Learned helplessness and the lockdown
https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/control/learned-helple
Here is an observation made by the great Dave Chappell, it – as it did the author - will make you think about this lockdown differently:
"Anyone that generates money has an invested interest in control!!
So, how do you control those that are uncontrollable?
That's easy!!
All you have to do is beat that person down with fear, then lay back and give them alcohol and pharmaceutical drugs and they will be so grateful you fixed the fear that they'll forget that it was you that did it too them in the first place!!"
https://therapybits.com/2018/03/02/do-you-suffer-from-learned-helplessness/
Now think about how (1) the Government creates debt to generate more money for them i.e. £1 trillion stimulus package, (2) how they have stated that off-licences stay open, (3) how they are throwing out anti-depressants and anxiety medicines like rice at a wedding, (4) how they are using the media to instil the fear of an "Invisible Enemy" that will kill you if Government sanctioned precautions are not taken and (5) telling everyone to stay at home for another 3 weeks and get food and supplies delivered to them (This is form of operant conditioning that further reinforces learned helplessness).
https://www.optimumperformanceinstitute.com/failure-to-launch-syndrome/learne
Hence, learned helplessness occurs when an individual continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to change their circumstances, even when they should do so. Discovering the loss of control (i.e. the lockdown) essentially elicits a passive response to the harmful situation (Need the author say more?!). This leads to learned helplessness facilitating several different psychological disorders. Depression, anxiety, phobias, Low self-esteem, passivity, poor motivation, giving up e.g. suicide, lack of effort, frustration, procrastination, failure to ask for - or seek – help and shyness and loneliness (are you seeing it yet?) can all be exacerbated by learned helplessness.
https://txm.com/overcoming-four-big-barriers-lean-culture-part-3-overcoming-lea
The term was coined in 1967 by the American psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier. The pair was conducting research on animal behaviour that involved delivering electric shocks to dogs. Dogs who learned that they couldn’t escape the shock stopped trying in subsequent experiments, even when it became possible to avoid the shock by jumping over a barrier. (The researchers later realized they had picked up on a slightly different behaviour, learning control, but studies have since confirmed that learned helplessness occurs after classically conditioned to think that the situation cannot be changed.) The phenomenon exists in many animal species as well as in people. For example, Seligman subjected study participants to loud, unpleasant noises, with a lever that would or would not stop the sounds. The group whose lever wouldn’t stop the sound in the first round stopped trying to silence the noise in the second round. Therefore, an individual becomes unable or unwilling to avoid subsequent encounters with those stimuli, even if they are “escapable,” presumably because it has learned that it cannot control the situation.
https://foreverjobless.com/learned-helplessness/
What style are you?
So, what explains why some people develop learned helplessness and others do not? Why is it specific to some situations but more global in others?
Many researchers believe that attribution or explanatory styles play a role in determining how people are impacted by learned helplessness. This view suggests that an individual's characteristic style of explaining events helps determine whether they will develop learned helplessness. But when you take direction from external sources then that information naturally becomes how you interpret and explain the narrative of the information to others i.e. information becomes perception and perception becomes behaviour and guarantees the individual demands their helplessness Not unlike the public support for the Coronavirus Bill and the Lockdown after the media hysteria was created).
A pessimistic explanatory style is associated with a greater likelihood of experiencing learned helplessness. People with this explanatory style tend to view negative events as being inescapable and unavoidable and tend to take personal responsibility for such negative events (Not unlike how the Government has been able to get the public to report their neighbours and self-isolate because they fear a seasonal flu and/or spreading it).
People can push back against learned helplessness by practicing autonomy i.e. as stated in the Bill of Rights and Human Rights Acts and self-resilience, self-worth and self-compassion. Engaging in activities that restore self-control. For example, an elderly person who feels helpless in the aging process can engage in small exercises that they know they can do to restore a sense of control. So, the author asks: are you a helpless dog?
