Learned helplessness, mojo and serenity
http://talentdevelop.com/articlelive/articles/782/1/Learned-helplessness-mojo-and-serenity/Page1.html
Douglas Eby
Douglas Eby is author of the site - Talent Development Resources - and a writer and researcher in the areas of gifted adults and the psychology of creativity and personal growth.
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By Douglas Eby
Published on 09/12/2008
"Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got." Janis Joplin // One form of compromise is learned helplessness - an emotional and behavioral response
in which a human being (or other animal) has learned to "give up" or
act as if they are helpless, and loses motivation to act in their own best interest in a situation, even when they may really have the power to
change that circumstance - or at least their reactions to it.
"Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got." Janis Joplin
One form of compromise is learned helplessness - an emotional and behavioral response in which a human being (or other animal) has learned to "give up" or act as if they are helpless, and loses motivation to act in their own best interest in a situation, even when they may really have the power to change that circumstance - or at least their reactions to it.
"Clinical depression and related mental illnesses result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation." - Martin Seligman, in 1975.
Psychologist and writer Martin Seligman is well known for his work on this idea of "learned helplessness" earlier in his career, but more recently he has become a leader in the field of Positive Psychology, and is author of Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment.
The ability to pursue the best life for ourselves, the highest levels of excellence and achievement we want, includes feeling energized and motivated. Helplessness outside a laboratory situation, in "real life," is not inevitable. Many people are resilient and thrive. But it is not a simple matter of willful optimism; we need to be aware of the social conditions and our often hidden reactions that can lead to feeling helpless.
In his article Learned helplessness, Bill Harris, director of Centerpointe Research Institute, explains "There is competition for resources at all levels in all living systems, including human and animal communities.
"Built into each system, fairly or unfairly, is a mechanism by which the group automatically withholds or withdraws resources from individuals who 'fail.'
"What is more, unsuccessful individuals–through internal, built-in, automatic self-destruct mechanisms–withhold resources (positive, life-giving neurochemicals and hormones, for instance, that would cause them to feel and function better) from themselves!
"The resulting condition is sometimes referred to as 'learned helplessness.'
"When humans (or animals) are able to solve a problem they not only overcome the problem, they also thrive in other ways (some internal and some external) as a result of having encountered and successfully dealt with that problem."
Harris says his company's Holosync CD program has the ability to stimulate the production of the 'success neurochemicals' that successful people are able to produce, and this "makes it easier to overcome the negative, self-destructive, learned helplessness momentum."
He also notes it is valuable "to use the resulting awareness to look inside your own mind and observe the internal processes that directly generate how you feel in each moment, how you behave, what and whom you attract or become attracted to, and what meanings you place on the events of your life."
Continued in Learned helplessness (Why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer), by Bill Harris.
As horrific as some experiences are, some people are able to resist situations that could lead to overwhelming helplessness.
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) was incarcerated for years in several Nazi concentration camps.
But he pointed out in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, that nobody could force him to think something he didn’t want to think: "Everything can be taken from a [person] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
[From article Appreciative Intelligence, by Tojo Thatchenkery and Carol Metzker.]
Here is another quote [paraphrased] by Victor Frankl on meaning and purpose, which can also be antidotes to helplessness: “What people need is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of them. What they need is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by them.”
[From article Making Meaning, by Eric Maisel, PhD.]
Psychologist Salvatore Maddi, who runs the Hardiness Institute in Newport Beach and is author of the book Resilience at Work, studied employees at Illinois Bell Telephone before, during and after the breakup of AT&T. Illinois Bell almost halved its work force in one year. Job descriptions and chains of command changed regularly.
Even so, one-third of the people excelled, maintaining their performance, morale and health. Two-thirds fell apart, suffering problems such as anxiety, depression and high blood pressure. Maddi found that those who excelled - the "hardy" - shared these characteristics: They stayed involved rather than feeling isolated; tried to influence outcomes rather than lapsing into helplessness; and chose to learn from their experience rather than feeling threatened by it. [From article Don't Worry, Be Happy.]
More about Janis Joplin: Her power as a singer was amazing. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine placed her on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Her advice: "Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got." [quoted in the Changing Course newsletter] is a valid call to look at how we may limit ourselves.
Though it's advice she did not follow; she died in 1970 at age 27 of a drug overdose (heroin, possibly combined with alcohol). Many other gifted artists have used and misused drugs and booze. See my articles Gifted, Talented, Addicted, and Actors and Addiction.
Addiction psychologists sometimes refer to drug and alcohol misuse as "self-medication." But that implies a disease and a medical solution, but addiction - to drugs, smoking, alcohol, porn, online gaming - is not a disease in the traditional sense. (See the AddictionInfo.org site.)
That 'disease' view can also further our sense of helplessness about needing to manage or escape from problems like abuse and anxiety, because drinking and drugging do not solve or "medicate" those life problems.
The various flavors of 12-Step and AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) programs openly promote helplessness: Step One says, "We admitted we were powerless over our addiction.." So following a 12-step program and finding it doesn't work (which is the case for more than 90 percent of people), just reinforces the idea of helplessness. And probably not just about addictive behavior, but coping with life in general.
A psychosocial theory of motivation can explain how important our early life experiences impact our attitudes and motivation.
Psychologist Erik Erikson described eight stages "through which a healthily developing human should pass from infancy to late adulthood. In each stage the person confronts, and hopefully masters, new challenges. Each stage builds on the successful completion of earlier stages. The challenges of stages not successfully completed may be expected to reappear as problems in the future." [Wikipedia.]
That idea of completing a stage of development may relate to learned helplessness if we "fail" a challenge in life.
Another aspect of all this is extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and locus of control - that is, where do we look for motivation and control: outside of ourselves (extrinsic) or within ourselves (intrinsic).
In his article Your Feelings and the Internal Point of Control, psychologist Marc F. Kern declares, "Your vision acts like a rope that is stretched across the river so that you can hold on when the waters get rough and you want to give up, when your old feelings become almost too powerful to manage.
"We humans pride ourselves as being the 'thinking' beings on this planet. In reality, even for us, everything starts as a feeling."
So what about Mojo? It has various definitions, including self-confidence, self-assuredness, belief in one's self, and ability to bounce back from a debilitating trauma and negative attitude. A related idea would be resilience.
One way that a sense of powerlessness and helplessness can impact our personal development and creative vitality is we may set up self-defeating or self-limiting patterned ways of dealing with life that erode our mojo.
Psychologist Kenneth W. Christian talks about a number of these styles in his book Your Own Worst Enemy: Breaking the Habit of Adult Underachievement, including "Extreme Non-Risk-Takers" who "focus totally on minimizing risk in their lives... because they try to avoid situations in which they could possibly fail, they gravitate toward occupations, relationships and activities that do not present serious challenges or reflect their real interests."
Also see his articles.
That kind of self-defeating pattern is probably based more on feelings than rationality. We want to avoid feeling hurt or scared - except for going on a theme park ride, or at a movie, or skiing or something else we choose.
"Your emotions can choke you up based on what you remember about the past that you did not like and because of what you are projecting into the future that you want to prevent,” says Hale Dwoskin, CEO and director of training of Sedona Training Associates.
[From his article How Not to Choke Under Pressure (and Why People Often Do)]
Part of being resilient and not deflated by all the people and situations we can't control, is to be more proactive.
An article about her new movie "The Women" notes that Meg Ryan suggested a line for her character: "I've spent a lifetime trying to be all things to all people, and somehow somebody is always disappointed."
"I definitely had my time with that, without knowing I was doing it," Ryan says.
"I did that in my marriage. I did that probably in the way I initially parented Jack. I definitely had that feeling for a long time that I was running around being a reactive person instead of a proactive person.
"Solving this problem. Putting out this fire, then exhausted at the end of the day. It's not a fun way to live and I determined that I didn't want to live that way anymore.
"I wanted to be seen for me by the significant people in my life, and I wanted to be happy and serene."
[From article Meg Ryan: 'Happy and serene' by Rachel Abramowitz, Los Angeles Times, September 11, 2008.]
Maybe that's really what we all want - to be happy and serene.
Taking on endless problems - especially ones that can't be solved to the extent we want - is a way to keep feeling helpless.
And always "putting out fires" may also keep us diverted from actually going for our childhood dreams of being an artist - or whatever else will realize our talents.
"Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got." Janis Joplin // One form of compromise is learned helplessness - an emotional and behavioral response
in which a human being (or other animal) has learned to "give up" or
act as if they are helpless, and loses motivation to act in their own best interest in a situation, even when they may really have the power to
change that circumstance - or at least their reactions to it."Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got." Janis Joplin
One form of compromise is learned helplessness - an emotional and behavioral response in which a human being (or other animal) has learned to "give up" or act as if they are helpless, and loses motivation to act in their own best interest in a situation, even when they may really have the power to change that circumstance - or at least their reactions to it.
"Clinical depression and related mental illnesses result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation." - Martin Seligman, in 1975.
Psychologist and writer Martin Seligman is well known for his work on this idea of "learned helplessness" earlier in his career, but more recently he has become a leader in the field of Positive Psychology, and is author of Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment.
The ability to pursue the best life for ourselves, the highest levels of excellence and achievement we want, includes feeling energized and motivated. Helplessness outside a laboratory situation, in "real life," is not inevitable. Many people are resilient and thrive. But it is not a simple matter of willful optimism; we need to be aware of the social conditions and our often hidden reactions that can lead to feeling helpless.
In his article Learned helplessness, Bill Harris, director of Centerpointe Research Institute, explains "There is competition for resources at all levels in all living systems, including human and animal communities.
"Built into each system, fairly or unfairly, is a mechanism by which the group automatically withholds or withdraws resources from individuals who 'fail.'"What is more, unsuccessful individuals–through internal, built-in, automatic self-destruct mechanisms–withhold resources (positive, life-giving neurochemicals and hormones, for instance, that would cause them to feel and function better) from themselves!
"The resulting condition is sometimes referred to as 'learned helplessness.'
"When humans (or animals) are able to solve a problem they not only overcome the problem, they also thrive in other ways (some internal and some external) as a result of having encountered and successfully dealt with that problem."
Harris says his company's Holosync CD program has the ability to stimulate the production of the 'success neurochemicals' that successful people are able to produce, and this "makes it easier to overcome the negative, self-destructive, learned helplessness momentum."
He also notes it is valuable "to use the resulting awareness to look inside your own mind and observe the internal processes that directly generate how you feel in each moment, how you behave, what and whom you attract or become attracted to, and what meanings you place on the events of your life."
Continued in Learned helplessness (Why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer), by Bill Harris.
As horrific as some experiences are, some people are able to resist situations that could lead to overwhelming helplessness.
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) was incarcerated for years in several Nazi concentration camps. But he pointed out in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, that nobody could force him to think something he didn’t want to think: "Everything can be taken from a [person] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
[From article Appreciative Intelligence, by Tojo Thatchenkery and Carol Metzker.]
Here is another quote [paraphrased] by Victor Frankl on meaning and purpose, which can also be antidotes to helplessness: “What people need is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of them. What they need is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by them.”
[From article Making Meaning, by Eric Maisel, PhD.]
Psychologist Salvatore Maddi, who runs the Hardiness Institute in Newport Beach and is author of the book Resilience at Work, studied employees at Illinois Bell Telephone before, during and after the breakup of AT&T. Illinois Bell almost halved its work force in one year. Job descriptions and chains of command changed regularly.
Even so, one-third of the people excelled, maintaining their performance, morale and health. Two-thirds fell apart, suffering problems such as anxiety, depression and high blood pressure. Maddi found that those who excelled - the "hardy" - shared these characteristics: They stayed involved rather than feeling isolated; tried to influence outcomes rather than lapsing into helplessness; and chose to learn from their experience rather than feeling threatened by it. [From article Don't Worry, Be Happy.]
More about Janis Joplin: Her power as a singer was amazing. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine placed her on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Her advice: "Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got." [quoted in the Changing Course newsletter] is a valid call to look at how we may limit ourselves.
Though it's advice she did not follow; she died in 1970 at age 27 of a drug overdose (heroin, possibly combined with alcohol). Many other gifted artists have used and misused drugs and booze. See my articles Gifted, Talented, Addicted, and Actors and Addiction.
Addiction psychologists sometimes refer to drug and alcohol misuse as "self-medication." But that implies a disease and a medical solution, but addiction - to drugs, smoking, alcohol, porn, online gaming - is not a disease in the traditional sense. (See the AddictionInfo.org site.)
That 'disease' view can also further our sense of helplessness about needing to manage or escape from problems like abuse and anxiety, because drinking and drugging do not solve or "medicate" those life problems.
The various flavors of 12-Step and AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) programs openly promote helplessness: Step One says, "We admitted we were powerless over our addiction.." So following a 12-step program and finding it doesn't work (which is the case for more than 90 percent of people), just reinforces the idea of helplessness. And probably not just about addictive behavior, but coping with life in general.
A psychosocial theory of motivation can explain how important our early life experiences impact our attitudes and motivation.
Psychologist Erik Erikson described eight stages "through which a healthily developing human should pass from infancy to late adulthood. In each stage the person confronts, and hopefully masters, new challenges. Each stage builds on the successful completion of earlier stages. The challenges of stages not successfully completed may be expected to reappear as problems in the future." [Wikipedia.]
That idea of completing a stage of development may relate to learned helplessness if we "fail" a challenge in life.
Another aspect of all this is extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and locus of control - that is, where do we look for motivation and control: outside of ourselves (extrinsic) or within ourselves (intrinsic).
In his article Your Feelings and the Internal Point of Control, psychologist Marc F. Kern declares, "Your vision acts like a rope that is stretched across the river so that you can hold on when the waters get rough and you want to give up, when your old feelings become almost too powerful to manage.
"We humans pride ourselves as being the 'thinking' beings on this planet. In reality, even for us, everything starts as a feeling."
So what about Mojo? It has various definitions, including self-confidence, self-assuredness, belief in one's self, and ability to bounce back from a debilitating trauma and negative attitude. A related idea would be resilience.
One way that a sense of powerlessness and helplessness can impact our personal development and creative vitality is we may set up self-defeating or self-limiting patterned ways of dealing with life that erode our mojo.
Psychologist Kenneth W. Christian talks about a number of these styles in his book Your Own Worst Enemy: Breaking the Habit of Adult Underachievement, including "Extreme Non-Risk-Takers" who "focus totally on minimizing risk in their lives... because they try to avoid situations in which they could possibly fail, they gravitate toward occupations, relationships and activities that do not present serious challenges or reflect their real interests."
Also see his articles.
That kind of self-defeating pattern is probably based more on feelings than rationality. We want to avoid feeling hurt or scared - except for going on a theme park ride, or at a movie, or skiing or something else we choose.
"Your emotions can choke you up based on what you remember about the past that you did not like and because of what you are projecting into the future that you want to prevent,” says Hale Dwoskin, CEO and director of training of Sedona Training Associates.
[From his article How Not to Choke Under Pressure (and Why People Often Do)]
Part of being resilient and not deflated by all the people and situations we can't control, is to be more proactive.An article about her new movie "The Women" notes that Meg Ryan suggested a line for her character: "I've spent a lifetime trying to be all things to all people, and somehow somebody is always disappointed."
"I definitely had my time with that, without knowing I was doing it," Ryan says.
"I did that in my marriage. I did that probably in the way I initially parented Jack. I definitely had that feeling for a long time that I was running around being a reactive person instead of a proactive person.
"Solving this problem. Putting out this fire, then exhausted at the end of the day. It's not a fun way to live and I determined that I didn't want to live that way anymore.
"I wanted to be seen for me by the significant people in my life, and I wanted to be happy and serene."
[From article Meg Ryan: 'Happy and serene' by Rachel Abramowitz, Los Angeles Times, September 11, 2008.]
Maybe that's really what we all want - to be happy and serene.
Taking on endless problems - especially ones that can't be solved to the extent we want - is a way to keep feeling helpless.
And always "putting out fires" may also keep us diverted from actually going for our childhood dreams of being an artist - or whatever else will realize our talents.