Pattern Of Helplessness As A Reaction To Trauma

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Up to a certain age, we are exclusively what our parents broadcast to us about us. If mom loves us, then we know about ourselves that we are worthy of love. If it rejects and depreciates, we grow up with a sometimes distinct, sometimes deeply hidden inside from ourselves and those around us, a sense of our own badness.

The feeling of one's own weakness, helplessness in the face of life's difficulties, disbelief in one's own strengths and strong fear (of difficulties and of a fiasco) are the experiences of a person who did not have sufficient, constant and stable support from parents in childhood, but had problems in the experience that did not correspond his strength and development.

In an exaggerated metaphor: as if a person who has never played sports is obliged to win the Olympic Games. That is, common sense will tell any adult that these are unrealistic requirements and should not be agreed to. But the child does not have such filters in front of the parents' expectations. If something is persistently expected or demanded from him, the child feels the need to comply. In this situation, some become “achievers”. Others do not cope, and if the parent does not provide enough support here and does not lower the bar: they are traumatized by disappointment and rejection. When, besides the opinion of adults about oneself, there is still nothing to rely on, the only conclusion that arises is the knowledge of oneself as bad, flawed, insufficiently suitable, about whom the mother is upset, or the grandmother is ashamed, or about whom dad had a better opinion.

Subsequently, any, even feasible, new difficulties can subjectively meet with helpless horror. This happens because the child cannot independently process the amount of guilt and shame that arises when his parents are disappointed with him. And in adulthood, every time life situations can potentially threaten a person, albeit in a small percentage with an unfavorable outcome, there is so much fear of experiencing that unbearable cocktail of feelings again that paralysis occurs. The situation ceases to be seen in real size. The risks are perceived as enormous and causing irreparable damage, so that against their background the potential opportunities can in no way outweigh and give energy to try.

If a person is prone to violence against himself, then life turns into a cruel struggle with his “inferiority” in attempts to force himself to ignore his own powerlessness and finally get down to “business”. Often, without sufficient attention to the needs that lie behind this difficult condition, a person after some time finds himself in depression, which only aggravates the feeling of his own badness. Because in order to start doing something, it is necessary to enlist the support that was so lacking in childhood. At least in the person of your therapist, who will help you find your resource, notice your successes, and support you in those places of experience where frustration will inevitably arise. People who tend to feel helpless often suffer from a banal lack of experience in many areas of life, which is difficult to get due to the great fear of getting it in a negative way. The difficulty lies in accepting the inevitability of obtaining not only positive experience in life, in increasing the client's ability to experience it and learn to find and appreciate its positive meaning (since any experience goes to the piggy bank of our knowledge about ourselves and the world.)

Often these clients have a dependent character structure. And they often show breakdowns, escaping from the zone of stress into addictive actions: compulsive spending of money, overeating, promiscuous sexual relations, gambling addiction, workaholism, addictive relationships with one partner, which push the rest of life to the periphery. This is a way to distract yourself from solving the main problem, and the unbearable feelings that it causes. For example, a person who suffers from financial difficulties all his life can borrow money to go on a trip, and then whatever happens. And upon his return, he is forced to repay debts painfully and difficultly. And it makes you feel even more helpless and incapable of anything.

People with strong patterns of helplessness often become adept at manipulators. Some are well aware of themselves in this role and poorly acknowledge fear. Others - know themselves from childhood, as a deprived poor fellow-loser, and fiercely resent any attempts to draw attention to what is the use of adults for them in this position.

Most of all, these people want to become "normal": sufficiently mature, stable, reliable, strong, independent and self-confident. But they don't understand how to do it. Rigid, perverted forms of creative adaptation to life (the only possible at one time), although they bring their own benefits, but in general have a destructive effect on the system of human relations with oneself and the world, and load emotional life with excessive shame, guilt and fear of the future.

If you, while reading this text, recognized yourself, but are currently depressed, it is important to start finding help in order to get out of the depressed state: find a specialist, if necessary, a psychiatrist (to prescribe medication support) and a psychotherapist with whom you can recover to a stable mental state. Then you can begin to notice reality. In what I do not have experience at all and am afraid to get it, and in what do I feel quite stable? What am I good at? The reality is that I am an adult and already have the potential to have enough strength and resources to learn to cope with many life difficulties, relying on someone stable and reliable. What are the real consequences of possible failure or failure that scare me the most? How can they affect my life and how can I cope with it, who can I turn to for help? (Replaying the worst-case scenario significantly reduces anxiety.) Step by step.

Not everything that a person knows about himself from childhood - characterizes him for real at a given moment in time. And only thanks to the new experience gained, you can find out about yourself.