Step #2: Be honest about how you display learned helplessness
You know that thing I said about the hard work of self-examination can come later? Well, um, welcome to later. Once you’ve gotten a handle on what “learned helplessness” actually is, you should assume this pattern is in you in some way (since it is in ALL of us in some way), and figure out how it tends to arise in your mindset and life.
Aim questions at yourself to discover what makes you feel helpless. Questions like:
- “What makes me feel angry, insecure, or even hopeless, in a way that is perhaps out of proportion to the situation?”
- “What hits my raw nerves?”
- What makes me think things won’t or can’t improve?
That may help you find where the helpless feeling lies.
For some people, it will be feeling helpless in the face of something relatively minor (you can’t change your colleague’s laziness, so you feel like you’ll always need to work extra hours). For others it will be something major (your mom’s dementia is never going to get better, you are the only one of your siblings who lives near enough to care for her, and you feel stuck).
Remember: even when we can’t change a situation or another person, there are ALWAYS ways we can change how we respond.
One man I interviewed last year described being constantly at odds with his college-age daughter: “She just pushes all my buttons and I find myself getting SO ANGRY with her. The only thing I can do is to shut up, turn around, and leave the room so I don’t do something I’ll regret.” I asked him how he addressed it with his daughter later, and he paused. “I generally don’t. I can’t solve it, and there’s nothing I can do to make it better, so I stay away from it because I definitely don’t want to make it worse.”
Now, I don’t know his situation, and it is possible that this father is putting up hard-earned boundaries and “staying away” because there truly isn’t anything else he can do. But it is also possible that he has fallen into the trap of learned helplessness, and there actually are steps he can take.
In part 4 we will talk a bit more about what that looks like, but here’s a sneak peek. For example, no matter what, that father can take responsibility for his actions and take captive the negative thoughts that arise in his mind. He can focus on what he can do, including:
- Doing his part to mend the relationship
- Writing notes or sending texts to his daughter (even if she never responds well)
- Taking an anger management class
- Inviting his daughter to attend counseling together
My guess is that he is not truly helpless.
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