Learning To Be Helpless

Humans like to shift the burden of proof onto non-sentient objects or phenomena. Take Groundhog Day, for example. Not so much the part about woodchucks and 6 more weeks of winter, but the phrase which implies that certain unpleasant things might repeatedly occur to us that are beyond our scope of effect. Is there really any harm in blaming some unseen force for our feeling stuck, though?

The harm in this belief—whether it's a true belief, half-hearted superstition, or a dubious joke—comes from the fact that it belongs to the types of thinking that encourage learned helplessness. This is a mental process in humans or animals that have been unsuccessful in preventing or ending aversive stimuli (i.e. unpleasant experiences), where they will sometimes resolve to no longer attempt to put an end to such stimuli because they have concluded that they are helpless to do so. However, because humans can use forethought and abstraction, we are able to come to such conclusions without any personal experiential basis for it. Meaning, some of us are so imaginative that we can just think to ourselves, "This sucks. I feel like I have no control over this" and voilà—we are convinced of our helplessness.

Unsurprisingly, this mental state is strongly linked to depression and anxiety, but of course this process is not as simple as abrascitalopram*: several other unpleasant experiences are often at play where an individual can so easily convince oneself of their own ineffectuality (the above linked article gives a good overview of the risk factors if you are interested).

It is important to keep a healthy perspective on who we are as individuals, on the world around us, and on the general direction we want our lives to go. If we can find a way to maintain balance among these three aspects of our lives, we stand a much better chance of avoiding the path to learned helplessness.

Taken together with the previous two articles (1 & 2), the main takeaway point here (just kidding, there are three) is:

• There are things that are out of our control and these things are necessary for life.
• Feeling "in control" for too long can desensitize us to things which actually are controllable, but can happen at inopportune times, thus making us feel as if we've lost control we never really had in the first place .
• Your willpower is only limited by your perspective—and that is only limited by your desire to learn, grow, and flourish.

"Sometimes I wish I had a thousand lifetimes. I don't know, Phil. Maybe it's not a curse. Just depends on how you look at it."

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*See also: Ala-Ka-Zoloft, Hocus Lexapro-cus, Cymbalta Leviosa