Positive Psychology Program and Certified Coaching— Things You Need to Know About Learned Helplessness

Have you ever felt like a day keeps getting worse as it goes on? That is precisely how I felt last 2020. I’ll discuss one of the most exciting topics in a Positive Psychology Course which is also discussed briefly in life coaching schools.

The year started with Kobe Bryant dying, then the looming scare of CoVid-19. I was on my last semester, and there was the sudden change to having online classes, and I thought that was all. But it kept getting worse! We’re the batch that doesn’t get any graduation rites due to restrictions, and as job opportunities were sparse, I tried opening up a meat-cutting business, and lo and behold, the African Swine Fever news came. I had to shut it down.

I felt so bombarded with bad news every day, and I realized how it might have been a lot worse for others. And it’s true. Unfortunately, some people gave up and accepted their fate. In this article, we will discuss the psychology behind a concept associated with giving up— let’s learn about learned helplessness.

I was able to dwell more on this concept of learned helplessness when it was briefly discussed in my life coach training. This behavior is strongly associated with animal psychology and also applies to human beings, especially when they are in a situation where they feel powerless. Thus they become inactive and might overlook opportunities for change.

What is Learned Helplessness?

Learned helplessness was discovered as a phenomenon that happens when an animal is put into a recurrent unpleasant stimulus that cannot escape repeatedly. The animal will tend to discontinue trying to save itself from the trigger and act helpless even when presented with an opportunity to escape. This concept is one of the pioneer topics in the development of the positive psychology program. This concept was accidentally discovered by psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier after observing how dogs that were classically conditioned to receive a shock after a particular sound had such inaction and helplessness. They placed these dogs in a box with two chambers divided by a low barrier, one of the floor chambers was electrified, and the other was not. The classically conditioned dogs made no attempts to escape, even though it can be quickly done by jumping over the divider. To further investigate this occurrence, they made three experiment setups.

• The first setup strapped dogs in harnesses for some time then released them.
• The second setup dogs we placed in harnesses then subjected to electric shocks that they could avoid when they press a panel
• The third setup was subjected to electric shocks, but shocks are random, and they cannot avoid it

The dogs in these three setups were then placed in a box divided into two chambers described previously. In the first and second setup, the dogs rapidly learned to jump over the barrier and avoid the shocks. However, the dogs from the third setup no longer attempted to save themselves from the surprises. It was as if their previous experiences no longer expected that they could prevent the shocks. This phenomenon had been observed in different animal behaviors, but its effects can also be witnessed in humans. A famous example would be a child that does poorly at examinations and assignments in mathematics. You might observe that they may tend to feel hopeless about improving their performance on the said subject. When faced with a math-related task, they may feel like they cannot answer a math question on the board, and therefore they do not try answering it at all. In children and adults, learned helplessness is associated with psychological disorders and intensifies anxiety, depressions, phobia, timidity, and loneliness. When you become an adult, the pressure that you once felt when encountering math questions becomes merely a sense of nervousness whenever you have to calculate.

Learned Helplessness in Relationships and Domestic Violence

Learned helplessness is best demonstrated in cases of domestic violence. This phenomenon leads us to answers why victims stay to their abusers:

• Why didn’t they tell someone?
• Why didn’t they try to get help?
• Why didn’t they just leave?

It’s hard to explain the influence of manipulation on the victim’s behavior. After all, viewers might think it makes no sense that victims decide to stay with someone hurting them.

Just like in the experiment of dogs, abusers are the ones who give a series of “helpless situations” (i.e., the form of abuse they put their victims into) to accustom the victims to the exploitation and instill to them that they do not have any control over the situation. The abusers keep absolute authority, and the victims learn that they are helpless about their conditions.

This leads to the victims’ feelings of learned helplessness and further progresses into an absence of motivation or effort to escape. This situation is almost similar to the dogs in Seligman and Maier’s experiments. The dogs learned that no matter what they do, they would be electrocuted; just the same as the victims of domestic violence and abuse understand that they will always remain powerless and under the abusers’ control no matter what they do.

These perceptions are incredibly hard to dismiss, often requiring intensive therapy and support to shake them off in this mindset.

A theory about domestic violence was formulated based on learned helplessness, and it’s called the idea of cyclic abuse, or battered woman syndrome. Positivepsychology.com defines this as:

“a relationship in which domestic violence has occurred is likely to continually involve violence that’s doled out in a predictable and repetitious pattern.”

The pattern goes through four stages, according to Rakovec-Felser (2014):

1. Stage One: Tension builds as the abuser gets angry, and there is a significant decline in communication; the victim then feels the need to be submissive and concede.
2. Stage Two: this is where the abuse occurs, also known as the acting-out period;
3. Stage Three: the honeymoon period. In this period, the abuser apologizes, expresses remorse, and/or tries to make up for the abuse. The abuser might promise never do it the abusive act again, or they can then turn the blame on the victim for provoking the abuse;
4. Stage Four: The calm period. When the abuse stops, the abuser acts like it did not happen, and the victim may start to consider the abuse is over, and the abuser will change.

The theory of cyclic abuse suggests that not only will abuse victims feel helpless and that the victims will also:

• Re-experience the abuse as if it were happening again even when it is not;
• Attempt to escape the psychological effect of the experienced abuse by avoiding activities, people, and emotions;
• Experience hyperarousal (easily aroused or flushing) or hypervigilance (easily startled, or sensitivity to stimulus);
• Have disrupted interpersonal interactions;
• Have body image concerns or other somatic concerns;
• Develop sexuality and intimacy issues (Rakovec-Felser, 2014).

Learned helplessness is a severe and pressing concern for victims of domestic violence and other abuse.

How to Beat Learned Helplessness in School

If you’re a parent and/or a teacher and you see signs that your children are exhibiting learned helplessness regarding school, here are some things taught in life coaching schools that might help you too: Teach them about how mistakes are okay as long as there is a sustained effort in trying again. A student’s motivation can be fragile and may quickly dissipate. When a student makes a mistake in class, it might make them feel like there is pressure on them to be perfect. This, in turn, can make them feel like failures. But in reality, no person can grow without making some mistakes, which is a concept that they need to understand. So what can educators do? I learned this one through an exercise in positive psychology coaching training. What teachers can do is that they can try to hush down being critical when a student gave a wrong answer because being too harsh can develop into a fear of trying and making a mistake. Learners should be relaxed in exploring new ideas without being tormented by thinking that they might make an error. Instead of being JUST critical, the teacher must ALSO reassure them that making mistakes is alright, as long as they try again. Encourage participation of the Quiet Students Some students become low motivated in the classroom due to being overlooked and not being given enough school tasks. Teachers should take great care and provide special attention to timid or who feel less capable than their peers because they need the educator’s assistance to become motivated and engaged in school. Differentiate Growth Mindset (effort) and Fixed Mindset (abilities). Emphasize students’ effort to study for an examination and make it not just about their innate abilities. You can encourage children by telling them, “If you study hard for this test, you’ll do well, and your effort will be rewarded.” Students need to learn that the process of learning is not just about one’s innate intelligence and traits but is more about the development of areas that you can improve. Through life coach training, I learned how that teachers and parents should help adjust a student’s mindset. They should be taught that they control their academic performance. Here is a certified coaching tip from Nobel Coaching: Educational therapists who work with children with learned helplessness have a great way of illustrating this [1]: They would turn off the light in a room and ask a student, “Does this mean there is no more light?” A student will say, “No, the light went off because you turned off the switch.” The therapists then say, “There’s a switch in your head that you turned off because you didn’t like what was happening in school.” This can help the student change their rationale for failure from “I’m dumb” to “I turned off my switch,” meaning “I didn’t put in the effort.” Gently Shape Their Confidence by Giving Them More Time and Help. When a student doesn’t incline to think about the questions teachers ask in class and quickly gives up, educators must do their best to encourage them to put some effort into it. Teachers can guide them with additional questions, even more, straightforward ones, to answer them. Also, try encouraging them to take their time or consult a classmate that could help them answer it. Focus on the Effort, Not Just the Outcome Do not forget to praise the effort given by a student in coming up with a response, even if it may not be entirely correct. Most of the time, students have initial ideas, but they tend to make missteps along the way. An example would be a student who tries hard to answer a math question; if teachers and parents always focus on the student getting a wrong answer, the learner may experience learned helplessness. Instead of being critical, it might be better if teachers and parents say “Good job!” or give an “I like the way you’re thinking” remark. These phrases express support they continue to provide an effort in learning and the classroom. However, if a student is not doing fine in school, it’s unlikely that they’ll start getting the most excellent grades right away. We’re looking out for development, even if it’s slow. That’s why the educator must provide reassurance and praise along the way, to let them know that they’re improving and make sure their motivation isn’t fading.

How to Beat Learned Helplessness in the Workplace

Learned helplessness can also occur in the workplace. The following are some idea on how to beat the feeling of helplessness in the office adapted from Medium.com:

1. Move Forward, not backward

To encourage workers to get better, they must be reminded that when we keep believing that we can grow, we get to have control over our behaviors. The following are some of the questions to help everyone get started:

• “What do we want to do differently next time?”
• “How should we change the process during our next redwork (i.e., process-focused work) period?”
• “What worked well that we want to keep and not change?”
• “If you could go back in time on this, what would you tell yourself?”
• “What do we want to remember about this for next time?”

When workers ask themselves these questions, they reevaluate their performances and look into possibilities and growth opportunities.

2. Look Outward, not inward

Workers should be taught that they should focus on what they need to do and not what they lack. Workers should have a mindset that looks at the more prominent and outside perspective of the whole task rather than pinpoints individual faults. The following are some phrases of encouragement and affirmation from my life coach training. These can help teams align their mindset in doing what is needed rather than looking at what doesn’t work out.

• “If someone else had to take over this project, what would you say to them to make it even more successful?”
• “What changes would the board want us to make here?”
• “What could we do to serve our customers better?”
• Finally, the right language can encourage a sense of ongoing improvement, recasting the team’s perspective from one of avoiding errors to one of achieving excellence:
• “Let’s focus on what’s going right here that we can build on.”

When they focus more on what they can do around them and then look at what they lack themselves, they become more aware of how they can improve in processes than just dwelling on their shortcomings.

3. Focus on Process, not on individuals

When teams focus on what they can improve on the process rather than what individuals did wrong, workers prevent blaming and encourages working together.

• “Thinking about the work itself, what do we think could be improved?”
• “How could this be done better?”
• “What improvements could we make to the process?”

4. Pursue quality, not avoid errors

When workers think that they’d rather avoid errors, this can results in inactivity as there can be the mindset that “to prevent mistakes is to avoid actions and decisions; no movement, no error.” Avoiding errors is not an inspiring motivator. This internal war is within ourselves where we choose between being “good” and “better.” Most of the time, people can settle on just being right, and they forget to push past their limits to achieve being “better. Sometimes people forget that they can become something great — something excellent. A powerful motivation of pushing past our limits and achieving something extraordinary is what we need.

Researches about Learned Helplessness

Lots of researches were done about learned helplessness, the following overviews of some of the studies:

• Learned helplessness was observed in honey bees, but they don’t seem to display “freezing” as other species. (Dinges, Varnon, Cota, Slykerman, & Abramson, 2017).
• Researchers from Brazil observed evidence of “learned helplessness: in zebrafish (do Nascimento, Walsh-Monteiro, & Gouveia, 2016).
• Even tree shrews exhibit this behavior (Meng, Shen, Li, Li, & Wang, 2016).
• Experiments probed the link between learned helplessness and the brain. A famous example of this study was from Kim and colleagues (2016), which showed how brain activity in mice displaying non-helpless behavior is generally more significant than that of the ‘vulnerable’ mice groups. However, this pattern was inverted in the part of the called “locus coeruleus,” involved in physiological responses to tension and anxiety. This discovery is fascinating, as it proposes that individuals experiencing learned helplessness are aiming their energy toward reacting to their distress. In contrast, more resilient individuals keep their energy more dispersed.

Scientifically-Based Interventions to Help You Gain Control

Seligman offers research-based exercises that can influence our thinking and lead us toward a healthier well-being state. Here are three from his book Flourish: The Gratitude Visit “Close your eyes and call up the face of someone still alive who years ago did something or said something that changed your life for the better. Someone you have never thanked and that you could meet face-to-face. Please write a letter of gratitude to him or her and deliver it in person. Please read the letter to the person, not telling him or her about the letter before you arrive. After reading the letter, notice the person’s reaction and while she or he may want to stop you before you finish reading it – keep going. Once finished, talk together about the content of the letter and your feelings for each other. When we express gratitude, we benefit from a festive event’s pleasant memory, and express gratitude to others strengthens our relationship.” What Went Well Exercise “People tend to spend more time thinking about what is evil in life than is helpful. Worse, a focus on adverse events sets us up for anxiety and possible depression. While it is always beneficial to spend time analyzing bad events to learn from them for future use – we’re much better served to spend more energy thinking about and savoring what went well. Every night for the next week, set aside ten minutes before you go to sleep to write down three things that went well that day and why they went well. This routine for a week has the strong possibility of becoming a habit and increasing the odds of happiness.” Signature Strengths Exercise “This exercise encourages you to own your signature strengths by finding new and more frequent uses of them. A signature strength brings a sense of ownership as you see yourself doing it. You feel excited and determined to use it, even as you develop more practical skills in its use. It invigorates rather than exhausts you, and it shows up in personal projects that revolve around it. Let’s say that a signature strength for you is creativity. You may decide to set aside a few hours each week to write the next best-selling novel. Or, if your power is self-control, you may choose to work out in the evening rather than watch TV. Create new ways to use your signature strength and reflect on the impact this is having on your overall state of well-being.”

Seligman’s Learned Optimism Model

Martin Seligman—one of the researchers who discovered the concept of the learned helplessness phenomenon—later found his interest drawn to the complete reverse of learned helplessness: optimism.

Although Seligman’s name was associated with learned helplessness, he knew he had more to offer the world. His study on the subject led him to think about what other mindsets and perceptions are learned and develop positive traits instead of creating feelings of helplessness.

Seligman’s research led him to create the model of learned optimism. He found that, through resilience training, people can learn to develop a more optimistic perspective. This ability has been observed in children, teachers, military members, and more (Seligman, 2011).

Benefits of Optimism

If you have ever gone through a positive psychology program, then you surely have heard of the several profits of becoming a more optimistic person. Some of the many rewards of optimism that researchers have discovered comprise:

• Better health: A meta-analysis of 83 kinds of research found that optimism played an essential role in health outcomes for cardiovascular ailments, cancer, pain, physical symptoms, and death.
• Better mental health: Optimists report greater levels of well-being than pessimists. Research also suggests that teaching learned optimism practices could considerably lessen depression.
• Higher motivation: I learned from our lessons in the life coach training institute that Becoming more optimistic can also help you retain motivation when pursuing goals. When trying to lose weight, pessimists might give up because they believe diets never work. On the other hand, optimists are more likely to focus on positive changes they can make to help them reach their goals.
• Longer lifespan: Studies have shown that optimistic people tend to live longer than pessimists.
• Lower stress levels: Optimists not only experience less stress, but they also cope with it better. They tend to be more resilient and recover from setbacks more quickly. Rather than becoming overwhelmed and discouraged by adverse events, they focus on making positive changes to improve their lives.

In one research, children with risk factors for depression were put in a training program where they were taught skills related to learned optimism.

The study revealed that children with the risk factors were much more likely to show symptoms of moderate to severe depression at a two-year follow-up. However, those who had received training in learned optimism and anti-depression skills were half as likely to develop such symptoms of depression.

Can You Learn Optimism?

While it may be clear that optimism can be beneficial, it becomes a question of whether people can learn to take a more positive perspective. Can even the most pessimistic of people adjust their worldview?

• Nature vs. Nurture

Researchers suggest that in addition to being partially hereditary, optimism levels are also influenced by childhood experiences, including parental warmth and financial stability. Seligman’s work, however, suggests that it’s possible to learn the skills that can help you become a more optimistic person. Anyone can learn these skills, no matter how pessimistic they are, to begin with.

• Optimal Time to Develop Optimism

Seligman’s research suggests that it may be beneficial to teach kids optimism skills late enough in childhood to have the metacognitive skills to think about their thoughts but before the onset of puberty. Teaching such skills during this critical period might be the key to helping kids ward off several psychological disorders, including depression.

• The ABCDE Model

Seligman believes that anyone can learn how to become more optimistic. He developed a learned optimism test designed to help people discover how optimistic they are. People who start more optimistic can further improve their emotional health, while those who are more pessimistic can benefit by lowering their chances of experiencing symptoms of depression. Seligman’s approach to learning optimism is based upon the cognitive-behavioral techniques developed by Aaron Beck and the rational emotive behavioral therapy created by Albert Ellis. Both strategies are focused on identifying the underlying thoughts that influence behaviors and then actively challenging such beliefs. Seligman’s approach is known as the “ABCDE” model of learned optimism:

• Adversity: The situation that calls for a response
• Belief: How we interpret the event
• Consequence: The way that we behave, respond, or feel
• Disputation: The effort we expend to argue or dispute the belief
• Energization: The outcome that emerges from trying to challenge our beliefs

To use this model to learn to be more optimistic. Here are some examples.

Adversity

Think about a recent sort of adversity you have faced. It might be something related to your health, your family, your relationships, your job, or any other kind of challenge you might experience. Imagine that you recently started a new exercise plan, but you are having trouble sticking with it.

Belief

Make a note of the type of thoughts running through your mind when you think about this adversity. Be as honest as you can, and do not try to sugarcoat or edit your feelings. In the previous example, you might think of things such as “I’m no good at following my workout plan,” “I’ll never be able to reach my goals,” or “Maybe I’m not strong enough to reach my goals.”

Consequence

Consider what sort of consequences and behaviors emerged from the beliefs you recorded in step 2. Did such ideas result in positive actions, or did they keep you from reaching your goals? In our example, you might quickly realize that the negative beliefs you expressed made it more challenging to stick with your workout plan. Perhaps you started skipping workouts more or put in less of an effort when you went to the gym.

Dispute

Dispute your beliefs. Think about your beliefs from step 2 and look for examples that prove those beliefs wrong. Look for an example that challenges your assumptions. For example, you might consider all of the times that you did successfully finish your workout. Or even other times that you have set a goal worked towards it, and finally reached it.

Energization

Consider how you feel now that you have challenged your beliefs. How did disputing your earlier beliefs make you feel? After thinking of times you have worked hard toward your goal, you may be left feeling more energized and motivated. Now that you have seen that it isn’t as hopeless as you previously believed, you may be more inspired to keep working on your goals.

4. Learning Optimism May Take Time

Remember, this is an ongoing process that you may need to repeat often. When you find yourself facing a challenge, make an effort to follow these steps. Eventually, you will find it easier to identify pessimistic beliefs and to challenge your negative thoughts. This process may also ultimately help you replace your negative thoughts and approach challenges with greater optimism.

When the pandemic hit, it felt like everything was going down the drain, but then I realized that I was not looking enough, and I almost missed a lot of opportunities ahead of me. Yes! The ongoing crisis brought many negativities that almost sucked me in, but when I started challenging my thoughts and pursued the career path, I wanted… well, here I am!

One of the best things I’ve learned from the positive psychology program is that learned helplessness can become learned optimism. Through life coach training, I understood how to help myself and people who w I believe that it is beneficial when you know how to manage this phenomenon when it occurs.

I share bits of knowledge with you, and I hope that you share these things with others too!