Learned helplessness is the belief of not being able to do anything in the face of unpleasant situations or threatening challenges. In other words, we experience the feeling of not being able to do anything to change the reality in which we find ourselves.
For example, we repeatedly try and fail to ski in deep snow, abandon our attempt and end up avoiding it. By negatively attributing our performance to our personal ability, we tend to interpret that we have no control over the situation and therefore do not try to fix it. We are convinced that we cannot change it no matter what we do and, after several attempts, we end up ‘learning‘ that we will not be able to succeed in what we want or have to face, feeling ‘helpless‘.
In these situations, even though there are real possibilities to modify the aversive circumstances, we do not perform any behavior to avoid it. We resign ourselves to the situation, giving up trying because we believe we will not be able to solve it, and never again decide to test our strength: this is the distinctive “I can’t” reaction. The root of this conditioning lies in our previous experiences in which we could not effectively control them. Thus, we ‘learn’ that the situation leaves us helpless, that we cannot do anything about it and that is beyond our control, even if circumstances change and occasions for action arise.
This conditioning is related to the concept of self-efficacy, which is our belief in our innate abilities to achieve our goals. Faced with the feeling of lack of control, this restriction occurs differently among skiers as well as among contexts, and may appear continuously in a specific skiing situation. In this condition, we generally have a pessimistic internal dialogue with a tendency to perceive negative situations as permanent, convincing ourselves that we will not be able to change. We may also see them as personal, assuming that it is our fault, or generalized in terms of believing that we cannot do anything right.
This psychological state often originates when we have been ineffective in determining the reasons for our behaviors, but it is also seen when we are repeatedly and authoritatively criticized regardless of our performance, so we stop making an effort to bring about change, as evidenced by our pessimism, lack of motivation to act, resignation, and passivity.
The psychologist and writer Martin Seligman, considered the father of positive psychology, extensively studied this phenomenon, which also involves decision making. If we cannot or do not have the capacity to choose, we easily resign ourselves and learn to behave passively, that is, we develop an attitude of resignation. When perceiving that our decision-making power is restricted, we feel helpless and when the same situation repeats itself, we learn to accept it. As in cognitive distortions, learned helplessness is provoked by irrational thoughts such as “It is no use trying” or “I will never learn”.
In relation to failures, if we repeatedly make mistakes, we may deduce that we are not capable of improving our skiing and stop trying. Our interpretation of the situation influences both our belief in this condition and the way we manage it. This not only increases the belief of learned helplessness: it also decreases our self-esteem.
Three deficits are observed in the face of learned helplessness:
- In the motivational deficit we manifest delays in our will to act.
- In the emotional deficit, affective alterations such as anxiety, discouragement, and demoralization are observed.
- In the cognitive deficit, our ability to elaborate solutions to the difficulty experienced is affected.
This psychological conditioning, in which it is very easy to incur, is produced gradually, that is to say, progressively we, unconsciously, weaken psychologically until our will to act is affected. The conditioning worsens until we give up skiing, but it does not disappear because it is a personality trait that may extend to other areas of our life. To reverse it, our interpretation of the situation of rejection must be modified.
If we suffer from helplessness we have ingrained psychic patterns, which are dysfunctional and inhibit us from acting to modify our own situation. To regain control of our skiing it is not enough to tell us what we should or should not do, but to reaffirm our self-esteem, evoke successful experiences of self-improvement, and enhance our capacity.
The helpless attitude in the initial ski learning stage
Many of our skiing psycho-affective experiences come from our beginner stage. If we are helpless skiers in the present, we may have learned to behave passively from that period. If after several attempts we have not been able to overcome a certain skiing situation or condition, we have probably learned to believe that we will not be able to impose ourselves. If we perceive that the environment is hostile, we learn to adopt a helpless attitude because we are convinced that we will never be able to manage it and, as we experience repeated situations of failure, we lose the ability to keep trying.
If we are currently beginners facing unsuccessfully challenging situations, we may come to feel considerable vulnerability and believe that no matter what we do, we do not have and will not have the power to manage our skiing reality. This would be a hard apprenticeship that could leave us a strong impression on the way we perceive our skier Self.
In this initial stage in ski learning we need to fail, to feel frustrated and angry because, if we protect ourselves or are excessively protected from feeling these emotions, we are depriving ourselves of learning to persevere, to feel competent, to master of our own skiing, and to know we are able to achieve our goals.
Becoming the author of our own skiing makes us feel in control and, although the conditions influence us, they do not determine our evolution. If, on the other hand, we take on the role of helpless victims, we are likely to learn to have a pessimistic view of skiing. We may justify what happens to us, adopt an apathetic attitude, stop making decisions, allow things to happen to us, and give up control of our own skiing. If this is not reversed, we will continue to carry this belief of helplessness, possibly into other areas of our life.
Being helpless skiers we have a chronic self-perception of insecurity and incompetence along with debilitating beliefs that do not correspond to reality. Seeing a sport therapist such as a ski instructor will provide the basic tools to reconvert these beliefs and forge our own recovery. A few sessions oriented to apply certain strategies will be enough to start the reversion of our condition and to believe in ourselves.
The following strategies can improve this condition:
- First of all, we must change the distorting thoughts since they generate behavioral restrictions.
- Generate possibilities to unfold our own potential.
- Implement tactics for coping with adversity.
- Learn to actively intervene to modify our behavior in the face of the circumstances that arise.
- Turn to a professional for help. Attempting to ski in complex snow or terrain conditions without instructions generally leads to loathing them.
