Episode 14: Season 3: Rethinking Our Thoughts Part II: What Is Learned Helplessness and How Can I Overcome It?

[00:00:00] Hello Beloveds and welcome to Christian Emotional Recovery, a podcast for those who are survivors of childhood trauma, emotional neglect and narcissistic abuse.

[00:00:16] This podcast is hosted by Rachel Leroy, a college professor and trauma survivor. Many of us spend years trying to heal and don't get anywhere.

[00:00:28] We don't always target the trauma itself, which is so often what keeps us stuck.

[00:00:34] This podcast is where faith meets science. Rachel is an emotional healing expert with 20 years of experience applying healing modalities that helped her start making progress after nothing else worked.

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[00:01:09] Hello everyone and welcome to Christian Emotional Recovery, season 3 episode 14. I'm your host, Rachel Leroy,

[00:01:25] and this episode is rethinking our thoughts part two. What has learned helplessness and how can I overcome it?

[00:01:35] This is season 3 episode 14 rethinking our thoughts part two in a series.

[00:01:41] And this one is what has learned helplessness and how can I overcome it?

[00:01:45] Now this was a two part series. It's a two part series rethinking our thoughts and part one was episode 13,

[00:01:52] and it was rethinking our thoughts part one what are cognitive distortions and how can I overcome them?

[00:01:58] And then for the second part of this series we're doing rethinking our thoughts part two, what has learned helplessness and how can I overcome it?

[00:02:06] Now primarily on this channel we focus on getting to the root of trauma in other words what caused it, what contributed to it,

[00:02:13] where did it come from and rooting into those experiences in a way where we can feel those experiences understand those experiences validate them and allow them to come up and out through our neural network.

[00:02:28] And it's also primarily about somatic or body work because that's where trauma lies is in the body and in the root of what happened with the trauma.

[00:02:38] However, I do believe that there is something too also thinking about our thoughts and even though the primary source of healing for trauma is in the body and in experience,

[00:02:51] is also a healing power and being aware of our thoughts and rethinking those thoughts and in turning those into a different way of thinking so that we can have a more productive life.

[00:03:06] So on this channel I do believe in a holistic approach, and that's why we're doing this series.

[00:03:11] So just a few things about the channel. If you haven't, please go to the YouTube channel and like the YouTube channel and subscribe where you can get exclusives that you can't get on the podcast or anywhere else.

[00:03:25] There is a little overlap but about 90% of it, 80 or 90% of it is not overlap. Now you can find the podcast on the YouTube channel that there's a separate video playlist that I have as well that is exclusive to the YouTube channel.

[00:03:40] So check that out. If you haven't checked out the Facebook group, go to Christian Emotion Recovery on Facebook and subscribe where you can get support and weekly memes of encouragement and community with other survivors like yourself.

[00:03:55] And also if you'd like to support this ministry go to cofi.com that's a reputable site, k-o-fi.com and I'll put the link in the show notes along with all these other links.

[00:04:07] And that's where you can make a one time donation and if you'd like to donate monthly, you can donate $5, 10 or $25, you can go to Patreon and that's also a reputable site for donating monthly in that case.

[00:04:20] That I will also put the link in the show notes. Okay, so let's go ahead and jump right into this episode. So this one is learn helplessness and you know that term I have a little bit of mixed feelings about it but basically learned helplessness is a psychological term and I believe it was coined by Martin Seligman and his partner and there is some there are some some research studies that he did that are controversial.

[00:04:49] Because they did involve animals and I have mixed feelings about that but the research has been done and so I do want to present them here because it is something that helps you to understand the nature of trauma and the nature of adverse experiences and just stress.

[00:05:07] Chronic stress can lead to trauma in some cases. So what am I talking about with this experiment? Let's go ahead and jump into what learned helplessness is how can it help you to understand what learned helplessness is and how do you flip that into what's called learned optimism instead.

[00:05:24] Learned keyword learned here remember on this on this channel we do not do toxic positivity and we do not do bypassing and bypassing is when it's like you're experiencing trauma and so it's like, oh, you just need to pray harder or just think positively and everything will be all right and you know stuff like that.

[00:05:44] And so this is learned optimism in other words it's a skill that can be cultivated and learned helplessness if you experience that like I have a lot you probably can extrapolate what it means just by the term but we will talk about it then you might also, you know,

[00:06:05] have a lot of learned helplessness that you're not even aware of and some of which you are but either way if you've experienced strong aces or adverse childhood experiences or if you've experienced a lot of narcissistic abuse childhood emotional neglect childhood trauma or childhood abuse emotional abuse or any kind of adult trauma or abuse as well sexual abuse or anything anything that's traumatic.

[00:06:30] That's really traumatic then you may have a sense of learned helplessness in certain areas of your life or in a lot of areas of your life that's the other thing is that learned helplessness you might excel in one area of your life and then be.

[00:06:43] Really bad in another area so like you might be really good at relationships and not good at money or the other way around you might be really good at your career and making money but you're not good at relationships.

[00:06:55] So most of us who have experienced trauma we do see the price paid in different areas of our lives right there are deficits there are shortcomings there are things we just don't feel like we can get right.

[00:07:06] Let's go ahead and jump into learned helplessness and talk about it what is learned so we'll talk about what is learned helplessness and we'll talk about the experiment that.

[00:07:16] The experiment that came up with a theory in how he amended it we'll talk about learned what causes learned helplessness we'll talk about the symptoms of it and then what are ways to overcome learn helplessness that's the whole point is to flip the script to overcome it to cultivate learned optimism.

[00:07:36] And that's one of the resources that we'll be using today is a book that's been around for a while and it's by Martin Seligman and it's called learned optimism how to change your mind and your life and I'm going to read a few passages from my old copy here.

[00:07:51] And then we'll talk about the solution or the antidote to that and so we'll also talk about the resources that can help you to overcome this in steps you can take okay.

[00:08:07] So first of all it's good to know that this theory is based more in cognitive based therapies and you know a lot of therapists and psychologists use different therapies in conjunction with one another it's not all one thing or the other.

[00:08:24] And so using a combination of therapies can be very helpful but just cognitive based therapy rarely heals somebody with extensive trauma.

[00:08:34] So you do have to use other treatments in conjunction with this but this particular therapy talks mainly about cognitive therapy and cognitive therapy helps it's just that it works better in conjunction with more body based therapies like EMDR or ART if you're not sure what those are.

[00:08:52] Look up the look up the letters and it'll tell you I just I'm just really bad remembering abbreviations but they're basically body based therapies that help you to remove trauma in a more visceral.

[00:09:05] So what is learned helplessness now I have three sources here I already told you about the book the other two or two articles one is what is learned helplessness in medical news today by.

[00:09:21] Jane Leonard and it's medically reviewed by Danielle Wade and then another one is learned helplessness and C PTSD so this one actually connects the concept of learned helplessness with the concept of complex trauma and this is in psych central learned helplessness and C PTSD and this one is by Jared Pistoya I think it is Jared Pistoya and it's medically reviewed by Matthew Boland okay PhD.

[00:09:49] Let's jump right into what is learned helplessness in the medical news today.

[00:09:57] There's a we talk about it talks about what is learned helplessness obviously the intro to the article so I wanted to read that just so you can get a sense based on an expert.

[00:10:09] Learned helplessness is because I think they can articulate what it is better than I can and it says in the medical news today article in psychology learned helplessness is a state that occurs.

[00:10:20] After a person has experienced a stressful situation repeatedly they come to believe they are unable to control or change the situation so they do not try even when opportunities for change become available.

[00:10:33] And it says psychologists first described learned helplessness in 1967 after a series of experiments on animals suggesting that their findings could applaud a humans learned helplessness leads to increased feelings of stress and depression.

[00:10:47] For some people it is linked to PTSD post traumatic stress disorder and it says this article explores the state of learned helplessness and suggests waste overcoming.

[00:10:57] And it goes further in a sub tied or what is learned helplessness. It says according to the American Psychological Association learned helplessness occurs when someone repeatedly faces uncontrollable stressful situations then does not exercise control when it becomes available.

[00:11:14] This is my thoughts. So if this happens to you when you're a child how an earth can you do that you don't even know that you can do that you don't even know that that's a thing and you probably don't have the capacity to do it anyway.

[00:11:25] So if you get conditioned from childhood to have a lot of learned helplessness that's not your fault what you do with it is up to you and that sucks. It's not fair that you have all of this baggage that you have to deal with as somebody else put there.

[00:11:38] But that is the reality is that you can learn or unlearn this helplessness and learn a more active and proactive way to approach life.

[00:11:51] And so it says they have learned that they are helpless in that situation and no longer try to change it even when changes possible. Once a person having this experience discovers that they cannot control events around them they lose their motivation.

[00:12:05] If an opportunity arises that allows the person to alter their circumstances they do not take action. Individuals experiencing learned helplessness are often less able to make decisions.

[00:12:16] So helplessness it says can increase a person's risk of depression. Professor Martin Siligman one of the psychologists credited with defining learned helplessness has detailed three key features.

[00:12:27] One becoming passive in the face of trauma to difficulty learning that responses can control trauma and three an increase in stress levels.

[00:12:37] So that's a little bit about what learned helplessness is and some of the key components of some of the key components of learned helplessness.

[00:12:55] And so I wanted to also talk about look at the history of it because it's very brief but learning the history of learned helplessness will actually help you to understand where this study comes from.

[00:13:10] How it formed and how it impacts human psychology because then you can see the cause and effect relationship between certain stimuli or things that happen or triggers and a reaction.

[00:13:26] Okay so let me preface this part by saying that I do not support animal testing in general and these studies were done in the 60s of a lot has changed its than and it's horrible that in this this in this study most of us are would be a part of course that they used electric shocks on dogs.

[00:13:47] But that's the reality that's what happened and of course even a lot of these a lot of the scientists look back on the work they did in their glad they got results but they're not glad about how they came about them.

[00:14:02] So a lot of this study has been modified also in terms of the content of it, but I'm just going to go ahead and read it with that little disclaimer in mind.

[00:14:10] The history in medical news today says in 1967 professor silicon and his partner was professor Steven Mayer first described their theory of learned helplessness.

[00:14:22] The researchers conducted studies on dogs in which they exposed the animals to a series of electric shocks.

[00:14:28] The dogs could not control the shocks, the ones that could not control the shocks eventually showed signs of depression and anxiety and those that could press a lever to stop the shocks did not.

[00:14:39] So in other words they had some autonomy.

[00:14:42] That's why in this platform we emphasize agency personal choice and autonomy because those are absolutely vital for somebody who's healing and for the dignity of any human being in my opinion.

[00:14:58] And then it says in follow-up research the dogs that could not control the shocks and the first experiment did not even try to avoid the shocks despite the fact that they could have done so by jumping over a small barrier.

[00:15:10] They had to learn to become helplessness and then it says that the ones that had the lever actually did jump over the barrier.

[00:15:18] So they understood in their mind they had been conditioned oh there's a way I have a way I can do something about this.

[00:15:26] So even if somebody doesn't have a way out of a situation like when you're a child, if you're an abusive situation there's really nothing you can do about it and even if you could the thought would never occur to you like that doesn't even come up for most people.

[00:15:39] When you're seven or eleven years old it just doesn't come up.

[00:15:43] But so when you get older and you do have agency and you are a grown adult, you still are conditioned to feel helpless like a child and that's not your fault because that's how your mind is programmed.

[00:15:57] So that's why we do the healing work here in order to reprogram our minds right?

[00:16:02] So it also says still under the history many years later however professor may or conducted neuroscientific research that suggested that the dogs did not in fact learn helplessness instead they had not learned control.

[00:16:20] So it took it almost sounded like they blamed the dogs for their own response that's horrible, but it put it back on the situation that the dogs just did not know how to respond to that situation because they have never been taught.

[00:16:36] Kids that are taught that their bodies are theirs kids that are taught that it's okay to say no respectfully to an adult kids that are taught that even if they are disciplined.

[00:16:46] That it's okay to set boundaries in certain contexts and kids that are taught that they have agency and that they have choices.

[00:16:55] Then they're more likely to do that when they're adults if you're taught sit down and shut up you don't get to say here even if it's not like.

[00:17:04] Bladed in abuse but more like harsh parenting or neglect like you're you cry and your mom doesn't come then you're going to start to believe that nobody's ever going to come and that it's always you see what I'm saying how that.

[00:17:18] that leads into adulthood with those thoughts so professor silicon it says also coined the turn term learned optimism which is used to challenge negative thoughts and combat learned helplessness.

[00:17:31] So I love that statement I'll say it again professor settlement also coined the term learned optimism which is used to challenge negative thoughts and combat learned helplessness.

[00:17:42] So that's a little bit about what learned helplessness is a little bit about the history of it and a little bit about the.

[00:17:54] The you know what the experiment and tell and how that connects to how our thoughts are in our own experiences on quite often in childhood and how we're conditioned and programmed.

[00:18:04] To feel and to be helpless and we don't even know there's another option but you can question your thoughts you can question your feelings you can feel your feelings and validate them and still question them.

[00:18:15] And that's the thing that that you have more power than you could ever imagine when you re-condition yourself God gave us autonomy God gave us free choice and that's part of why we love our neighbor is because we respect do want to others as you would have them do want to you.

[00:18:31] So I wanted to talk about cellic men's amended conclusion, cellic men in mayors amended conclusion where they made an update to their study and it was.

[00:18:41] So this was a long time later, but it says this is the psych central article and it's cellic men and mayors amended conclusion and it says according to their 2016 updated study.

[00:18:55] cellic men in mayors reversed the conclusion that the dogs actually didn't learn to be helpless in response to the shocks rather the passive helplessness behavior they demonstrated is the default reaction to prolonged an imminent stress.

[00:19:10] In other words, the dogs didn't actually learn helpless behavior but instead failed to learn how to escape from the extreme stress.

[00:19:18] Now that sounds like splitting here but it's actually significant because it proves and shows that we'll first of all it wasn't the dogs fault however they responded.

[00:19:26] The second of all you couldn't even try to blame the dogs or try to blame a person that's in a similar situation their response is all they could have known and so it takes reconditioning and retraining.

[00:19:41] To learn a different response and that's why daily healing work is so important or if you don't do it daily you do it several times a week regular healing work and healing practice is essential to.

[00:19:56] healing and to reprogramming your mind and to learning to take control of your life and living the life that God intended you to live.

[00:20:04] Okay, so I thought it was important to talk about his amended theory he and his partners amended theory many many years later and we over time have started to take a less punitive approach to healing work and blaming the victim or the survivor less and realizing it's not their fault.

[00:20:23] But also putting power and agency back in the survivors hands so that they can reprogram themselves so they can let God reprogram who they are in Christ.

[00:20:32] And so they can begin to heal and take an active role in their own life and making changes the more it's like a snowball effect the more you do it the more you know you can the more you know you can the more you do it.

[00:20:44] If you get out of practice you may revert to an old pattern but if you come back to it you'll you know you'll be able to get back into practice and feel more like you have control over your life and I bet when you're actively doing healing work you do feel that way more and that there's a reason for that.

[00:21:04] And because you're not sitting back and having that learned helplessness and it is something you have to deal with for the rest of your life and it does get become more natural to have more learned optimism and stay at but it does take time and there is a snowball effect.

[00:21:19] So when you you know take a break that's fine and then come back to the work just make sure you come back to what that's the key okay.

[00:21:28] Okay, so in the psych central article it's who does learned helplessness effect and it says learn helplessness can affect anyone of course.

[00:21:37] It can often begin an early childhood especially if a child was abused or neglected according to a 2016 review of studies under these circumstances.

[00:21:47] A child can take on a significant amount of emotional distress and ultimately develop feelings of helplessness.

[00:21:54] Abuse and neglect are particularly problematic in childhood because kids are unlikely to associate what they're experiencing with abuse.

[00:22:02] They also have less knowledge and fewer resources to take actionable changes to make actionable changes the result for example could be that the child grows up believing their worthless.

[00:22:12] Incidentally, in significant or powerless in the face of stress or adversity the early traumatic experiences of childhood can then develop into more complicated conditions such as CPTSD.

[00:22:24] And then as an extension of that this is the article on CPTSD and learned helplessness.

[00:22:31] The next section in psych central says learned helplessness is most commonly observed in major depression, but it can also occur in complex PTSD or CPTSD.

[00:22:40] Now keep in mind, PTSD is when a single event or a couple of single events affects somebody's responses in their mind and the way that they react to things.

[00:22:52] CPTSD is when you have triggers over a long period of time usually in the case of childhood emotional neglect or childhood abuse or something similar to that.

[00:23:02] And it says here CPTSD is a more severe form of PTSD typically develops after prolonged repeated trauma.

[00:23:12] Although more current research is needed, the learned helplessness theory may also help to explain why conditions like CPTSD develop.

[00:23:21] And I would also argue that while they're not exactly the same, there's a strong correlation between learned helplessness and disassociation as well.

[00:23:30] But situations it says that result in learned helplessness behaviors parallel those that create CPTSD according to a 2011 study, namely exposure to prolonged trauma experiences could cause a sense of helplessness about the situation.

[00:23:49] And major depression is one of the strong connections to learn helplessness and so it's CPTSD.

[00:24:01] And so that's a little bit about who does it affect and how it's connected to trauma and chronic trauma.

[00:24:08] So what are the symptoms of learned helplessness? The symptoms and medical news today, the symptoms and medical news today include it says learned helplessness can impair a person's ability to handle stressful situations.

[00:24:22] We know that it can also increase the risk of mental health conditions like depression and anxiety that makes sense.

[00:24:29] So the more agency we have, the less likely we are to experience anxiety and depression and that's another reason that I emphasize agency on this channel.

[00:24:39] We are not going to be as autonomy, free will, free choice. Not allowing somebody to take that away from you, setting kind boundaries, not letting people run over you and override your free will choices and respecting and allowing the other, the same for other people even if you don't agree with or like their choices.

[00:24:58] As long as they're not harming themselves in a very destructive way and as long as they're not harming someone else.

[00:25:06] So the symptoms include it says, feeling a lack of control over the outcome of situations, failing to ask for help, having low self-esteem, decreased motivation, putting less effort into tasks, lack of persistence, feelings of frustration, passivity and giving up easily.

[00:25:25] So those are some of the symptoms of learned helplessness. So we've talked all about learned helplessness, let's look at learned optimism. What is it?

[00:25:36] And what is a way that you can overcome this?

[00:25:40] So this concept here is more a mindset and an idea. And it's not necessarily where you have a concrete practice, but you know it might be hope to get the learned optimism book by Seligman.

[00:25:55] I have a copy of it sitting here on my desk.

[00:25:57] And I'm going to read a few passages from it, but I also wanted to read learned optimism and like some of the antidotes to some of the ways that you can start to reprogram your mind.

[00:26:12] And then the medical news today and the psych central article, it says, now in these articles you can read them, it goes into more detail in the medical news when impact on children impacts on adults, consequences, linked to mental health conditions.

[00:26:27] But it talks about how to overcome learned helplessness.

[00:26:30] And here in the medical news today article, here are some ways that you can do this. Now, keeping mind is like a developed ways to decrease feelings of hopelessness and you're like, well how do I do that?

[00:26:42] So these are abstract here.

[00:26:44] But if you get the book and if you want to learn more about it, there are courses you can take, you can watch YouTube videos and there are articles that will give you specific practices on certain things that are listed here.

[00:26:57] And you can also read it on your own. I'll link the source below as well.

[00:27:02] Medical news today, it says in therapy, people can receive support and encouragement, explore the origins of learned helplessness, develop ways to decrease feelings of helplessness, identify negative thoughts that contribute to learned helplessness, identify behaviors that reinforce learned helplessness, replace thoughts and behaviors with more positive and beneficial ones.

[00:27:26] So there's a podcast episode that I talked about flipping the script and that was one of the first podcast episodes I did a couple of years ago.

[00:27:35] And I'll include that in the show notes, and that's one thing that you might do to help you to start replacing some of those negative thoughts with positive thoughts because I know that's easier said than done.

[00:27:46] And I struggled with that my whole life and that's why it has to be something deeper and something more rooted inside of you and not just like this sort of methodical replacement of old behavior with new needs to be something that sticks.

[00:28:01] So healing that sticks is one thing and the other one is flipping the script, changing the narrative around your experiences in your life.

[00:28:11] And so another one is identify behaviors that reinforce learned helplessness, replace thoughts and behaviors with more positive and beneficial ones.

[00:28:19] Improves self esteem, work through challenging emotions and address instances of abuse, neglect and trauma.

[00:28:27] So yes, getting to the root of your trauma also helps with learned helplessness and I think it's important to do that work more.

[00:28:35] But to be aware of this other component of it and how conditioning your mind from the ins outside in can also be helpful even though doing more of the work from the inside out is more helpful.

[00:28:47] So it makes sense.

[00:28:48] So doing the work from addressing instances of abuse, neglect and trauma and doing this somatic work in my opinion is more powerful for a trauma survivor but that does not mean that reconditioning your mind doesn't have its place because it does.

[00:29:02] And the last one is set goals and tasks for themselves in other words agency autonomy free will.

[00:29:08] And then it says some older research also suggests that exercise can prevent learned helplessness and animals and I would argue it does there's so much anecdotal and scientific evidence that exercise helps us to feel.

[00:29:21] And so we can also say that the more people on calmer, more in control, clear minded people that do exercise actually perform better on intellectual tests as well.

[00:29:32] So there's definitely something about the brain functioning better and you being able to function better as a result.

[00:29:38] And it also says though there is no research into this particular effect of exercise in humans.

[00:29:44] And it's a personal benefit to mental health and can reduce or prevent anxiety depression stress and other health problems eating a helpful diet, meditating and practicing mindfulness our other lifestyle changes that can boost a person's mental health and outlook.

[00:29:59] And we would also say scripture time with God listening to Christian music listening to any kind of positive upbeat music prayer all of those go along with these other practices in terms of the benefits they have on the body and on the mind and on overcoming learned helplessness.

[00:30:21] So those are some things that you can do to overcome learned helplessness. There's also a little section in psych central that talks about that.

[00:30:30] And it basically talks about cognitive therapy and EMDR or I movement de-sensitization therapy are good therapies for treating learned helplessness that's from the psych central article.

[00:30:45] And it also talks a little bit more about how we self talk, how self talk can impact our healing and how positive self talk can be a way to reconditions ourselves for learned optimism.

[00:31:04] And it says here in psych central the role of explanatory styles. It says the updated conclusions from the Seligman and Mayor study suggest that a hopeful way of making sense of complicated circumstances also known as explanatory style I would say self talk can overcome learned helplessness.

[00:31:24] They elaborate that this is likely the best defense against the default helpless response. Your explanatory style centers around the beliefs of how much influence you have on a situation.

[00:31:34] If you see yourself as a passive agent in an uncontrollable situation, are you believe you have some influence on a situation and hope that it will not be permanent that hope would underlie a semblance of control.

[00:31:48] Both perspectives influence your potential for helpless behavior explain the researchers. If you're explanatory style is passive that's that self talk, the narrative, the script that I talked about a minute ago.

[00:32:02] You may feel there's nothing that can be done to recover from depression or significant trauma so you don't try. Ultimately this enables your sense of helpless helplessness.

[00:32:11] If you're explainatory style this active, you may view your trauma as a learning experience. I hate that but you know it's true. It is it's true.

[00:32:20] And I'm seeing more of our culture's mindset learn going more towards learned helplessness and it's kind of scary because people are like, I can't see it as a own something as a learning experience. This should have never happened to me.

[00:32:31] Yeah, you're absolutely right. It should have never happened to you but you know what it did and is it your fault? No, it's not and does it suck? Yeah, it sucks. Is it fair? No, it's not fair.

[00:32:43] But you know what it is here and it is the reality. So dealing with it is what we need to do and being constructive about it is the way to heal.

[00:32:56] And so don't do anything to block your own healing. Validate yourself and don't wallow in this shit and have happened to me so long that it keeps that in itself.

[00:33:06] The validation can become a form of I don't want to say self pity, but yeah, self pity and while we're is seeing it as learning experience not oh God gave this to me so I would learn but here it is it happened. So I'm going to learn from it. You see the difference moving forward that will help you to move forward.

[00:33:25] And then lastly it says this style could then serve to protect against helplessness by enabling a hopeful perspective. Okay, and then it gives you some resources at the bottom about EMDR therapy cognitive therapy for trauma and PTSD and self help God to see PTSD and PTSD.

[00:33:44] So those are some things that you could look at at the bottom of the psych central article that is linked in the show notes. Okay, so a couple of other things learned optimism the book by Martin Seligman I'm going to read a few passages bear with me here. You may hear my book Flapping around and I'm just reading them kind of randomly. I haven't really planned what I'm going to say but I've read this book a couple of times meaning many years ago it's been a long time.

[00:34:12] But I just wanted to read a couple of things that stood out to me first in the part where we talked about explainatory styles.

[00:34:20] There's a section in the book called Explainatory explanatory styles and there's a guy named John T's Dale who is an expert that's done research in this area as well.

[00:34:31] And this is Seligman responding to him and he said I learned that for T's Dale the solution came down to this. How people explain to themselves the bad things that happened to them.

[00:34:41] People who made certain kinds of explanations he believed are prey to helplessness teaching them to change those explanations might prove an effective way to treat depression.

[00:34:53] So that's powerful. That's powerful in that sort of riffs off of what I was saying before and then there's another section here on I think it's a section on ultimate pessimism as a strange title but anyway, there's a section here and it says they simple results directly identified the source of learned helplessness.

[00:35:16] So I guess this was one of the studies and they had done something with rats. He's poor animals, but it says it was caused by experience in which subjects learned that nothing they did mattered and that their responses didn't work to bring them what they wanted.

[00:35:31] You might have experienced that in childhood and that would explain learned helplessness and then it says this experience taught them to expect that in the future and in new situations their actions would once again be futile.

[00:35:46] And then a little bit below it says learned helplessness could be cured by showing the subject his own actions now work.

[00:35:55] It could also be cured by teaching the subject to think differently about what caused him to fail.

[00:36:00] It would be prevented if before the experience with helplessness occurred the subject learned that his actions made a difference.

[00:36:09] The earlier in life such mastery was learned the more effect of the immunization against helplessness and this is my word, but we can learn it later in life.

[00:36:18] It's called neuroplasticity, their science all over the place about how we can rewire our brains they didn't even believe that until 20 or 30 years ago and there's overwhelming evidence that adults can reprogram their minds.

[00:36:31] And then it talks about in the next page there's a list of symptoms.

[00:36:40] And um, applied them to people in animals that had taken part and learned helplessness experiments and one of them said helpless people in animals didn't think very well.

[00:36:49] And we're in attentive they had extraordinary difficulty learning anything new and had trouble paying attention to crucial cues that signal rewards or safety.

[00:36:58] So it's like they didn't even pick up on there that sucks right that's not fair, but like I said when you start to train your mind you'll start to notice those things you'll start to fight against those things you'll start to see a different way.

[00:37:11] I don't even like the concept of fighting against something I like the concept of integrating something new that's better than fighting against something but in another place in the learned optimism book it says.

[00:37:25] Silling men says we can more or less easily distance ourselves from the unfounded accusations of others, but we are much more worse at distancing ourselves from the accusations that we launch daily at ourselves.

[00:37:38] After all if we think them about ourselves they must be true wrong what we say to ourselves when we face a set set back can be just as baseless as the ratings of a jealous rival.

[00:37:50] I reflexive explanations are usually distortions. You see how that connects to what we talked about last time with a cognitive distortions cognitive distortions actually can contribute to learned helplessness and so if you can work on your cognitive distortions you'll also be working on learned helplessness.

[00:38:07] And then it says they are mere bad habits of thought produced by unpleasant experiences in the past but childhood conflicts by strict parents by an overly critical little league coach by your sister's jealousy.

[00:38:19] But because they seem to issue from ourselves we treat them as gospel so in other words somebody plant something in your head intentionally or unintentionally and then it's internalized and then we repeat it back to ourselves.

[00:38:33] So you may have an internalized narcissistic uncle or an internalized abusive grandmother in your head talking to you if that's the person that that spent the most time with you or maybe even cost the most trauma and learning to question those voices and learning to quiet those voices is everything and it can be done.

[00:38:54] But it says they are merely beliefs however and just believing something doesn't make it so just because a person fears that he is unemployable, unlovable or inadequate doesn't mean it's true.

[00:39:05] It's essential to stand back and suspend belief for a moment to distance yourself from our pessimistic explanations at least long enough to verify their accuracy checking out accuracy of our reflexive beliefs is what disputation is all about.

[00:39:23] Another word question your negative assumptions question them evaluate them analyze them objectively use logic and then it says the first step is just knowing your beliefs weren't dispute.

[00:39:38] The next step is putting disputation into practice in other words questioning that negative narrative and flipping the script right so I'm still thumbing through the book here you may hear me thumbing around in here.

[00:39:49] I think that's all the quotes that I wanted to read from the book but that just gives you an idea of some of the content in the book and so like I said I will put that in the.

[00:39:59] I'm showing notes as one of the resources and that is what you might get this book as a good first step on if you're like I don't know where to start how do I work on my learned helplessness and flip the script into learn optimism.

[00:40:13] I would say work on cognitive distortions so go back to part one of the series and get the book on feeling good by forgot the guy's name burns and then the other one is learned optimism and that's by Martin Seligman and go through those books slowly journal out the responses and the work underlying things read it aloud listen to it again and again and get this stuff in your mind and start reprogramming it.

[00:40:42] That's something you can do I'm not saying you have to but that's something that you can do and so that's a little bit about what learned helplessness is how it connects to the first and when we did on cognitive distortions and how taking a holistic approach.

[00:40:57] to not just thinking about the source of our trauma which is the most important thing but also considering the impacts of that in terms of our thinking can have such an impact so we talked about what learned helplessness was.

[00:41:11] the experiment that brought about this scientific research what causes learned helplessness what the symptoms are and antidotes to that through learned optimism and specific therapeutic approaches.

[00:41:25] I hope this episode has been helpful like I said go click on check out the show notes for the resources click on the subscribe bell in the YouTube channel which is linked below as well.

[00:41:38] Please feel free to join the Facebook group, Christian Emotional Recovery if you want to contribute to this channel so I can continue to do this work go to the links below in order to contribute one is co-fi dot com and the other one is patreon dot com.

[00:41:53] Thank you so much for listening this was part two in a two part series and this was season three episode 14 part one was season three episode 13 and it was what are cognitive distortions and how can I overcome them.

[00:42:09] and this one was what is learned helplessness and how cannot overcome it. Remember that you have autonomy and you have agency and you have power and God gave that to you and this isn't about trying to be in control of everything.

[00:42:24] It's about being in control of yourself and by doing that you're allowing God to work in your life more actively.

[00:42:32] And changes possible healing is possible is about doing the reconditioning and reprogramming daily healing work and you do start to see changes as time goes on.

[00:42:43] Thank you so much for listening remember you are fearfully and wonderfully made and God loves you.

[00:42:49] Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode of Christian Emotional Recovery hosted by Rachel LaRoy for links to this week's resources and to join the discussion check out this episodes show notes at christianemotionalrecovery.com

[00:43:07] where you can also find links to our YouTube channel and Facebook group join our email list and get other episodes and resources.

[00:43:15] If you enjoyed the podcast please rate and review the podcast and tell a friend who may benefit from this message.

[00:43:22] See you next time and remember beloveds God loves you and you are fearfully and wonderfully made.