Overcome the habit of learned helplessness

Learned helplessness can be unlearned - giving you greater autonomy and freedom

Do you often feel it's a waste of time to think about doing certain things, because you just 'know' you can't do them?

Do you always instantly dismiss suggestions that there might be ways through your difficulties that you just haven't tried yet, because you are sure they 'won't work' for you?

It's common for people who are experiencing depression to feel that everything is hopeless, and that they can't do anything about it. But even people who aren't depressed can find themselves really held back in life because of their fixed notions of what they can and can't do. Just where do these notions come from? What gives you the idea that specific things are beyond your capabilities and so not worth bothering to try?

How Martin Seligman identified 'learned helplessness'

This question intrigued psychologist Martin Seligman, who was studying the curious behavior of some dogs. When they were put in a 'trap' situation where there was an escape route that was not difficult to find, they made no effort to escape. Instead, they became lethargic and did nothing at all. But another group of similar dogs readily escaped the trap. There was one significant difference between the two groups of dogs.

The first group had previously experienced a similar 'trap' situation in which there was, in fact, no escape. The second group had not had such an experience. Seligman and his co-researchers hypothesized that the first group had 'learned' that there was 'nothing they could do' in such a situation. So, even though there was a readily discoverable escape route in their experiment, these dogs made no effort to find it.

Escaping from the limits of learned helplessness

Of course, humans are not dogs, but this response pattern is often seen among people too. If you have had experiences which have taught you, or somebody important to you repeatedly told you, that you can't do X or Y, you may come to regard your inability to do X or Y as a 'given' that you just have to accept - even if, in different circumstances, there is nothing to prevent you from doing X or Y.

The real challenge of overcoming learned helplessness, however, is realizing that you need to overcome it in the first place. When you 'take it for granted' that you can't do something, you don't go looking for ways to do it, and so you can get pointlessly stuck for a long time.

As you are reading this page, something or someone has got you past that point, and you are wondering whether, in fact, you could take a different view of what's possible for you. And, if so, how?

Hypnosis can help you break out of imaginary limitations

Overcome learned helplessness is an audio hypnosis session created by psychologists which will help you break through the limitations you imagine (or others have told you) make a fence around your life. You will experience the transforming effect of allowing yourself to go into deep trance and activate all the hidden and as yet unrealized powers of your unconscious mind.

You won't suddenly acquire super-powers. You will still be a normal human being. But you will enjoy the liberating feeling of manacles falling from your wrists, of doors opening before you which you believed were shut and barred for ever. As you listen repeatedly you will find yourself much quicker to notice and take advantage of opportunities, and becoming so much more able to do more of what you want in life.

Download Overcome learned helplessness and set yourself free from imagined constraints.