What does this look like in “real life?”
Learned helplessness appears in many ways, in part because of a truth that researchers were surprised by but will be familiar to any reader of the Bible: our default setting as humans is often an immature, self-interested response like passivity or self-pity when things go wrong.
Let’s examine a common pattern in marriage, using the example of a representative couple I’ll call Tom and Kim.
Tom is fed up with being corrected by Kim on everything from how he loads the dishwasher (“The plates go this way.”) to how he plans dates (“Why is it always hamburgers and action movies with you?”) to what he and the kids had for dinner when she went out with friends. (“The kids told me they had pizza and soda and ice cream. No wonder their tummies hurt.”)
So Tom quits trying. He feels like his best efforts to help, plan dates, and have fun with his kids aren’t the right ones, so he develops a passive, “why bother” attitude. He shuts down at home, thinking “what’s the point in trying?” He’s “learned” that he cannot change his situation no matter how hard he works (which isn’t true, but he thinks it is).
On her side, Kim feels lonely in the marriage. Tom consistently withdraws to his “man cave” instead of talking to Kim whenever he is tired from work (which is often) or in a bad mood. She gets upset and seeks reassurance, but rarely gets what she needs. She feels helpless and like nothing will change, so she retreats to the safety of spending most of her time with her kids and at work rather than trying to connect with her husband. And she vents regularly in an online group with other women who have gone through challenging relationships. After all, they will listen to her, give her a shoulder to cry on, and validate her feelings.
As regular blog readers will know, roughly 75% to 85% of men and women have different “raw nerves” that a spouse can hit without intending to. There are exceptions (about 15-25% depending on the survey), but the most “raw” insecurity of men tends to be “Am I any good at what I DO?” while that of women tends to be “Am I loveable? Does he REALLY love me?” Thus, her regular “corrections” about his performance and his regular disappearances from her presence really hit each other’s raw nerves. In the face of that repeated pain – and feeling like they can’t do anything to stop it – it is not surprising that both shut down and feel helpless.
To Kim, her observations about plates, dinner dates, and junk food seem like just that: observations. But to Tom, they’re electric shocks that jolt his primary insecurity over and over again, with no way out.
To Tom, his disappearance to his “man cave” is just a way to chill out when he is tired; he assumes Kim knows he loves her. But to her, they are electric shocks that jolt her primary insecurity and there’s nothing she can do.
The safest thing, each of them thinks, is to avoid triggering the shock in the first place by not getting close to the source of electricity. After all, they think, if we can’t change anything, it is better to avoid the whole situation by shutting down.
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