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Full hypnosis download Learned helplessness

Leaned helplessness is a feature of depression for many people. It also lays waste to large quantities of human potential as people fail even to try because they wrongly believe they’re doomed to fail because of past failures.

The psychologist Martin Seligman, an expert in positive psychology and overcoming depression, coined the phrase ‘learned helplessness’ to describe the phenomenon whereby people (and even dogs and rats), because of past experiences where they truly were helpless, believe they are helpless in present situations, even where objectively they are not helpless at all.

For example, if someone was bullied by classmates as a child, they may bring the fear they experienced in that time into an adult group situation, even though now people are friendly and supportive. This fear may prevent them from speaking their minds. Or perhaps a woman who felt trapped and abused in one relationship goes onto to have a new relationship with a kinder man, only to still feel unable to speak up. She still feels helpless even though she no longer is.

I’ll often ask a client suffering from this learned helplessness to imagine a beautiful bird locked in a cage. Although the bird is perfectly capable of flight, its experience is of being unable to fly. Even if the cage door is left open, the bird still feels there is no escape and so doesn’t fly free. Seeing this ‘pattern’ of learned helpless ‘from the outside’ can help the client ‘fly free’ from their own learned helplessness.

Learned helplessness is not the same thing as self pity. It’s really a kind of ‘blind spot’ that masks real opportunities.

I’m sure the new hypnosisdownloads.com session Overcome learned helplessness will help many people fly free from their own particular cages.

All the best

Mark