Dana Gatto
Have you ever thought to yourself:
- I give up.
- The outcomes no longer depend on what I do or what I think.
- It won’t matter what I think, no one cares.
- I have no control over the outcome.
- My actions are futile.
- I am incompetent.
If you have ever thought any of these things, or something similar, you may be operating on what is termed learned helplessness. You’ll know you’ve fallen into learned helplessness if you have become inappropriately passive, this change has followed exposure to prolonged uncontrollable events, and there is a change in the way you think about your ability to control similar future events.
Sometimes it’s a trauma, sometimes it is merely experiencing some bad experiences close together. You can experience a rough job that changed your perception about yourself and your abilities, it can come from a toxic relationship or one that just wasn’t right for you, having a rough year in school, gaining weight in a short period of time, virtually any negative experiences that happen in close proximity and repeatedly can train you into learned helplessness.
You start to feel powerless, depressed, you begin isolating, you feel like there is no point in trying, you accept that what is will always be the way it is, you believe that even if you take action you will still be in the same place. Often there are solutions everywhere to get you out of this negative-feeling place but you don’t even try them. If you feel heavy about something or like you have to tolerate it, or it’s just the way it is, I can assure you that is not the case. You do not ever have to settle for feeling bad. You do not ever have to go without something that you want, you just may need to be open to the who and the how. You do have power. There are many things you can control, including how you feel and how you personally live your life. You get to have, be or do anything. I have said it before and I will say it again…if you do not believe that last sentence, it is only your perception, not reality. If you want to succeed in your life you have to believe it is possible for you.
Learned helplessness is something everyone does not experience. The difference in whether a situation causes learned helplessness or not lies in whether you are traditionally an optimist, or a pessimist. The good news is that both optimism and pessimism are learned behaviors, which means they can be unlearned. Optimism, it turns out, isn’t just defined as the tendency to expect things to turn out better than probability predicts, nor is pessimism defined only as the tendency to expect things to turn out more poorly. Both terms are also used to describe the way we think about the causes of adversity, pessimism in particular being defined as the tendency to think about them in a way that makes us feel powerless. A pessimistic self-explanatory style, then, describes the tendency to attribute the causes of adversity to forces that are internal (“This is all my fault”), universal (“This affects absolutely everything”), and immutable (“This isn’t changeable”).
Here are 3 characteristic points of view when looking at problems, in which optimists and pessimists differ.
1. Optimists see problems as temporary, pessimists as permanent. For example, if optimists spill their coffee they won’t say “I always spill my coffee and ruin my clothes.”, but rather “I spilled my coffee this time, but I won’t spill the next one.”
2. Optimists see problems as specific to a situation, pessimists make them a general case. Being on a team assignment where one person doesn’t deliver their part, a pessimist is likely to say: “This team sucks.” and write off the entire team as lazy. An optimist would say: “One person is not very helpful, but I’m sure the rest of the team will do great work.”
3. Optimists see problems as externally caused, pessimists blame themselves. When getting a divorce, both people will think one of them is the major cause. An optimist will always attribute the failure to an external source, in this case, their former spouse (“He never wanted kids anyway”). The pessimist is likely to blame herself (“I never made time for her that’s why she left me).
As you can probably guess, optimists are happier. Optimists are also healthier because they are likely to take good care of their bodies since they believe that their choices will make a difference. Pessimists are prone to junk food and no exercise, as they believe it won’t matter. Pessimists are also prone to depression. Believing that nothing you do will change anything can of course make you depressed. In a study where people had to press buttons to make noises stop, symptoms of depression were found in those that experienced the rigged experiment where the buttons had no effect. On the other hand, optimists are more successful, regardless of talent. Optimists succeed no matter what, even if people doubt them or don’t believe they are talented enough. Dr. Seligman (an authority on happiness psychology) found that employees who under-performed skill-wise, but showed great optimism outperformed those with better skills over time.
So what can you do to become an optimist and begin to succeed as quickly as possible? Use the ABC technique by Albert Ellis. It works like this: When facing a crisis, you note 3 things about it.
What’s the Adversity?
For example you just got fired.
What is my Belief about this?
For example you believe you did a horrible job and that’s why you were let go.
What is the Consequence of my belief?
For example you feel depressed and can’t get out of bed for 2 weeks.
Go through your recent, negative self-talk and try to record 3 ABCs. Be sure to pick major challenges and differentiate between thoughts and feelings. Telling yourself you’re a bad golfer or that you have bad memory is a belief, crying or getting angry are the feelings that follow from your belief.
How you decide to deal with a negative event determines almost entirely how much it will affect you. That’s why it’s important to start recording your ABCs and seeing where you can change your beliefs. Once you’ve recorded a few negative believes, start challenging them. Ask yourself if they’re really true, whether there’s another explanation and if they’re true, what that implies. Then you can start labeling your thoughts into two categories: useful and not useful. Whenever you notice a thought is not useful to you, then you should probably not pursue it any further. Begin thinking about negative events as temporary, specific and external, record your ABCs and know that your attitude is learned…you can change it at any time. This way, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a true optimist.
Dana