Quotes & Sayings About Learned Helplessness

Repetitive, forceful corrections had taught this gentle dog that at a specific spot the handler would always yank the lead. Thus, each time the Newf arrived at that point, she'd freeze for a beat and close her eyes in anticipation of the impending blow. This caused her to lag, which led to another correction, which resulted in more lagging, another correction, ad infinitum.
It was a classic example of canine learned helplessness, whereby a dog learns to accept abuse as a natural, inevitable consequence of living with humans. Repeated corrections had only frightened and confused the animal, and she was trying to protect herself in the only way she knew how. — Joel M. McMains

You can't forge a relationship with learned helplessness, you can only force one and it will always be tenuous. There is always the possibility the peregrine will rediscover the strength of his heart. — Rebecca K. O'Connor

Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn't matter. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

When you cried, I learned what helplessness tastes like. Because all I could do was swallow. — Penny Reid

I thought society would do the right thing. Now I look around and I think
society never does the right thing. Sometimes people do the right thing. Sometimes one person makes a difference. But civilization has rules, and I've learned them well
never be helpless, never be sick, never be poor. — Christina Dodd

Do you vote? If not, is it because you think it doesn't matter because things never change, or politicians are evil on both sides, or one vote in several million doesn't count? Yeah, that's learned helplessness. — David McRaney

Greeders who plunder and steal from their people - not only steal their supporters and their childrens' future, but they also smash their mindsets and create learned helplessness that ensures people stay small. — Tony Dovale

J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and class, journeying to war and returning home. I've heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures' myths, and maybe that was true. I don't know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream.
Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don't have enough myths of our own, we'll latch onto those of others - even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it's human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight. — N.K. Jemisin

Poor dusky children of slavery, men and women of my own race-the transition from slavery to freedom was too sudden for you! The bright dreams were too rudely dispelled; you were not prepared for the new life that opened before you, and the great masses of the North learned to look upon your helplessness with indifference-learned to speak of you as an idle, dependent race. Reason should have prompted kinder thoughts. Charity is ever kind. — Elizabeth Keckley

It seems as though we can no longer imagine anyone but a professional or an institution or a product supplying our daily needs or solving our problems. This learned helplessness is, of course, much to the advantage of the corporations eager to step forward and do all this work for us. One — Michael Pollan

In fact, if there was one thing Tabitha had learned from the weekend thus far, it was that people had all sorts of facades about them, covering tucked-away bits of badness and goodness. Fear and courage. Helplessness and hope. — Jessica Lawson

Every time the drill instructor screamed at me and I stood proudly; every time I thought I'd fall behind during a run and kept up; every time I learned to do something I thought impossible, like climb the rope, I came a little closer to believing in myself. Psychologists call it "learned helplessness" when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life. From Middletown's world of small expectations to the constant chaos of our home, life had taught me that I had no control. Mamaw and Papaw had saved me from succumbing entirely to that notion, and the Marine Corps broke new ground. If I had learned helplessness at home, the Marines were teaching learned willfulness. The — J.D. Vance

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume. — Noam Chomsky

There are four nutrients you will want in your behavioral formula, adjusting them as your baby gets older: breast-feeding, talking to your baby, guided play, and praising effort rather than accomplishment. Brain research tells us there are also several toxins: pushing your child to perform tasks his brain is not developmentally ready to take on; stressing your child to the point of a psychological state termed "learned helplessness"; and, for the under-2 set, television. — John Medina

The more pessimistic your explanatory style, the easier it is to slip into learned helplessness. — David McRaney

All of us, poor & rich alike, have been conditioned by our upbringings. Impoverished men & women may become lulled into a state of "learned helplessness" without hope to change their lives. Likewise, the wealthy can walk in a state of "learned blindness" ignoring the desperation of the local & global poor. — John Green

Breaking, in modern psychology, 'learned helplessness.' This is where you crush an animal's desire to fight. Why is it that we believe broken things are tamed possessions? — Rebecca K. O'Connor

It's philanthropy, but it's good politics, too. Mighty good politics. The poor are some of the most grateful people in the world. George Washington Plunkett. — H.W. Brands

Everyone secretly wants to be owned. — Alicen Grey

Absolutely devout in her complete care of my body, she had only taught me to be weak and voiceless.

But I had unlearned that lesson. Our enmeshment no longer felt to me like proof of love. I was no longer willing to permit this silencing. Helplessness didn't have to be my identity, I wasn't condemned to it. I was willing - able - to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed her to help me, to take care of things for me - and to save me - but, back in the home where I'd learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it. — Aspen Matis

All of us, poor & rich alike, have been conditioned by our upbringings. Impoverished men & women may become lulled into a state of "learned helplessness" without hope to change their lives. Likewise, the wealthy can walk in a state of "learned blindness" ignoring the desperation of the local & global poor. — John Green

The biggest problem in AFRICA, is the government/public service leaders ensure that the education system teaches them WHAT to think and NOT HOW TO THINK. IT embeds a Fixed Mindest of Learned Helplessness. We can ReThink Resilience and psycap to transform the people, but the leaders won't be too happy when the voters can think beyond learned helplessness and a go beyond a liming culture 2000 years out of date.
We need to Rethink Education and culture in the digital age. — Tony Dovale

Effective Peer Coaches emphasize inquiry over advocacy. Too much advocacy can produce learned helplessness. Inquiry builds capacity to improve teaching and learning by helping teachers to be more effective at designing and implementing learning activities that meet the needs of their students. — Lester Joseph Foltos

Years later, when I got to college, I learned about an important theory of psychology called Learned Helplessness, developed by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman. This theory, backed up by years of research, is that a great deal of depression grows out of a feeling of helplessness: the feeling that you cannot control your environment. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

They say a writer is not a single person, it is a bunch of characters. What I learned from life is that everyone is a bunch of characters, characters who live and die within us. The moment I was raped, many characters in me died. I lost most of my characteristics. Several new characters were born, one was rage, second was a lifelong unhappiness and third was the fear of helplessness. — Himanshu Chhabra

Psychologists call it "learned helplessness" when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life. — J.D. Vance