Overcoming Learned Helplessness

[Deleted member 12723]

I can so relate to what you are going through. I still struggle with it. One thing that helped me so much was taking the Model Mugging Defense Course. You could probably Google it and find out all about it.

One time a guy I did not like came towards me and I put up my hands in a defensive posture and I yelled at him to back off. Of course I got some stares, but he did back off and left me alone after that.

Assertiveness training is good too.

But like I said I struggle with the freeze response and am still working on it. I am wishing you all of the help you can get with this problem because it is a big one.

 

[maddog]

Gosh, certainly feeling overwhelmed, but not due to anyone here or anything that anyone has said. It's just that even trying to think or articulate about this issue seems to kick it into action and I feel the wordless numbness and paralysis closing in around me like some sort of wet blanket of isolation. It's horrible, and distressing... but of course it is.

How am I with general assertiveness? Well, actually, just as you describe Abstract, I am someone who has held management positions and been in charge of high pressure, high consequence work units for most of my adult life, and as such have been required to be very assertive, confident and quick thinking at times. I have also done a lot of training and public presentation work which has necessitated that I be articulate, confident, and able to think and speak under pressure. Reconciling that reality with who I become when the issues become personally threatening feels intolerable, like the most vicious form of mocking self betrayal.

Anger... is a bit more complicated again. I don't really do anger, which in itself is a problem. I mean that I don't do genuine, properly directed anger, and pretty much never have. I certainly do displaced anger and struggle badly with this, but absolutely never seem to match the emotion and the action with its cause or justification, and the results are never pretty. Sadly, and not surprisingly, I have come to fear and resent my own anger as a result, and to fearfully avoid others' whenever possible. Anger feels like a terrible danger in the world, like a plague that has been secretly released into the population and which has the ability to kill us all. The fact that my role models for anger were confined to shows of violent, often fatal, aggression, probably hasn't helped...

I think I sort of relate to the challenge to my helplessness feeling like a challenge to others and not just myself, but am struggling to put words around what I'm thinking about that. Trying to behave in any way which is "not me" feels both threatening and personally invalidating, in some way that is linked to survival and to the things I had to do and to be in order to survive. Perhaps there is a part of me who argues that being the way I am has kept me alive through trauma and danger a hundred times worse than anything I'm facing now, so why on earth would I want to change something that clearly works...

And perhaps there is something deeper than that too, something that is more about the twisted dysfunctional bonds I still have with those who taught me to be the way I am. I know that as a child I held onto the hopeless belief that if I behaved as they expected me to, then perhaps they would love me, or at the very least perhaps the suffering would ease. Even now that I consciously reject those assertions, I think my unconscious hasn't caught up yet, and holds doggedly to a non-existent hope that some day, somehow, I will still prove myself loveable.

In that sense, I suppose I should just conclude that learned helplessness is just yet another manifestation of everything that I haven't managed to unlearn from my childhood. I suppose I should conclude that everything is... and that should help, just a little, but doesn't today.

This thread does though, as hard as it is to keep coming back and scratching at this wound, so thanks so much to everyone for bearing with me and for offering your thoughts and experiences.

Maddog

 

[Abstract]

Just dropping off some support for you MD. You are very brave to discuss it all. It sounds like this is very painful. I relate very much to a lot of what you say here.

Will come back when I get the chance.

I genuinely mean this just for *you* not for me as I am fine - but I hope you never felt pressured to share.

 

[Abstract]

I'm back!

I feel the wordless numbness and paralysis closing in around me like some sort of wet blanket of isolation.

You express that so well. I hate how even approaching emotionally loaded subjects has me close down into a mindless state. Not saying thats how you feel but it is was happens to me.

like the most vicious form of mocking self betrayal.

It does feel like a terrible self betrayal. Really though you reacted in an entirely normal way to a very frightening and abnormal situation.

I don't really do anger, which in itself is a problem

One of the things I realised for me is that I was phobic of anger. Both with others and even more so within me. I rejected it. I actually thought I didn't really feel it for the longest time.

I have read that we generally react in two possible ways when we grow up around unhealthy anger and rage. We either reject it and see it as always 'bad" or we take on the same behaviour - seeing it as a do-unto-others-before-they-do-unto-you issue. In a spectrum way of course. My sister reacted differently to me. I relate very much to what you describe. I saw anger as all that was evil in the world.

Underlying anger is fear but when we feel anger we want to defend and when we feel fear we retreat. And wanting to defend can be interpreted in a healthy and appropriate way. Understanding all this and the theory of healthy anger (which I did through DBT) and working on accepting it on at least a cognitive level really helped me enormously. Not that any changes came from it - I should be so lucky! - but rather that it gave me a clear idea of what I wanted to aim towards.

Then there is the subject of feeling worth self protection and boundaries. In a way it is saying "my feelings are more important than your aggression". That was and is a problem. The only way I got around that was just taking the steps as I knew I had to change them in order to have some way of living in myself long term. I used that with ED as well. Realising that I don't have to feel deserving or that something will work for me in order to do it.

So I started diary writing every single day - I don't know what I would have done or would do without writing. It's the single most important lifeline for me. I would look at my day and see where I should have felt anger and look for it. Just acknowledging it made all the difference.

I don't think I could have progressed to the point of being able to stand up for myself in the recent situation if I had not first done all this work on anger. I guess I feel like that and general assertiveness (for myself as I always was assertive with/for others) have laid the foundations for other change to happen.

I'm not sure what is weighing most heavily on your mind at present, whether it is the big picture or recent very difficult events, but if it is the latter I hope there is not too much self judgement and shame. I know for me that that is exactly how I would react but I also know for you that you deserve nothing less than understanding and compassion.

eing the way I am has kept me alive through trauma and danger a hundred times worse than anything I'm facing now

Freezing or retreating can be the single most normal and sensible reaction to really dangerous people or situations. I look back at my home life and in my heart I know that I would have been much worse off if I had fought. I can't feel it of course and hate myself with a passion for it. I know it's something I need to process at some point but I have not been able to go there. Emotionally that is, or in general.

But the way I see it is that I don't want to default to that place automatically with everything Maybe there will be something that will happen where it is appropriate and that will be OK (yeah right!) but for me I don't want to get stuck in that place for extended periods in the way I do.

s more about the twisted dysfunctional bonds I still have with those who taught me to be the way I am. I know that as a child I held onto the hopeless belief that if I behaved as they expected me to, then perhaps they would love me, or at the very least perhaps the suffering would ease. ....just conclude that learned helplessness is just yet another manifestation of everything that I haven't managed to unlearn from my childhood.

This is the foundation of what learned helplessness is for me. It is about deeply ingrained automatic paths of behaviour. I think these are set up in our brains and are deeply entrenched. I also totally believe in brain plasticity and the possibility of change. That it is just about setting up new beliefs, then new habits and that they slowly start taking over from old ones. With lots of hard work. But sadly I have found that any work on these things brings up a lot of the past and emotions relating to it. Maybe that is OK as maybe that is a type of trauma processing in and of itself.

 

[falling]

I am dealing with very similar issues. Logically I know I can deal with any problem that comes up in life and I'm always trying to keep positive and be realistic but I catch myself "numbing out". I find myself pushing others away and isolating myself. And whenever I'm faced with a stressful situation I go 'cold' and turn into a robot. This worked for me when I would dream/think and get flashbacks about being raped so now I do it all the time and I can't control it. But as a result I can't feel much of anything anymore-good or bad.

I hope we all find a way to break this cycle but I have no idea how to do it.

 

[Abstract]

Just been thinking about this more and I think more in my life is learned helplessness than I had thought. Or maybe its that I am seeing the bigger picture more clearly. This is probably an very important topic for me.

 

[maddog]

Abstract, I am slowly, deeply reluctantly, coming to believe that together with toxic shame, learned helplessness is a core issue for me. Together, they are the epicentre of my disorder, and most of who I am and how I behave and what I think and feel is symptomatic of these two separate, though deeply enmeshed, issues.

I suppose that as always, insight is helpful and an important step forward. I rather sarcastically suggested to my therapist on Friday that perhaps we could just google "how to overcome toxic shame and learned helplessness", and a nice neat little instruction manual would pop up onto the screen.

I tried it... must be something wrong with google!!

Maddog

 

[Abstract]

I very much relate MD. Sending you a good dollop of self compassion to soften that awareness.

I have to say though that although I totally understand and relate to the feeling that you are made up of shame and helplessness, from the outside it is a quite obvious that they are the very big thunder cloud around who you are and your core and that there is an enormous amount making up MD.

There is also a lot of fight in you even if you can't see it. You work hard and want to process the trauma and do what a lot of work on recovery. That is quite an achievement considering what recent times have been like for you and the situation you find yourself in. You also have a great relationship with your t and that is no small achievement. I understand that those things probably don't feel like anything and can't break through the shame but they are huge.