Building Resilience — 6 Tips to Trade Helplessness for Healthy Control (Part 3)

This is part 3 of a four-part series on how to root out the pattern called “learned helplessness” from our life and relationships. In part 1 we explored what learned helplessness is, and in part 2 we used a marriage example to examine what it might look like in our lives. This week and next, we share the six steps to kicking it to the curb in any part of life.

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If you missed part 1 and part 2 of this series, you’re going to want to tap the brakes on this part 3, and read those two first. We’re tackling learned helplessness – what we do in response to the false belief that there’s nothing we can do to improve our circumstances (our marriage, our weight, our toxic situation at work, etc.) even when improvements are available. As researchers have pointed out, the pattern can be reversed by recognizing that we are never truly helpless.

Whether things are tough in marriage, health, work, addictions, parenting, or anything else, there are always things we can control.

Of course, a short blog series can’t address every nuance of making the mental switch toward what counselors call “self-agency.” But to get us started, here are the first two of six steps we can take today to pull ourselves out of a passive or helpless mindset and into an active place of resilience and taking more control (in a good way) in our life and relationships. Next week we will cover the last four steps.

Step #1: Learn to spot learned helplessness in the wild

The prerequisite to all other steps is to learn to spot the kinds of statements, complaints, or assumptions that reveal a sense of learned helplessness rather than a healthy sense of control or resilience. As we’ll cover in a moment, although this dynamic can sometimes be more pronounced among those who endured childhood trauma, almost everyone has “learned” helplessness to a greater or lesser degree.

Many of us will incorrectly think this pattern doesn’t affect us. So we first must train ourselves to recognize learned helplessness when we see it. Think of this as a non-emotional, fact-gathering first step. What does learned helplessness sound like in general? This is NOT yet “what does learned helplessness sound like in me?” The hard work of self-examination can come later.

In general, statements born from learned helplessness usually point to a “why bother” reflex – a statement that sounds something like:

“I’ve tried and nothing works so I guess I’ll just resign myself to ______.”

As one helpful learning tool, refer back to part 1 of this blog and review the bullet-pointed statements at the top. Those are all different ways this pattern plays out. (For example: “I’ve tried to lose weight so many times and I just gain it all back. There’s no point in trying.”) Train yourself to spot this dynamic whenever you hear it – whether that is in a friend’s comments, or in something you read or see in the media.

Once I tried to spot this “why bother” or “helpless” reflex in the wild, I started seeing it in places I had never noticed before. (I saw it in myself just last week when a customer service rep “made me late” for a meeting while fumbling to resolve what should have been a quick issue. And then I realized: No one forced me to stay on the line for 45 minutes! A healthier response would have been to politely say, 15 minutes into the call, “I don’t want to be late for a meeting, and I’m going to need to call back. What’s the phone number to reach a supervisor?’”)

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.

A final note for trauma survivors: Be gentle with yourself in this process

Before we close today I want to offer an important thought for trauma survivors. Sometimes, learned helplessness stems not from giving into a simple temptation to be self-focused, but from substantial wounds and difficult, prolonged life cues. For example, perhaps as a young child you had parents who didn’t or couldn’t give you what you needed despite your cries for help. You might have “learned” that your needs were not worth meeting.

They are.

I wish that hadn’t been the message you received. If that is you, please know how sorry I am that you went through what you went through. My heart hurts at the image of you as a child, truly being helpless in the face of pain.

If that dynamic rings true in your life, be gentle with yourself as you begin to think through the ways you, as an adult, have given into a sense of helplessness. While it’s understandable, it also happens to be amplifying one type of pain (the difficulty) with another (the inaccurate sense of helplessness).

So my prayer for you is that this process will help you begin to patiently and courageously identify and disarm the “I am helpless” lies that may have crept in to your heart over time. If you have felt helpless in an abusive relationship of some kind, I hope you will begin to see that even in the very worst of situations, relief and support are always available. Consider seeing a counselor who truly understands trauma and who can help you move forward well.

Come back next week for the final part of this series, where I’ll unpack the last four strategies for how to leave learned helplessness behind.

And if you are interested in having Shaunti speak on kindness for your workplace, church, school or community group, please contact Nicole Owens at nowens@shaunti.com.

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