When bad things happen to us or the people we love, it’s normal to feel down and frustrated.  But when really bad things happen, or when a number of bad things occur that seem to add up, we can become paralyzed by feelings of helplessness.  Losing our sense of control over what matters to us most can be emotionally devastating.   Research shows it can actually put our mental and physical health at risk.  Fortunately, in working with some inspiring people and getting through my own periods of helplessness, I have been encouraged by noticing some shifts we can make that seem to help transform feelings of helplessness and increase our resilience.

Back in school, I was fortunate enough to study with Martin Seligman, a brilliant research psychologist who discovered a phenomenon he called “learned helplessness.”  While he was working on an experiment, he observed an unusual finding.  Dogs that were given a shock quickly learned that they could avoid the shock by jumping over a barrier to escape it.  But dogs who previously had been given shocks that they could not escape, didn’t learn how to escape, because they didn’t even try.  These dogs simply lied down and trembled, assuming there was nothing they could do to alleviate the pain.  The dogs exhibited symptoms of doggy-depression, resigned to endure their suffering.  Even when encouraged with rewards, the dogs did not move.  They had learned to be helpless.  Seligman actually had to physically drag the dogs across the barrier many times for the dogs to discover that there was something they could do to help themselves.

Fortunately, I started working on research with Marty when he began to apply his research to people.  He found that just like the dogs, people are at risk of depression when they’re exposed to stressors they cannot escape.  Seligman’s Learned Helplessness Theory of Depression has received a lot of support as one of the risks for and mechanisms of depression.   Having little control over events in our lives not only causes us to feel sad and hopeless, but we lose the ability to take the steps we can to help ourselves.  This in turn, fuels the depression and causes us to stay trapped in a negative cycle.

So how do we overcome helplessness?  Just like the dogs, we have to drag ourselves over the barrier.  We have to make ourselves take action, even if it’s in our attitude.  One way to do this is by choosing acceptance.  This may seem paradoxical, but it’s actually quite powerful.  Rather than resigning ourselves to be a victim, we can work toward the goal of acceptance, which puts our minds and hearts into action.  In choosing to work toward acceptance, we move forward to engage in coping.  We recognize that there are things in life that happen to us that we cannot control, but that we can do things to cope.  This shift helps engage us in the healing process of grieving, first by acknowledging what happened, and then feeling the sadness, anger, and disruption in the loss of what we once had.  In choosing a path of acceptance, we can reach out for support and talk about what happened, giving ourselves the permission and motivation to be active in identifying and taking care of our needs.

It is no accident that the first step for a member in Alcoholics Anonymous is admitting that you are powerless.  This acceptance helps you move into the activities of the next 11 steps.  But as I often say that change is a process, so is acceptance.  It takes time and effort.  But in working through our responses to the bad things that happen to us in life as a process of acceptance, rather than a passive life of endurance, we put ourselves in charge again.  I have been remarkably inspired in watching people who are confronted by the most challenging circumstances demonstrate the most amazing humility and resourcefulness through acceptance.  A man I knew whose wife had cancer put it best.  He said, “I’ve been sitting around asking why this happened.  But then last night I just told myself there was nothing I could do about it, so why not take her out dancing.”