I just can’t do it!

I remember being asked by two different people on two separate occasions what I wanted to achieve in a particular area. I gave my answer straight away without even thinking. They both responded with the same answer “so what’s stopping you?”. I stopped to think for a moment and then gave my stock answer. They both asked the same question separately because to them there was no reason why there should be any hesitation around me doing this particular thing.

After both interactions, I thought to myself, were the reasons for me not doing it really valid? Or had I just decided that the reasons were enough for me to believe I couldn’t do this thing right now? Had I put a self imposed limit on myself? Was I acting a bit helpless? At that moment I realised that I had to stop making excuses and start putting a plan together.

Learned helplessness

There is a psychological term called “Learned Helplessness”. When someone goes through a lot of negative events in their life, they eventually decide that they have no power to change their life for the better. This is because deep down they believe that bad things will always happen to them. This leads them to having a lack of motivation, numbness and a feeling of helplessness. The person still responds with negativity, lack of motivation, being passive and feeling helpless, even when good opportunities or good people come into their life. Therefore they never get out of the learned helplessness loop and therefore they sadly don’t live life to their full potential. 

Think about that person, or two, in your life who you dread asking how they are because they always have something to moan about (we have all met someone like this!). It could be a family member, friend, fellow student or work colleague. Now I don’t mean, they have gone through a one off situation and they need to vent, no I’m talking about every time to speak to them they are moaning about the same thing or things they were moaning about 5 years ago. It’s got to the point where you have stopped suggesting ideas of how to improve their situation because you know that they will find every excuse under the sun why the ideas won’t work. 

You leave the conversation drained knowing that you will hear the same moaning the next time you meet. This is one example of how someone has developed learned helplessness. They have incorrectly resigned to the fact that there is nothing they can do to change their situation or mindset. They hate it but it becomes their reality because they subconsciously find comfort in this helpless way of thinking.

Dogs

Learned helplessness was a term devised from psychologists Steven F. Maier and Martin E. P. Seligman in the 1960's. They did some experiments on dogs. A group of dogs were placed in an area where they couldn’t escape. When in the area that they couldn’t escape, they received electric shocks. 

Another group of dogs were placed in an area that was divided by a panel. These dogs could escape the electric shocks by pressing the panel with their nose and leaving.

The next stage of the experiment was placing the dogs in a new area that was divided by a barrier in the middle. The dogs could escape the electric shocks by jumping over the barrier. The psychologists found that the dogs who could escape the first round of electric shocks by pressing the pressing panel with their nose, jumped over the barrier during the second experiment to escape the electric shocks. What about the dogs who couldn’t escape the electric shocks in the first round experiment? Yep you probably guessed it, they didn’t try to escape by jumping over the barrier. Due to the pain they had experienced from the electric shocks which wasn't their fault, with no way of escape, they had sadly learned to become helpless and accept that they had to get shocked.

Way before the 60's

Even though the term was made public in the 1960's, that doesn’t mean that people weren’t experiencing learned helplessness long before then. There were people documented in the Bible who experienced what we call learned helplessness. 

One person was the disabled man who Jesus healed. This is discussed in the Bible, in the Book of John, Chapter 5. This man hadn’t been able to walk for 38 years as a result he lay by the pool of Bethesda all day, everyday. Now this pool was traditionally known to have healing properties. It was said that when an angel stirred it, the pool would bubble up. When this happened, the first person to reach the pool would be healed. As a result the pool area was always surrounded by ill people. When it came to the disabled man at the pool, the Bible says: 

“When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”.  “I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”  Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!” - John 5:6-8

The disabled man had what we would now call learned helplessness. He had gone through the trauma of ill health through his disability, which was not his fault. For 38 years the man would’ve over time become demoralised at not being able to move without the help from someone. He may have also been made to feel less than by people in his life during those 38 years. He may have encountered missed opportunity after missed opportunity, due to not being able to walk. All these events and situations may have led to depression, lack of motivation and an increasing sense of helplessness. 

Even when an opportunity arose, that according to tradition, could cure him of his illness, the little bit of hope he had left was enough for the man to find a way to get to the pool of Bethesda, so he could change his situation for the better. However, when the man got by the pool, he was met with another obstacle, yet another negative event, no one would carry him to the pool when it started to bubble. Even if he dragged himself to the pool using his arms, he wouldn't have been the first one there to be healed, as tradition stated. He probably felt, yet again, that no one actually cared about him. He probably thought everyone was too selfish to care if he got healed or not. He may have been so demoralised that he may have even thought that no one would care if he wasn’t alive anymore. Yes, the final deep sense of helplessness. 

So when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came along with yet another opportunity to change the man’s situation for the better, what does the disabled man do? He turns down the opportunity! The learned helplessness was deeply set in by this point, so the man knew straight away to tell Jesus that he couldn’t get well. If you currently have physical ill health or mental ill health or have in the past, and someone came to you and asked you “Would you like to get well?”, then I’m sure for the majority of you that your answer would be “YES!”. This wasn’t the case for this man when Jesus asked him this very question. This was because of his life experience, the man had decided that there was no point in believing he could get better. His learned helplessness had changed his mindset, so regardless of what opportunities came his way to improve his situation, he wasn’t going to take it and accept the help from others. 

Now the difference with his man was that he wasn’t interacting with just some kind by ordinary man who would’ve either:

1. Tried to persuade the disabled man to let him carry him to the pool, at the next appropriate time, and then get frustrated when the disabled man refused to let him help him.

2. Walked away feeling sorry for the disabled man.

   
   

No, the disabled man was interacting with God the Son himself, Jesus Christ. Jesus didn’t need to sit around trying to persuade the man to let him help him. Instead Jesus used His divine powers and His grace to heal the man, whether the man had hope and wanted the help of being healed or not.

How to overcome learned helplessness

If you resonate with any of this yet but feel there is no way out of this way of thinking because life has been too cruel to you, then these tips may help you:

1. Reframe your mindset: Martin Seligman also created the term “Learned Optimism”. Learned helplessness creates a mindset of never being able to change your circumstances, no matter what opportunities come around or who tries to help. By shifting your mindset to one of learned optimism encourages you to challenge the negative thoughts in your mind by making small changes in how you think and react. 

   
   

   With learned optimism, when you face a setback, instead of going straight to self blame or despair, you reframe your thoughts to look for alternative explanations or solutions to get out of the situation. Harvard University Research Assistant, Charlotte Nickerson, uses an example of instead of thinking, “I failed because I’m not good enough,” a person practising learned optimism might think, “This was a tough situation, but I can learn from it and do better next time”.

2. Understanding what you can and can’t control: When we face trauma and setbacks in life, it’s easy to want to avoid ever being hurt again. Some people do this by trying to control every aspect of their lives. Ironically, this can include controlling how much they don’t do. This is because they feel their life is so out of control that the feeling of helplessness sets in and they give up and don’t do anything. Choosing to not do anything is a type of control too.

   
   

   You need to understand which aspects of your life that you can have a healthy level of control over and focus on those areas. Again, Charlotte Nickerson, says these are the areas that we can have some control over: 

• Your attitude: Choose to approach challenges with a positive, can-do mindset.

• Your effort: Decide how much time and energy you put into your goals (I have to add that you have to put some effort in though as a minimum!).

• Your response: You can’t always control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to it.

• Your self-care: Prioritise taking care of your physical and mental health.

• Your relationships: Nurture the relationships that bring positivity into your life.

  
  

By focusing on these areas, rather than trying to control what may happen to you as the result of other people’s actions, who you can’t control anyway, means that you can make small steps to improve the quality of your life. 

“The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.” - 1 Corinthians 10:13

3. Learn to fail: When you try something and fail at it, it helps us to build resilience. We see where we can improve. If we take ownership of it and make the active decision to see where we can improve next time, then studies by Psychologist, Carole Dweck, have shown that this way of thinking helps reduce learned helplessness. 

4. Learned hopefulness: Trying new things and maybe failing at it at first will lead to learned hopefulness instead of learned helplessness. Learned hopefulness is allowing yourself to try new experiences or develop new skills. Trying new experiences allows you to learn which areas of your life you can have some healthy control in. If it doesn’t work out then that can also build resilience, as well as making life more interesting and exciting. This helps you not focus so much on the negative situations of the past because you are motivated by the new opportunities in your life.

   
   

5. Seek support: God designed us to be social creatures. We aren’t meant to go through life alone. However we can have deep rooted wounds because of the trauma we have gone through or the hurt people have caused us. This can make us want to be alone because it feels safer. Sometimes our trauma wounds are so deep that we need support from a professional to help us to safely unwrap the years of bandages that we have wrapped around ourselves to deal with the wounds. If you feel that you have deep trauma wounds that are keeping you in a learned helplessness state, then seriously consider having therapy sessions to help you heal from the negative events of your past. 

   
   

   Speaking from experience, the professional therapy I have had alongside my faith and guidance from the Lord, is what has made me truly heal and move on from past negative events. 

   
   

   If you have had traditional counselling and still feel that you are stuck, then look into other types of psychotherapy like EMDR or EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). If you need help achieving a certain goal then consider having coaching or mentoring sessions. If you want a safe place to be vulnerable with others who have a shared life experience, then look into support groups. 

   
   

6. Lean into Jesus: Just like with the disabled man at the pool, when Jesus healed him, when the man had given up and felt helpless, Jesus can do this with you too. If you truly surrender to Jesus and when I say surrender, I don’t mean just thinking “I believe in Jesus but I think I've got control of all this”. I mean you lay everything down. I’m talking about laying down your pride, your need to control everything, the past trauma, your rejection and abandonment issues, your lack of motivation and your learned helplessness. You lay it all down and tell God the Father, in your prayer, that everything you have tried in order to not feel helpless and hopeless hasn’t worked, so you need Jesus Christ to fully take control and lead your steps so you get out of the helplessness spiral.  

   
   

   You then repent to God, not to anyone else but to God the Father himself through your faith in Jesus. You repent to God for not trusting God when positive opportunities, no matter how small, came in your life but instead you rejected them due to your learned helplessness. Remember repentance isn’t just your words, it’s more importantly your actions. You truly repent when you have stopped doing the learned helplessness and actively show that you are now trusting God. Just saying you won’t do it, isn’t repentance. A change in actions and behaviour is repentance. 

   
   

   Being honest with God, privately laying all the messy and complicated stuff down before Jesus, asking Him to take control of your life and repenting for not trusting Him is true surrender to God. 

   
   

   If you truly believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, died for your sins, came back to life on the third day, is your personal Lord and Saviour and is your only access to God the Father and the Holy Spirit. Then when you fully surrender, then Jesus Christ will step in and take control of the wheel that is your life. The Holy Spirit will then lead you to the opportunities and positive experiences that will help you heal from past hurt and trauma, so you can be released from the years of learned helplessness. 

   
   

“And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will” - Romans 8:26-27

All you have to do is trust Jesus and truly believe that He loves you and only wants the best for you. Ignore the lies from the devil and his demons, who will whisper to you doubts, will whisper the idea that you have to isolate yourself from everyone, will whisper the constant reminders of your past hurt, will whisper the idea that no one likes you and everyone is out to get you. They are all lies because this is what the devil does, he and his army of demons have been watching and studying us all our whole lives. So they will take a real past negative event that you experienced but they will distort your mindset around the event with so many lies that you start to believe that you can never move on from the pain and hurt, so you become stuck in learned helplessness. 

“Where have you come from?” the Lord asked Satan. Satan answered the Lord, “I have been patrolling the earth, watching everything that’s going on” - Job 1:7

“So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” - James 4:7

“Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are” - 1 Peter 5:8-9

“The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. May the grace of our Lord Jesus be with you” - Romans 16:20

So instead of listening to compulsive lying fallen angels, who are the devil and his demons, who make you feel that you can never achieve anything in life. Always remember that the devil and his demons never achieved anything they planned to do in heaven, the only thing they achieved was getting kicked out of heaven and they hate you anyway, so they are the last group you should be listening to! 

Try listening and surrendering to the one true God who created you, the one true God who loves you and the one true God who cannot lie. Let Jesus Christ in, so he can help you, lead you to the right people and opportunities, give you hope, reframe your mindset and heal your mind. Just like he healed the man at the pool.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding” - Proverbs 3:5