- Hey everybody, happy Thursday.
Now today's question comes from Twitter.
I asked a bunch of you for your questions and you sent
them in and this one's a good one.
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But let's get into that question.
And the question is,
Kati, I'd love to know your opinion on learned helplessness,
whether or not you believe it's something that strongly
affects people and if so, the best way to unlearn it.
Veritasium did a video on it a while back and I want
your take on it.
I will link his video in the description.
It is a great video and this was super interesting
for me to research, so thanks for asking it.
Now in a nutshell, what I learned about learned helplessness
is that it was something studied in 1967.
Back then, just so you know, they could do studies
on things that technically they couldn't
get away with now.
What they did was they had three different studies
on groups of dogs and yes, I'm just as upset as you
that they did these studies on dogs.
Briefly, I want to tell you how the research studies
were set up so that we can kind of understand
how they came to believe that learned helplessness
was a thing, okay?
I'm going to read from my notes to make sure
I don't forget anything or misinterpret the information.
All three groups of dogs, so they broke the dogs
into three different groups, they were
all given shocks randomly.
Some could escape the shocks while others had no way out.
So some were let out of their harnesses so they could
get out and get away.
Others could hit a lever to stop the shocks and some
couldn't do anything.
The ones that couldn't get out were then moved
to another area, with the other dogs.
So the ones that had no way to escape the shocks
were then placed with the other dogs that could.
This other area that they were moved to,
with the other dogs, the only thing they had to do
to escape the shocks was to jump over a short wall.
The dogs that were able to escape prior, jumped over
that wall, they're like, I don't want to get shocked.
I'm outta here.
But the dogs who weren't able to escape
the shocks previously, didn't even try
to escape it this time, even though they could.
This learned behavior that they observed in the dogs,
the belief that no matter what they did,
they could never escape the shocks, is what they
then called learned helplessness.
That's really where that term originated from.
They found that the only way to get these dogs to unlearn
that learned helplessness, was to physically go
into the cages, pick the dogs up and remove them
from the area where they were being shocked.
They'd have to do this at least two times.
For many dogs, they had to do it many more times,
until they would realize that they could actually leave
and they had control over what was happening to them.
The way that I believe learned helplessness could present
in people would be as a result of abuse,
especially constant abuse.
Any of us who have been diagnosed with CPTSD
could understand that maybe we've been stuck
in that freeze state, off and on throughout our whole lives.
Remember when I did those videos with Alexa,
we talked about fight or flight and freeze.
So flight or flight is up here and our normal range
is here, right?
Fight or flight, I can get out.
Freeze is when we dissociate.
We honestly know that there's nothing we can do
to get out and we freeze, hoping that the pain
or the abuse or whatever's going on will just stop.
I honestly think that we could deem the freeze state
another form of learned helplessness.
After the study that they did with the dogs,
future research went on to study humans and to figure
out if we also struggle with this learned helplessness.
The way that they went about it with humans is that
they had us in rooms, taking tests or doing tasks,
and some people had this loud noise going on
that they could never turn off.
The other group had the same loud noise going on
but they knew that they had the ability to turn it off.
The person who sat them in the room said,
"if that becomes a bother to you, you can flip the switch
"and turn it off."
Whether or not they actually turned it off is irrelevant.
Just the belief that they could made all the difference,
because when they looked at the tasks and what they
were asked to complete, those who knew they had the power
to turn that noise off, even if they left it on,
did much better than those who didn't.
Those who didn't feel they had any control
did much more poorly on their tasks.
So what that tells us is actually great news.
What that means is it's all about our perception
and what we tell ourselves.
You know how much I love positive self talk
and that is what we can do to get out
of this learned helplessness state and the belief
that nothing we do is ever going to change
what's happening to us.
We can change our thoughts, therefore we can change
how we feel and how we respond to our environment.
Just like I always say, the first thing that we can do
when we're trying to change those negative
or pessimistic or learned helplessness thoughts,
is to start noticing them.
Start tracking how often you have pessimistic beliefs
and thoughts run through your head, saying things
to yourself like this'll never get better.
Nothing I do is ever right.
I'm always going to be stuck in this shitty situation.
Whatever it is you say to yourself, I want you
to first notice and then I would like you
to talk back to it.
I'd like you to replace that pessimistic thought
or belief with a positive, a more happy outlook on life.
I know it can be hard at first.
Sometimes it helps to imagine that a good friend
or a loved one is saying it instead, because overall,
I believe this positive self talk tool, we're putting
it in our belt, it can help not only take away
depressive symptoms and learned helplessness thoughts
and behaviors, but it can also just help our resiliency.
The more able we are to fight those automatic thoughts
or things in our environment we can't control,
the more we're able to keep those at bay and know
that we're going to be okay, the better we'll feel overall.
If you think about it, that kind of just
makes logical sense, right?
As we continue in that positive path, it can give us
the strength and resiliency so that we feel confident
and strong enough that we'll never find ourselves
in a situation like that again.
And just like Derek from Veritasium said in his video,
"I just hope that this video lets you know that you do
"have the power to change your life."
"You have the ability to manage any
"of those learned helplessness or pessimistic thoughts
"that may run around in your head."
You can stop that.
You can help yourself.
You are never helpless.
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As always, leave in the comments other thoughts
that you have, maybe things that I missed.
There's so much to talk about when it comes
to learned helplessness and if you want more information
about depression or other topics,
check out those playlists and I'll see you next time, bye!