What’s the way out?
So in our marriage example, how do Tom or Kim jump the low wall to avoid the shocks?
The starting point is a mind shift. Turns out, as we said last week, learned helplessness is a misnomer. Our human default is to feel stuck, hopeless, like a victim, self-pitying. We might get passive in response, we might get angry, we might vent. But the ‘stuck’ feeling is natural. What isn’t natural is what we have to do to overcome it: we learn a healthy sense of control. We learn that there is always something we can do, even if there are also things we need to accept. We are not helpless. We can train ourselves out of helplessness in the particular area where we are tempted to give up.
(In fact, not to nerd out on the brain science, but it’s the very presence of healthy control that cues our brains not to slide into the Eeyore-type mood changes that make us feel doomed or “stuck.”)
Thus, Tom and Kim need to realize that they are not helpless and that there are healthy things they can do. For example, using my own research as a starting point, one or both of them might ask the other person to read and discuss the “Insecurity” or “Reassurance” chapters in For Women Only and For Men Only for increased understanding of how they can avoid causing each other pain. Or perhaps they ask their spouse to attend counseling together. (And if their spouse will not, they can always go on their own to understand what they themselves can work on.)
Or maybe Tom and/or Kim decide to create boundaries. And the boundaries could be with themselves (“I realize I need to limit my time in that online group; there’s a pressure to complain more than to encourage.”) or with one another (“I know you don’t mean to sound so critical about what I did with the kids, but that’s what it feels like and it hurts. Can you moderate your tone a bit, so we can continue this conversation?”)
Whether it is marriage, work, a personal compulsion, or anything else, there are always things we can do.
So that is an example of how this “learned helplessness” dynamic works. In parts 3 and 4 we will cover the six steps that will help us overcome this pattern, and build a better one.
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