It's developed after a prolonged periods of adversity.
**CONTENT WARNING** This story mentions the topic of abusive relationships.
Sometimes, it’s hard to keep pushing yourself to accomplish something when it feels like you’ve struck out so many times—eventually, it feels easier to just give up. Maybe you’ve experienced a lot of rejection while dating, for instance, and it’s put you into a negative headspace. You end up thinking you’ll never find a compatible partner, so you stop going on a dates altogether.
This psychological phenomenon is called learned helplessness: It’s the belief that you have limited control over what happens to you and nothing you do will improve your circumstances, so it’s best to not even try, says Shawntres Parks, PhD, LMFT, a licensed marriage and family therapist and Women's Health advisory board member based in West Covina, California. It develops after experiencing prolonged periods (i.e. several months to years) of adversity.
Even when there are opportunities to grow and try different strategies, someone with learned helplessness feels so beaten down that they don’t give themselves the chance, says Lauren Cook, PsyD, a licensed clinical psychologist, keynote speaker, and author of Generation Anxiety based in Pasadena, California. For example, maybe you always struggled with writing and public speaking as a student. In the workplace, you may struggle to give presentations, and because of that, have trouble with your confidence. The result? Even when you're up for a promotion at your job, you don't broach the topic with your manager because you assume you won’t get it.
If you identify even the tiniest bit with this, it’s okay—there are steps you can take to leave learned helplessness behind. Ahead, experts identify the signs and causes of learned helplessness, plus, how to overcome this self-defeating outlook.
Learned helplessness isn’t a mental health condition itself—but it can be a sign of one.
Most notably, learned helplessness goes hand-in-hand with depression. They have a sort of symbiotic relationship: Depression is a symptom of learned helplessness, and learned helplessness is a symptom of depression, says Kate Cummins, PsyD, a licensed clinical psychologist in California. In fact, to diagnose someone with depression, learned helplessness is a necessary symptom to identify, she adds. But that's not the only mental health condition it's associated with—learned helplessness can also trigger anxiety.
Those with learned helplessness may also experience these symptoms, according to the experts:
Low self-esteem
Apathy
Isolation
Shame and guilt
Feeling a lack of control
Feeling unmotivated
Feelings of disassociation
Procrastinating important tasks
Insomnia
Stomach unrest/indigestion
Avoiding discomfort, change, and trying new things
Overthinking past experiences and obsessing over details that don’t matter
Any negative, repetitive circumstances experienced over time can create learned helplessness.
These negative experiences can be forms of systemic oppression, like patriarchal, gender-based, or race-based oppression, Parks says. Or maybe you have a learning disability and didn’t receive any supportive services at school, so you associate academics with your negative experiences. These events will lead you to assume you have limited control over your life, and eventually, develop into learned helplessness.
Some other common causes of learned helplessness include:
Unhealthy Family Dynamics
Learned helplessness can be a result of enmeshed families, where people are very dependent on their loved ones, and often ask for their approval and permission before making decisions. “They feel like they can't do things without that support,” Cook says. If someone doesn’t feel independent enough to make a decision without their family, they might give up and not make the decision at all.
For instance, if you tell your mom that you want to break up with your partner, but your family is enmeshed, she might say that you shouldn’t because your S.O. offers you a lot of stability. Sometimes, your family is “not always able to see what the person's values are or what their happiness may be,” Cook says. However, because you're enmeshed, you stay with that partner since your mom told you to.
The Nature vs. Nurture Factor
Trauma
Learned helplessness can come from traumas, such as experiencing abuse from a partner or family member. “In [romantic] relationships, learned helplessness comes from your inability to control your partner's thoughts about you or the way that they treat you,” Cummins says. While you may feel powerless to change your situation, know that help is available. If you are in an abusive relationship, reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text "START" to 88788.
Another type of trauma that can cause learned helplessness might be a situational struggle, says Cummins. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic was a global trauma that enacted learned helplessness around the world because no one had control over their own life anymore due to the lack of knowledge about how to treat the virus. During the height of the pandemic, it was common to feel hopeless.
Overconfidence
Sometimes, learned helplessness develops after someone is always being told they’re really good at something, Cook says. That positive feedback can inadvertently put pressure on this person to stay good, so they stop trying because they don't want to put in the effort, in case they fail.
Say you’ve always been told you’re amazing at public speaking, so you don’t prepare at all for a work presentation, then you totally bomb it. Those with learned helplessness have difficulty embracing a beginner's mindset—a.k.a. treating this work presentation like it's your first one and, therefore, being open to learning how to best prepare for it—due to a fear of failure, says Cook. So, even though you "failed" your presentation, it’s justified in your mind because you remind yourself that didn’t try in the first place. This cycle of believing you shouldn't try because you'll never succeed continues and can ultimately lead to learned helplessness.
Learned helplessness holds people back from achieving their full potential.
Those with learned helplessness “have a really hard time with growth mindset and change and evolution,” says Cummins. Consequently, they end up stuck in a rigid state in life because they're paralyzed by indecision, which prevents them from taking risks and moving forward.
Learned helplessness tends to manifest as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy where someone doesn't go after what they want because they've already decided “they're not worthy of it or they're not going to get it,” Cummins says. Maybe they want to meet a romantic partner, but they have a mindset of “well, no one's ever loved me and no one ever will,” so they don’t go to parties or approach people in social situations, Cummins says.
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On a professional level, someone with learned helplessness may not apply for a job that requires public speaking because they believe that their audience wouldn’t ever accept them or embrace them, Cummins says.
How Explanatory Styles Impact Learned Helplessness
There are many ways to overcome learned helplessness.
It's important to take steps towards tackling this self-defeating outlook “to see that we can break out of the box because we've told ourselves that we can't,” Cook says. Here's what you can do to overcome learned helplessness:
Gradually expose yourself to your fears.
You know the old adage, “Do one thing a day that scares you”? Now's the time to put that phrase into practice. If you have performance anxiety with public speaking, don’t go from zero to 100 and give a speech in front of a thousand people. Instead, challenge yourself to contribute one statement in your next meeting, and build your confidence from there. “Put yourself out there bit by bit, and start to get positive feedback from the world,” she says. “That is the best way to break through.”
Maintain friendships with positive pals.
Friends who have a positive perspective on life will “help to challenge that negative thought loop,” Parks says. They can be a valuable resource whenever you need a gut check to see if your negative perspective on a situation is valid.
Say you want to start working out but don’t know how, have a friend help you sign up for two workout classes in a week. Then, go—either by yourself or with that friend. This will show you that you do know how to work out. Whether you have a workout buddy or simply text your friend after class, “creating relational accountability is really good for learned helplessness,” says Cummins.
Journal to understand yourself better.
Grab a pen and paper, and write out your fears and thoughts around your rigid mindset, including the history of when it started, and any context around why it might have begun. Cummins recommends delving into these questions: Where did this come from? Why do I think this way?
Change your internal dialogue.
“Your internal dialogue is a very powerful tool to change your experience of learned helplessness,” Parks says. Challenge pessimistic thoughts with balanced, neutral, or even positive perspectives through the words you use.
Say you’re struggling with dating in the city you just moved to. Try this reframing exercise: Question how likely it is that your circumstances won’t change by thinking about how many other people have moved and still gone on dates and ended up meeting their partners—literally millions!
When you recognize how many other people have been successful with your same goal, question why it wouldn’t be possible for you. Instead of thinking of yourself as the evidence that you won’t meet someone, think of the others being the evidence that you can and will, Parks says. Ask yourself: Why not? Why wouldn’t this happen to me?
Another exercise is asking yourself what advice you’d give to a friend or family member in the same situation. This is helpful because learned helplessness “often doesn't apply to our thoughts about others’ efficacy”—it only applies to how you think about your own, Parks says. When you think of what you'd tell them, say it to yourself.
If possible, seek out mental health resources.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is especially helpful for those with learned helplessness because it addresses a client’s black or white thought process, Cummins says. This type of therapy “teaches the person to understand these negative thoughts that are dictating their emotions and behavior and override them with different perspectives” that challenge their mindset, she says.
So, back to the marathon example: If you don’t believe you’ll be able to run 26.2 miles because you’ve never run more than half a mile, your CBT therapist may give you a homework assignment of running (or walking) one mile before your next session. This challenges the learned helplessness because “it misaligns with the lack of truth,” says Cummins, and shows you that you, in fact, can run one mile. From there, continue building on that one mile and you'll eventually get to 26 of them. This will teach you to accept new challenges and changes because you're showing yourself that you can do it, Cummins says.
Give yourself credit.
Learned helplessness usually isn’t coming from a place of compassion, Cook says, so counter it by being kind to yourself. It’s about “giving yourself credit for showing up and not having the expectations be about perfectionism or doing it right,” she says. So, if you ran that mile and didn’t achieve what you consider to be a “fast” pace, ask yourself: Did I put in effort? Did I give it a shot? Then, give yourself credit for showing up.
Those with learned helplessness can “get into that all-or-nothing thinking where they either mastered it or they didn't do it at all,” Cook says. “We're looking for a nice stepping stone of an in-between.” You can't spell "stepping stone" without "step," so simply focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Even if you stumble at first—especially if you stumble—give yourself grace.