Hi, my name is Stephanie and today I want to talk to you about the concept of
learned helplessness and autism. This was actually a video suggestion by one of my
Patrons, so thank you for that and letting me know what you would like to
hear about. So, what is learned helplessness? It's kind of what it sounds
like. It's where someone basically learns that nothing they do matters anymore
when they try to get help or help themselves. So, this is a state where
someone's been conditioned, maybe by failure or by someone, like, ignoring
their needs, ignoring them in general, not being able to look to people for help
over and over and over and over to the point they no longer try. And in
experiments, they learned this with some dogs and some electric shocks, basically.
And they learned that dogs conditioned to believe that everything was out of
their control and that there was nothing they could do to make the shocks stop
wouldn't try to do it anymore, and then compared to dogs who hadn't been
conditioned to that, they learn quickly, there was an experiment where they could
just jump over this little half wall and they would be fine. The dogs who had not
been conditioned jumped over just fine because they hadn't learned that
everything that they do is useless and futile. Reading about it actually
concerned me a lot in the regards to children who go through ABA because a
lot of parents report that at the beginning that their child really, really
resisted it and then over time they didn't anymore.
And while there could be a multiple amount of reasons, it's also very
possible that they've been conditioned to learn that their cries for help and
the things that they're trying to tell their parents or trying to tell the
practitioner, their needs, all of that has been ignored to the point that they
don't feel like it's worth asking because no one will help them. This is
actually something I noticed and was really concerning to me in an autism
group that I was a part of. One of the parents of an autistic young man
said that apparently their son had been suffering from very painful headaches
for a while and had never told them and he had just kind of let it slip. And they
said well, your head hurts? And he said, yeah, but you can't do anything about it.
And they said, well, like, how long has this been going on and stuff like that.
So, it leads me to believe that there's been, at some point in that young man's
life, whether it was his family, his teachers, someone has sent him the
message that we can't help you. We're not willing to help you. That's why
children normally go to their parents for every little thing because they
believe that their parents are going to help them. So, that really concerned me
because of the way that he said that. It sounded to me like he had asked for help
before, I don't know if it was them or a teacher, it might not have even
been about headaches, something where people were just like, well we can't help
you. Well, too bad. You know, you just power through it. And he learned that he
couldn't ask for help. Now, autistic people are commonly treated
poorly by other people because they're different.
Especially autistics who have been mainstreamed, because they seem so
different and especially those who have never been diagnosed or who are late
diagnosed because when they were younger, there seemed to be no reason why they
were upset or why things were too much for them or why they did certain things.
And that kind of reaction by people that young can definitely lead to a sense of
helplessness. They learn over time you can't complain because if you complain
no one's going to help you, and they're just gonna ignore you. They're just gonna
be irritated with you. They can't help you. You're just weird. You're just
useless. You just can't do this and you just can't do that and when someone
hears these things over and over and over, when you've tried and you've tried
and you've tried and you failed and you failed and you failed, or when you've
tried and people have been awful back and you try again and people have been
awful back, or you tried to ask for help and there was no help,
this becomes learned helplessness. Where you no longer try. Where you no longer
are motivated to do much, if anything. You're no longer
motivated to ask for help. You don't see other people as a resource and that's
really troubling. So, while this can obviously manifest overall, there's a
few places I've seen it kind of manifest in autistic people, specifically to do
with relationships, whether that's friendships or family relations or love
interests. A lot of people will say, like, no one wants to be my friend. No one's
ever gonna want to be friends with me. Because they learned when they were
younger, all the time when they try to make friends, they were rejected. They
learn that that one time or those few times that they tried to engage in
something as awkward as dating and being in those sorts of relationships, that
they were immediately rejected, that they were just too weird and no one would
love them and no one would like them. This tends to cause what you might
consider a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, because of the hurt, because of learning
that you, you aren't gonna get anywhere, no one's gonna help you, no one's gonna
love you, et cetera, you start to avoid people. And by avoiding people, of course,
you're never going to meet the people who are gonna be your friends. You're
never going to meet the people who are going to love you. And so it's really
frustrating because you just kind of give up on those sorts of things because
you've learned helplessness in that area. Another issue is that many autistics are
considered hypochondriacs by others because whether they're diagnosed or not,
a lot of people don't understand that autism can also come with a plethora of
comorbids. So, people who have gone undiagnosed might be gaslighted a lot
into believing, like, the things that they feel, the things that they
experience, their pain, their whatever else, all of that's just in their head.
They're just attention-seeking. They just want to be this, and they just want to be
that. It's really hard because when you do that to somebody, they no longer trust
professionals to listen to them. So, they might have a very important issue that
needs to be taken care of immediately that, you know, that might be some pain
somewhere or they might be experiencing, you know, trouble eating. I don't know.
Whatever it may be. They've learned that doctors don't believe them, that they're
just considered a hypochondriac, that this and that, and they
won't tell people. And that can lead to some really, really dangerous, if not
lethal, results. This also can be applied to sensory aversive situations. So, I
don't think that we should just like, just deal with it and all that, but I
have seen for me, in my life, there are days that I can handle sensory things
and there are days that I cannot. And those days come and go as they feel. I
also know that I can use different aids like wearing headphones or taking a
break and stuff like that. But a lot of times, what happens for people is
something is really overwhelming, they have a really bad experience, they have a
meltdown, whatever it may be, and these things happen over and over again. And this
often happens in families, where their child is autistic, where they're
constantly having, like, bad things happen at stores or bad things happen at
restaurants, where everyone learns that, you know, you can't take them anywhere
because this is what kept happening and happening. We're not gonna try again. That
can lead to some really bad outcomes for some people, that were they're scared and
they limit themselves from experiencing anything because they had a lot of bad
situations happen and they've learned, like, I don't, I can't try this anymore.
I know all these bad things will happen to me and I can't try again and it's
always gonna be the same as it was before. I think this is actually what
people mean when they say not to let autism define you. A lot of people really
hate that phrase and I understand some people do think like, oh, autism is
this bad disease. Don't let you, like, don't be labeled by autism,
blah, blah, blah. But I think some people mean not to let the bad things ruin your
ability to try again. Because sometimes, I think, honestly, I think that autistics
may be more susceptible to learned helplessness. That's just a personal
theory. I don't personally have any scientific backing for that statement or
that claim, but I think it seems to be very easy for autistic people to learn
helplessness and for us to decide, like, it's not worth
it anymore. You know, I'm done with people. I'm done with all these places. It hurts
too much, whether physically or internally, and then, of course, learned
helplessness is a major issue with mental health. And unfortunately, autistic
individuals do tend to have poor mental health, probably due to being in a world
that's not always favorable, with people who aren't always educated. And people
don't always mean to, but they can do some really hurtful things and that just
makes it really hard. And that added to the fact that a lot of us do have, like,
anxiety and things that can be helped by balancing out chemicals and stuff like
that. So, what can we do? Because, obviously, this is an issue. It's not a nice place
to be in. The good news is that therapies can help. Going to someone, a
therapist of some sort, to kind of talk about those things. The problem is, of
course, someone who has learned helplessness might not be in the place
where they feel that they can ask for help. But if you're seeing this in
yourself, you're seeing, like, you know, I don't trust anybody or this is always
gonna turn out bad, I know, you know, these things happen over and over and over and
I'm not gonna try that again. If you find yourself in that place, I encourage you
to try one more time. Just try to make that appointment with a therapist to
talk and see if they can't help you. Because, so, with, like, a shorter term of
having learned helplessness, therapies tend to be able to, like, completely
reverse it. For a longer term learned ... helplessness, it does appear that,
you know, it's gonna take a longer time to deal with, more time of therapy and it
might not be, like, a complete turnaround, but it is, it's gonna help. And we don't
have to be in a state where we never try again because people hurt us or we never
try again because people didn't believe us. And I understand, like, that's not easy.
It's not easy to try again when people have been hurtful to you. It's really not.
That's part of, like, what I want to do, is I want to make the world a better place
for people to be able to talk to their doctor, to be able to talk to their
therapist, and not feel like they can't go to them because of that perpetual
rejection and that perpetual failure to get what they needed. Anyway, thank you
so much for watching. If you found this informational or enjoyed it in any way,
go ahead and leave a like. Let me know if you have any thoughts in the comments
below and hopefully for the Patron who sent this to me, hopefully this is kind
of the conversation you were hoping to hear about. Also, I do upload to this
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Thank you so much. I hope you have a wonderful week and I'll see you in my
next video. Bye!