandmother took me shopping
and had the knowledgeable sales clerks select a variety of suitable outfits,
giving me choices. And when my own daughter needed school clothes, I would
choose half a dozen suitable dresses (that were within my budget) and let her
choose two or three…and started this with her from the first grade. I have
never felt helpless or incompetent when it came to fashion…I took control of my
own wardrobe at 16 and had competent help those first few forays, then passed
the skill on to my own daughter. But this was not true of all aspects of my
life…in fact, until therapy, it wasn’t even true of much of my life.
Young adults
and middle-aged parents with a pessimistic explanatory style are often more
likely to suffer from depression. People with a pessimistic explanatory style
tend to be poor at problem-solving and cognitive restructuring, and also tend
to demonstrate poor job satisfaction and interpersonal relationships in the
workplace. Those with a pessimistic explanatory style also tend to have
weakened immune systems, and not only have increased vulnerability to minor
ailments (e.g., cold, fever) and major illness (e.g., heart attack, cancers),
but also have a less effective recovery from health problems.
…helplessness
is a key factor in depression that is caused by prejudice (i.e., “deprejudice”).
In this context, I do not believe the author is
referring exclusively to the kind of prejudice addressed by the Civil Rights
Act. Prejudice, after all, means “bias,” and a narcissistic parent can develop
a bias against one of her own children without race, gender, ethnic origin or any
other Title V conditions coming into play. Your parent or other family member
may be biased…prejudiced…against you for no discernible reason at all: you have
simply been assigned the role of family scapegoat and abuse will inevitably issue
forth from that. Psychoanalyst Elizabeth Young-Bruehl uses "prejudice" in this context: "Listening to my adult patients in psychoanalysis who were maltreated as
children, I have heard basically three stories: they were not wanted,
they were controlled and manipulated or they were not allowed to be who
they felt they were. So I have come to think in terms of childism that
intends 1) to eliminate or destroy children, 2) to make them play roles
no child should play or 3) to dominate them totally, narcissistically
erasing their identities. Survivors make it clear that the worst part of
their experience — the most difficult to heal from, the least
forgivable — was that no one protected them from it. They often make it
clear, as well, that they have internalized the prejudice and direct it
toward themselves."
Someone
facing inescapable prejudice (e.g., abuse) may develop learned helplessness and
depression as a result. “Helplessness born in the face of inescapable prejudice
matches the helplessness born in the face of inescapable shocks. ”
Abnormal and
cognitive psychologists have looked at the correlation of depression and
anxiety with learned helplessness over the years. It has been shown that the
symptoms shown with learned helplessness have corresponding symptoms in
depression. The symptoms most [people] feel
when depressed give the feeling of helplessness and uncontrollability that have
been correlated with learned helplessness.
Learned
helplessness can also be a motivational problem. Individuals who have failed at
tasks in the past conclude erroneously that they are incapable of improving
their performance. This can occur even when you
have not failed, but when failure is assigned to you…and that situation is
crazy making. You can also be set up to fail, even when it looks like you have
not. In the early 1970s my Nhusband and I got into a dispute about buying a
second car: I had a sickly baby and did not want a used car that might break
down on my in an emergency; he was adamant that I buy second hand. To end the
argument, he gave me a budget of $2500 and said if I could find a new car for
that money, he would buy it. Well, it took me several months but I did find
such a car…brand new for $2442…and he bought it but, instead of being pleased
at having a brand new car for so little money, he was furious with me. It turns
out that the whole thing was a set up to teach me a lesson and instead of
learning the lesson (he is always right) I made, in his eyes, a fool of him. He
was furious…livid…that I failed to fail. It became very difficult for me to
determine if I was supposed to succeed or fail at a task he set before me and,
because my focus was on pleasing him and getting his approval, I found myself
convinced I could do nothing right…
Another
example of learned helplessness in social settings involves loneliness and
shyness. Those who are extremely shy, passive, anxious and depressed may learn
helplessness to offer stable explanations for unpleasant social experiences.
However…people who cite helplessness in social settings may be viewed poorly by
others, resulting in a situation that reinforces the problematic thinking. Think “nerds” and other socially inept people…how do we,
in the larger society, think of them? Girls don’t want to date them, won’t
dance with them when asked at clubs, and generally shun them. Nobody likes
being rejected and those who have not mastered the art of social intercourse
find themselves repeatedly shut down in their attempts to integrate. That fear
of rejection and the feeling of humiliation that comes with it, keeps them
socially isolated because they buy into the idea that they are somehow
defective…which is, in itself, problematic thinking.
Social
problems resulting from learned helplessness may seem unavoidable…Learned
helplessness in response to experiences can be prevented or minimized by “immunization”
and, when present, may be reversed by therapy. People can be immunized against
the perception that events are uncontrollable by increasing their awareness of
previous experiences, when they were able to effect a desired outcome. Therapy
can instruct people in the fact of contingency and bolster people's self-esteem.
But when we become convinced of our helplessness,
when we believe that the world will not change and we are powerless to make any
changes in our own worlds, we begin to live the belief, and that inevitably
leads to depression.
So, are you afflicted with “learned helplessness”?
If you are the child of a narcissist, you probably are. But too often we take
this on without clarity: we think we are helpless to change our situation
because we think that to change the situation we must somehow get the authority
figures to change…and then when we hear we cannot change anyone but ourselves,
the message we take away is one of hopelessness because if we cannot change our
narcissistic parents, siblings, bosses, spouses, and others, we are doomed to
be their scapegoat for all time.
But extracting yourself from learned helplessness
is not a matter of changing the people around you, it is a matter of changing
yourself, a matter of changing your attitudes, your beliefs, your paradigms.
Your choices are not black and white, change the narcissist or remain in the
same trap. Your choices are infinite: leave the narcissist to be what she is,
but change the idea that you owe her your allegiance, change the idea that you
must do as you are told, to fulfil the role she created for you. You can choose
to change the frequency and nature of your communication, you can choose to set
down boundaries and even choose what those boundaries will be and what the
consequence for violating them will be. You can choose to see the truth of your
FOO or you can choose to continue to believe the fictions you have kept all
this time and which keep you depressed and helpless. You can un-learn this
helplessness if you truly want to, but it involves taking off the rose-tinted
lenses, giving up the myriad of excuses you use to rationalize your N’s
behaviour (which, inevitably, lays blame on you and makes you feel guilty), and
proactively seeking out the truth and embracing it, along with all of the
feelings of hurt, outrage, and disbelief that you may have stored away in hopes
that your worst fears are wrong and that your narcissists really do love and
value you, not for the role you play in their dysfunction, but for the warm,
real, loving human being you really are.
It means embracing reality, in all its ugly glory,
and changing yourself, your beliefs, your responses, your feelings to match the
objective reality of who and what your Ns are, rather than clinging to the
hopes that have kept you a helpless hostage for so long.
Easier said than done, I know…but it is the only
way to wholeness and leaving your learned helplessness behind.
I can grasp what you are talking about, having just recently experienced my freedom, and that I'm no longer chained to my parents and placating them.
ReplyDeleteLast year I did NC and it was amazing and my life certainly advanced, but I still had an achilles heel, and that was denial about my enabling dad. This caused me to feel some underlying guilt and a sense of obligation to him. It also saw me get sucked back.
Since coming out of my denial (which was painful), NC has become very straightforward and I am relishing my freedom. I am no longer my mothers emotional punching bag, where she bullies me and then runs and hides behind my EF, who'd then blames me for upsetting "your poor mother".. (see how helpless that made me feel)
But as you pointed out to me, I was free all along. But I hadn't perceived it, as I was still bound by feelings of helplessness and powerlessness and OBLIGATION.
And I all I had to do to be effective with NC, was change ME and leave.
The part where you said this..3) to dominate them totally, narcissistically erasing their identities. That was my mother to a tee, and where I'd learn to feel so helpless. When I was young, she'd yell and pound into me that I was no good, and I'd tearfully try to defend myself, but to no avail.
Now instead of having internal conversations with her in my head, where I'm defending myself to her, I remind myself "You don't have to talk to her". In my experience, defending oneself to someone (making them your authority), is also powerlessness.
I don't engage my mother anymore. I've walked away. FREEDOM from BOTH of them and their crazy making dysfunction.
So yes, this post totally resonates with me. It's very empowering and takes courage to do, but once my perceptions changed, it became so much easier to do. That's what amazed me. Life is good.
It took me years to understand that I was set up to fail because my mother seemed to be obsessed with my gaining worldly, conventional success. Actually I think now she just loved telling me what a loser I was. When I actually was successful, she was at best not interested. She had a genius for turning a success into a failure. When I was fifteen, I got a good school mark which I was pleased about. If she had been as concerned about my worldly success as she claimed to be, she should have approved but instead she said I had to work very hard to get that result and this meant i was a "plodder". This was devastating to me; somehow even when I was smart, I was stupid. I started pretending not to work hard. Even today, I don't tell her what has gone into accomplishing something, she seems to think it happens by magic.
ReplyDeleteI grew up really scared of telephones. I know this sounds unbelievable. I touched a telephone for the first time when I was eighteen, after living away from the parental house for a year. I don't mean I used a telephone, I just touched it and that was a breakthrough. I eventually learned to use telephones but this anxiety was a big professional liability. They said I sounded nervous on a phone. I don't know why I had such a phobia but my parents must have started it. My youngest sister was just the same. Talk about being set up to fail. It has taken me years to understand what happened to me.
I have known about my mothers NPD for 13 years. She set me up to fail by telling me that I wouldn't amount to anything or that I was a "loser." To the contrary, I have been successful in many areas of my life but it hasn't come without constant struggle to battle these kinds of beliefs. Her very last comment to me was, "I don't have a daughter." I went NC. She was a very sick woman.
ReplyDeletehow useful. Article about "unlearning". 90% of it is devoted to "learning" and remaining 10% basically say "don't do that".
ReplyDelete