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Reply To: Intrusive and Anxious Thoughts

Home→Forums→Tough Times→Intrusive and Anxious Thoughts→Reply To: Intrusive and Anxious Thoughts

April 10, 2024 at 8:56 am #431523
anita
Participant

Dear Kshiti:

You are welcome!

“What scares me is how I visualise myself while imagining what if situations, how I imagine myself weeping in a closed room shutting myself from everything else, with no desire to do anything for self care or for taking myself out of that situation– what you are describing here is depression and helplessness- the feeling that you are unable to help yourself, giving up on trying.

I mentioned helplessness to you back on page 1 of your thread, but I don’t think that I brought up the topic of learned helplessness.

very well mind/ learned helplessness: “Learned helplessness occurs when a person who has experienced repeated challenges comes to believe they have no control over their situation. They then give up trying to make changes and accept their fate. In animals, learned helplessness occurs when an animal is repeatedly subjected to an aversive stimulus that it cannot escape. Eventually, the animal will stop trying to avoid the stimulus and behave as if it is utterly helpless to change the situation. Even when opportunities to escape are presented, this learned helplessness will prevent any action…

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<p id=”mntl-sc-block_1-0-4″ class=”comp mntl-sc-block mntl-sc-block-html”>”When people feel that they have no control over their situation, they may begin to behave in a helpless manner. This inaction can lead people to overlook opportunities for relief or change… People may be left feeling that no matter what they do or how hard they work, nothing will make a difference…</p>

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<p id=”mntl-sc-block_1-0-60″ class=”comp mntl-sc-block mntl-sc-block-html”>”Learned helplessness often originates in childhood, and unreliable or unresponsive caregivers can contribute to these feelings… When children need help but no one comes to their aid, they may be left feeling that nothing they do will change their situation. Repeated experiences that bolster these feelings of helplessness and hopelessness can result in growing into adulthood ultimately feeling that there is nothing one can do to change his or her problems. Some common symptoms of learned helplessness in children include: Failure to ask for help, Frustration, Giving up, Lack of effort, Low self-esteem, Passivity, Poor motivation, Procrastination.</p>
<p class=”comp mntl-sc-block mntl-sc-block-html”>”Learned helplessness can also result in anxiety, depression, or both.11 When kids feel that they’ve had no control over the past events of their lives, they gain the expectation that future events will be just as uncontrollable. Because they believe that nothing they do will ever change the outcome of an event, kids are often left thinking that they should not even bother trying…”.</p>
Learned helplessness is evident in wat you shared back in Feb: “I get flashbacks of what I felt during that time, some examples are – ‘nothing ever gets better’ ‘there is no point of looking for my wellbeing’…  I began feeling that just when things started to become better, they went for worse… I began to think that it’s pointless to keep hopes as all I got was traumatic setbacks again and again… I felt that no matter how much I tried, things would always get worse”.

What do you think about this, Kshiti?

anita

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