Learned Helplessness -AKA- Victim Mentality and how to Address it

You are not always a Victim of your circumstances. Addressing Learned Helplessness

Learned Helplessness -AKA- Victim Mentality:

A behavioral state and personality trait of a person who believes they have little to no control over their life, even when control is possible. People who have learned helplessness tend to take on a victim mentality and give up very easily on a consistent basis when trying to accomplish important life goals. A common mantra is “What’s the point in trying?”

Learned Helplessness and Mental Illnesses

Learned helplessness has often been associated with several different psychological disorders. Depression, anxiety and certain phobias are the most common. When people feel a lack of control over their feelings and emotions, sometimes they quit trying to be anything different than depressed or anxious. Learned helplessness is dangerous in mental illness because it implies that the disease has control over the individual. Unfortunately, he individual is also controlled by the medication being used to treat the disease and is terrified of not having it. In some cases, the feeling of helplessness can lead to hopelessness, which can then lead to suicidal thoughts or attempts.

Solutions For Overcoming Learned Helplessness

Included are some DIY techniques.  However, it you struggle with them on your own, it is recommended to seek the help of a certified Mental Health Counselor.

When it comes to learned helplessness, the most important factor seems to be control. Humans need to feel they have some level of control over their lives. When someone feels as though they have no control, the feeling comes from a perception and perceptions are formed as a result of sensory input from our experiences in the world.

The good news is that because the feelings and behaviors associated with learned helplessness are the result of negative perceptions, they can be changed. Negative thinking may bring negative results because your thinking dictates who you are and where you’ll go. Changing perceptions involves changing thinking, but not just from negative to positive. It also requires changing the response to a stimulus from the one you have already learned (learned helplessness) by associating it with a new response.

There are some techniques that can help facilitate the development of new perceptions.

1. Reframing- Reframing was one of the first techniques developed and is still quite useful today. Part of its power comes from the fact that reframing can be performed with language alone. With reframing, you are training the part of the mind that causes a behavior (or response). Reframing works best when someone, ideally a therapist, is doing it with the person who has learned helplessness.

Steps of Reframing
• Identify the unwanted behavior. In the case of learned helplessness, the unwanted behavior is the immediate negative response to your perceived lack of control.
• Initiate communication with the ‘part’ of the client that is causing the behavior.
• Ask the ‘part’ to identify what the positive outcome of the behavior is (every behavior should have a positive outcome)
• Ask the ‘part’ to find several other ways to achieve the same outcome
• Gain the ‘parts’ agreement to try out the other behaviors to find a more useful behavior.

2. Belief Change- Since learned helplessness is a limiting belief about oneself; changing the belief can eliminate it. One technique that is used is called the Belief Change technique.

Steps for Belief Change-
• Identify a limiting belief you’d like to change. (E.g., I’ll always be overweight; I don’t ever have enough money, I can’t be happy because I have a mental illness). These beliefs are ‘negative affirmations’
• Construct a realistic/positive affirmation using the following form: I am xxxxx.

The keys to creating powerful affirmations are as follows:
Make them realistic and/or positive (What you want, not what you don’t want)
Make them identify-based (‘I’)
Make them present-tense (‘I am…’)
Make them emotionally powerful

▪ Say your new affirmation. Notice what thoughts and feelings are triggered and accept them. (The first time you say your new affirmation it will not seem ‘true’ to you. It is likely that you’ll have certain sensations and thoughts as a result, so be especially aware of any pictures that pop into your head, voices in your head, and feelings in your body. Often it is the feelings that keep an old belief in place, resisting the new one.)

▪ Reinforce your new belief by repeating your affirmation daily, allowing yourself to feel how you’ll feel when it’s true, and by noticing proof that supports it.

While learned helplessness is a behavioral response to certain perceptions we form about the world we live in, it is not a terminal illness. Learned helplessness is a behavioral response that can be changed through the use of some of these techniques that work toward changing perceptions from old negative thought patterns to new realistic/positive affirmations.

Written by: Charity M. Loring, LMSW

Loring Therapy LLC

loringtherapy.com

Adapted from Personality Disorder, Out of the Fog & Solutions for overcoming Learned Helplessness, D. Baret, Behavioral Brain Research 2005