Helplessness is not learned (2022)

I'm not sure why there's a few negative comments here. The dialectic the article sets up is clear:

    Prior: People acquire helplessness through reinforced external negative stimuli (dysphoric)

    Author: No, it isnt the presence of negative stimuli, but the absence of internal positive (control-promoting)

This makes all the difference for understanding how to treat the issue; as well as how to communicate it.

Let me give an example from my own life this morning. For quite awhile I've been leaving things in random places where they aren't tidy (prone to breaking, etc.). This morning, for the first time in awhile, I made the extra effort to move something to a better place.

On the first model, and an intuitive one, it was the effort to pick up the items that was the negative stimuli. So the treatment is: learn to enjoy tidying, etc.

Rather, I actually experienced the opposite, and I sort of realised it at the time.

This week I began resetting all my schedules, alarms; started reorganising my day. And it's no coincidence that this tidying-act followed; as have many since i've done this. The heart of the change was actually just putting 4 alarms on my phone.

So what has happened?

I havent learnt to enjoy anything more. Rather, I've started rehabituating my self of control -- by even trivial changes, I am strengthening that sense. The items of my apartment more clearly appear as objects that I can control, rather than a chaotic environment that's beyond control.

This I think is incredibly important in how we frame advice in these cases.

If you have some "learned helplessness", don't focus on the tasks over which you're helpless. Do something quite radically different: practice taking small steps of control, which require minimal effort -- and so on.

This article seems to relay on the idea that by default we can take no action and therefore we don't acquire helplessness as it is the default. But it doesn't seem to make sense? The norm is that we make actions all the time and agency is expected. When one loses their agency then we are talking about learned helplessness. If we want to say "Oh, in fact those people did not learn helplessness since there is nothing like this to learn, it is more accurate to say that they find their circumstances so dire that all actions seem to them unreasonable effort as it won't allow them to change those circumstances." then I guess that true but it seems trivial. It is like saying that if you are so depressed that you don't eat then it is not depression but a default state since you need a reason to eat and you just fail to have that reason. Which is like, the point? We expect healthy people to take care of themselves and if they feel like there is no reason for them to do so then they are not back to some natural state which is fine. So I feel like there is no big discovery here. It is just terminological adjustment so that we can avoid possible misinterpretations plus some new fact from the neuroscience which doesn't change anything about our psychological understanding.

So yea, the big fanfare about "debunking" and how the science progresses are out of place. This is a one paragraph news without citation.

Consider a human child. We are born objectively helpless. Over time, we develop bodily strength and (ideally) learn correct ways of relating to reality. This is effectively rooted in humility, which is not false modesty as we commonly seem to think, but a habit or disposition of assimilating the truth and conforming ourselves to it. (The opposing vice is pride which is a rebellion against truths that we don't like; the result is alienation from reality and delusion and, therefore, objective helplessness.) Conformity with the truth is a prerequisite of prudence (the ability to be able to discern our true good in any given situation), which is a prerequisite of justice (constancy of will in giving everyone their due), which is a prerequisite of fortitude (the ability to remain steadfast in the pursuit of the good in the face of fear), which is a prerequisite of temperance (the moderation of desire in light of our nature and thus objective good).

The point? That we need to learn and acquire virtue to attain self-mastery which is true freedom. (Note the "self". It is not about controlling or dominating others.) There is no one so helpless as someone who is a slave to his passions.

This makes perfect sense to me. I used to suffer severely from “learned helplessness”. I’d spent my entire life dealing with undiagnosed bipolar.

Once I learned my mental issues had a name and could be coped with, it shook me out of that “helplessness”.

Knowing what you have power over lets you focus on the things you can control.

When you can't escape suffering, you learn to cope with it in your mind instead of by escaping the stimulus. This allows you to adapt to a new normal and take what actions you can, optimizing for what you can control.

I see an interesting parallel with mindfulness here.

I guess I've misinterpreted the meaning of "learned helplessness." I've always thought it meant that the person had learned that it was easier to get someone else to do it instead of doing it themselves by feigning helplessness. I guess feigned helplessness is a better term for what I was thinking of?

I very much appreciate this article as it explains how science advances.

I read the book by Seligman and highly recommend it also to people outside the field.

On the other hand it seems like the author needs to justify that science can be wrong and needs refinements.

It’s very tedious. I remember during my PhD that I had to put these disclaimers on top too. I would expect that this is implicitly clear especially in an academic context.

I can't agree with this. Maybe they disproved a particular version of learned helplessness, regarding this dorsal raphe nucleus, but it seems clear that that is not the end of the story.

People and animals clearly learn to stop doing actions that have harmful consequences.

tl;dr Helplessness is the default, what the brain learns is control, examples of "learned helplessness" are actually the brain "unlearning" control.

Honestly doesn't seem like a very meaningful distinction to me.

Thats kind of interesting when you think of it in the context of big government or monopoly or union monopsony vs individual agency of free markets. Just believing that the market is free gives you the sense of control to act on your ideas vs the alternative of perceiving you have no control because union, or government, or marxism, etc. Causes the failure we have seen in those systems.

Everything in an organism is learned.

If you think it isn't then you're not observing the right timescale.

So what you learn is passivity or apathy. Not sure if this brings us forward, but good to know.

There is one place where Learned Helplessness is super prevalent due to loss of control: The behavioral treatment of autism in children.

Applied Behavioral Analysis uses operant conditioning theory and techniques used to coerce behavior and compliance in autistic children. It turns out though, that this “therapy” results in Learned Helplessness and PTSD/cPTSD in 46% of autistic people who later seek further therapy for trauma resulting from the practice.

Autistic people see ABA as torture and abuse. Help me end it.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1__cTL6OryHG5Hr6vwl_s...

A the imho proper and useful concept of "learned helplessness" refers to a situation where someone learns that appearing helpless and asking others for help is the success strategy for achieving any goal. In an environment where this is true, most people will quickly learn this. The situation where this is bad is when a person learns this unconsciously and really believe themselves to be helpless, their learning immediately ruling out even the thought of solving any problems themselves.

There is no reason why both negative and positive stimuli couldn't contribute to such learning. If you reward children every time they ask for help, or punish them every time they try something themselves, or both, there is a big chance they learn helplessness to some degree.