SucceSSwork nlp & hypnoSiS

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SucceSSwork nlp & hypnoSiS

Why is it important to learn about learned helplessness?

(Please note that I make no claim to any kind of psychological qualifications. I’m merely sharing my opinions about a commonly used term through the lens of my modest knowledge of the mind and my experiences with NLP).

Learned helplessness—

it’s not really a term that you hear used in NLP or hypnosis, rather it’s from the realm of psychology, and like somany psychological terms, bastardized versions have found their way into common everyday conversations. Still, it’s a very importantmechanism, and understanding learned helplessness will go far towards understanding what makes people behave in the ways they do.In everyday use, you might hear phrases like: “my room-mate is such a slob. He won’t do a bit of housework unless I really pushhim—he’s a real case of learned helplessness.” Well, it’s certain he’s a slob, and while the person doing the talking is referring to hisinability towards independent housework, whether or not it’s the result of “learned helplessness” is arguable.“Learned helplessness”

does not

refer to someone behaving helplessly in order to get sympathy or to pressure other people intodoing chores and favors. Colloquially, that’s referred to as a “martyr complex.”

So, what is learned helplessness?

Starting in 1967, Martin Seligman, doing research into the causes of depression in humans at the University of Pennsylvania, did adefining psychological experiment that went like this: dogs were held in harnesses and given electric shocks at regular intervals. Onegroup of dogs could stop the shocks by pressing a bar with their paws, but the other group, also receiving shocks, had a bar that didnothing to stop the shocks. They had

no control

over the pain they were receiving. Later, they were released into a small enclosedarea whose floor was covered with an electric grid that delivered a mild shock at regular intervals, but they could escape it by jumpingover a small barrier into another enclosure. Dogs that had been in the group that had control over their shocks during the first partof the experiment quickly escaped, but the majority of those dogs that had no way to control the shocks they received in the firstpart of the experiment simply curled up in the corner of the electrified enclosure and whimpered. They had “learned” that therewas no way to avoid suffering the shocks. They resigned themselves to suffering, and the state they resigned themselves to wassimilar to clinical depression in humans.What’s going on here? The dogs, when faced with a seemingly inescapable situation in the first part of the experiment, built a “belief structure,” as we say in NLP, in which painful electric shocks were inescapable. When an exit was offered, that exit violated the dogs’“reality,” so they did nothing to take advantage of the exit. Very likely, it was either not considered real, or might have seemed moredangerous and uncertain than the place the dogs were in, since one of the cardinal rules of instinctive motivation is that “the devilyou know is better than the devil you don’t,” or, wherever you are is safer at that moment than any place else.Can you think of real-life examples of this? Look at how many people spend their lives in a rotten job, relationship or community.Once a person establishes a certain acceptance of any situation, it becomes difficult for them to go anywhere else. No matter howbad the situation makes them feel, the odds that they escape it are slim. They may rationalize, as our dogs might have, that anychange will be for the worse, or they may believe they aren’t fit or good enough for anything better.

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SucceSSwork nlp & hypnoSiS

It’s important to be aware that, in people anyway, the thoughts they came up with to rationalize the helplessness are generated

by their behavior,

rather than the behavior resulting from the thoughts. The great hypnosis pioneer George Estabrooks observed thatwhen he gave people post-hypnotic suggestions to do crazy, peculiar, even destructive behaviors, they were able to immediately andunconsciously rationalize an explanation. The explanations were frequently ridiculous and implausible, but they always were able tospontaneously come up with something, and feel satisfied by it. In his book

Hypnotism

, Estabrooks relates the story of giving thehostess at a party a post-hypnotic suggestion to take off her shoe and fill it with flowers from a vase when a certain signal was given.She did so without hesitation, and when asked why she did it, told them plainly that it just looked better that way. She never thoughttwice about the implausibility of what she said.The mind is also employing a kind of prioritizing function, one that exists at all levels. In learning about any new situation, one isinitially confronted with a jumble of information about one’s surroundings and how one fits into it all. At first we give every bit of data the same priority. We rapidly learn what we believe to be important and what isn’t, what’s safe and what isn’t, and what’spossible and what isn’t. In NLP, we say that everyone has a unique

map of his world

based on how they fit into it, and that map isbuilt up of these beliefs. And we might learn to believe that in some situations, we are powerless. This mechanism teaches us we arepowerless to touch fire and not be burned, it tells us we can’t jump off of high places or eat foods that make us sick. It teaches uswhat we should do, based on our experiences of what does and does not work for us. These are lessons that the mind accepts fast,since survival may depend on them. And it all occurs in the subconscious part of the mind.Consider the situation of people held hostage for long periods of time. While it may seem common sense that they’d never stoptrying to escape, in fact after a time, they frequently do stop, and even when their captors loosen their confinement to the pointthat they could easily escape, they no longer even try. The futility of escape has been “wired in.” This is the effect of learned help-lessness, and it’s very powerful.You can see it’s only when a situation changes, usually for the worse

—not better

, that the hold it has on the individual might lessenenough for them to consider getting free of it.At this point, this may be bringing to mind dead-end jobs, abusive relationships, maybe drug addictions, and all of these situationsdo have a big degree of learned helplessness in them, too.So, just as the dog’s perceptions had been modified to believe that there was no real way to escape painful shocks, so too, can aperson’s beliefs be trained to perceive that there’s no way out of a situation. If someone were to tell you as an adult that you couldnow put your hands into fire without injury, or jump from the top of a tall tree, or eat a poison mushroom, you simply wouldn’tbelieve it. And the power of those correct beliefs are exactly as strong as incorrect beliefs that might say you can never be happy, ornever lose weight or never get a better job. These are things that you’ve learned from action and experience.You can see examples of how persistent this can be. Look at anyone who’s gone on a diet and lost, say, 30 pounds, only to gain themback as soon as the diet was over. Or people who came from poverty and gotten large amounts of wealth, only to find themselvesback in poverty a few years later. This is very common with sports figures and lottery winners.At the same time, there are wealthy people who’ve lost it all, and rebounded back to their old level of wealth surprisingly easily. Forthem, it was within the belief structure of these people that such wealth was not only possible but easily achievable for them. Justas there is learned helplessness, there is learned resourcefulness, too.

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People who look at situations like poverty, ignorance, imprisonment or addiction and think that the people who stay in those situationsare weak, or want to be that way, are speaking out of sheer, blind ignorance. Belief structures literally define an individual’s reality,and since an individual normally can’t consciously perceive their own beliefs,

they are not even aware of them.

Until the Wrightbrothers flew, many believed that human flight was impossible even to consider. And until they saw it for themselves, many still didn’tbelieve the news. You can probably think of similar examples from more current events, and maybe even from people you know.In order to escape the hold that learned helplessness has, a major change has to occur in the environment and/or the beliefs of theindividual. Beliefs are often linked to an individual’s environment and so changes in the environment can provide an opportunity tothe individual to see the possibility of a new way out,

if it’s strong enough.

In the case of the dogs in the shock box, merely offeringthe dogs a way out in the second part of the experiment wasn’t a strong enough change to the dogs’ perception of the environment.The very existence of the shocks was proof to the dogs that they were still helpless. In the same way, merely offering aid to someonein a helpless condition may not be sufficient, since their belief structure will negate any value that the aid may have. There has to bea real change to the environment itself.

Learned helplessness in your life

What’s it like? While the official definition of learned helplessness has to do with clinical depression, you can certainly find thelearned-helplessness effect in varying degrees in everyday life. What we in NLP refer to as a “limiting belief” is certainly a kindof learned helplessness, as we discussed previously. Little learned helplessnesses are often taken for granted, since they occur sospontaneously that they fly totally under the radar. I think nearly everybody has had the experienced something that they now likebut that they resisted trying for a long time, because of one initial bad experience. It could be a food, a travel destination, or it couldbe a sport or other activity. When presented with the option, how many times does one immediately say “no” without a secondthought, or any thought at all.On the other side of the scale, there is learned helplessness in a very big way. A person is faced with a certain situation and they feelunable to cope or to respond, because somewhere, somehow, something “taught” them it was a hopeless situation. There’s often an“Oh, no, not again!” kind of feeling, and a sinking or a weakening sensation, and the person in question feels helpless and hopeless.They may feel a sense of frustration, wanting to take action, but feeling

bound

by circumstance or surroundings. They may even feelcompletely incapacitated. Struggling against it can, ironically, cause the individual to feel like they’re sinking deeper into the helplessness,and that cycles around and around in their head. Do you remember our earlier discussion of Estabrooks, and the way his subjectsspontaneously came up with rationalizations for their actions? A person stuck in this helpless swamp will find their subconscious mindpresenting them seemingly logical reasons to justify their helplessness, thereby closing the door on the possibility of any future modesof escape.A very frustrating variation occurs somewhere between the two aforementioned extremes. It happens when someone isn’t inhibitedfrom doing a thing, at all. Rather, they go ahead and begin to do something they want to do, but they do it with a conscious orunconscious

anticipation of failure.

They go ahead, they try, they fail, and it becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy. We know thatwhat a person rehearses consciously or unconsciously is much more likely to actually occur. It’s all the more frustrating because theperson keeps trying and they keep failing, and the outcome reinforces the belief that escape is out of their control. Imagine someonelooking for a job who keeps going on job interviews, but goes to them with the anticipation of failure. Every rejection builds the“Oh, no, not again!” expectation for the next job interview, and, even though the individual is really consciously trying to succeed,

SucceSSwork nlp & hypnoSiS