Learned helplessness: what it is and how it can affect us

The defenseless state (or helplessness in English) is defined as a situation in which the patient feels that she does not have the ability to do anythingIn other words, none of her decisions will affect the development of events. It is an abandonment of action preceded by the conviction that, whatever we do, the outcome of a concrete situation is completely inevitable. As clear as the concept may seem, it should be noted that helplessness can be objective or subjective.

As with all quantifiable facts in life, objective helplessness can be calculated based on certain parameters. An animal is objectively defenseless with respect to a given outcome (O) if the probability of (O), before a given answer (R), it is the same as the probability of (O) if the animal had not done anything (notR). If this is applicable to all responses to a given event, the living being is living, objectively, a helplessness (O + R = O + notR).

Subjective helplessness, unfortunately, is another story. The animal must detect the "lack of contingency" in the face of a given event and, in a certain way, be able to predict that future attempts at action will be useless after taking an action concrete. We no longer move only in an action and reaction,

but in what the living being expects from the interaction in order not to act in future situations. As you can imagine, this is practically impossible to quantify in animals, as we enter complex cognitive realms.

Based on these premises, it is interesting to know that the state of helplessness can be applied to humans, more specifically in a concept known as the "state of learned helplessness" (Learned Helplessness or LH). If you want to know everything about this exciting condition, read on.

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The experiments that discovered the state of learned helplessness

First of all, we must fix our attention on the scientific article "Learned helplessness", published in the Annual Review of Medicine in 1967, by the American psychologist Martin Seligman, since in his findings are the first signs of learned helplessness in animals. In part one of the studies collected here, three groups of dogs were restrained with harnesses and subjected to different scenarios:

• The members of group 1 of dogs were restrained with harnesses and then released after a while. They are the "control" segment of the experiment.
• Groups 2 and 3 followed a completely different dynamic, as they were paired in tandem.
• Group 2 dogs received a light shock at random intervals that they could stop by pressing a lever.
• Each dog in group 3 was paired with one in group 2. When the dog in group 2 received a mild shock, the dog in group 3 also experienced it.
• The key is that the dogs in group 3 could not make the discharge stop with a lever. For them, the outcome of the situation was inevitable.

In the second part of the experiment, the dogs were placed in a facility with two halves separated by a small elevation. One of the halves gave random shocks, while the other did not. The dogs of group 1 and group 2 jumped to the other side of the facility when they received a shock, because there they were safe.

Surprisingly, the dogs in group 3 did not attempt to escape the shock, as they simply lay down and waited for the stimulus to cease., despite being able to jump like the rest to the safe zone. These dogs had associated the discharge with an unavoidable event and therefore were not trying to put an end to it in any way. With this complex and intricate experiment, the foundations of learned helplessness were laid.

Annotations

It should be noted that these experiments violate practically all current legislation on animal welfare. No experimental procedure is done with canine models unless it is strictly necessary and, if it is, the pain should be minimum in all cases and any procedure has to be carried out under local or general anesthesia, regardless of the species used.

This experiment is the result of an investigation in 1967, when the limits of legality in the scientific field were much looser. To this day, justifying a methodology like this before an ethical committee on animal welfare is, to say the least, difficult.

What is learned helplessness in humans?

Beyond experiments with electric shocks, the term learned helplessness is used today in human psychology to describe those patients who have "learned" to behave passively, with the subjective feeling of not being able to do anything in an unfavorable situation concrete.

Unlike objective helplessness in other animals, in our society it is always possible to act in a certain way to try to change things, so the same level of determinism is not conceived as in the experiment previously aforementioned. The person who adopts this mechanism believes that he cannot do anything, but in no case does he have the real assurance that her actions will be empty.

Thus, learned helplessness is seen as human failure to pursue, use, or acquire adaptive responses in an instrumental way. People who suffer from LH believe that bad things will happen yes or yes, because they do not have the necessary means to avoid it. This psychological event occurs especially in patients who are exposed to problems for long periods of time, especially at vulnerable times during development. In these cases, it is learned that responses and events are not connected, which hinders learning processes and leads to inactivity.

How does learned helplessness affect?

Learned helplessness (or learned helplessness, LH) it is common in people who have a history of abuse and / or neglect during childhood or early adolescence. In addition to promoting the appearance of attachment disorders and other psychological events, the patient blames himself himself from the abusive dynamics and, as a consequence, he develops LH, anxiety and a state of very inactivity. marked. Early neglect also manifests itself with similar symptoms, as the child believes that her situation is deserved regardless of how she behaves.

On the other hand, learned helplessness can also appear in adult patients, especially in the elderly. Feeling the loss of faculties and having a backpack of negative experiences favor this emotional mechanism, because whatever happens, a person older will age "regardless of what you do" (this is not true, since many steps can be taken to take care of yourself in old age).

By way of closing this topic, we present you a series of symptoms that will help you detect tinges of learned helplessness in your own person or in your relatives. Do not miss them:

• Constant fear: In LH, the link between response-effect is somewhat broken. Therefore, the patient believes that bad things will happen to him, regardless of how well he does things or how he behaves.
• Generalized anxiety: This state of continuous fear and pessimism translates into anxiety, which can become chronic over time.
• Passivity: it is the clearest sign of learned helplessness. Bad things will happen to the patient, but he will be inactive to them.
• DepressionPeople with LH can develop depression, which results in a myriad of different symptoms, both physiological and emotional.

Conclution

The state of learned helplessness is completely subjective, since it is impossible to establish causality in 100% of the cases outside the experimental field. Applying a shock (O) regardless of the response of an animal (R) is possible when it is tied in a controlled environment, so the rule is fulfilled that the outcome (O) is the same whether there is a response or not (notR). Fortunately, this never applies in the human environment.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is based on an ironclad premise: everything that is learned can be unlearned. For this reason, the first step in dealing with a state of learned helplessness is always to ask for professional help. Thus, with the simple act of seeking psychological treatment, the patient's action is already conditioning the potential outcome of any situation. Breaking this cycle of pessimism and inactivity is possible, provided that the appropriate psychological tools are sought.