Defeatism, or "Learned Helplessness".

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I have to wonder how much executive dysfunction and learned helplessness interact and/or have in common...

Good question.

For sure I can relate to learned helplessness, a variety of things happened in childhood and the message (in this context) I gleaned from those experiences was that as a person I was lesser; that my thoughts and feelings were not relevent and often wrong. Add to the mix that I was aware my perspective was different (but not why) and acting on it got me into trouble more times than I care to remember, it's no wonder I self censored instead of self regulated.

Making decisions, how to feel or act, were someone elses responsibility, I learned to be reliant on external regulation and to doubt my own inner voice.

I still struggle with self regulation generally, it doesnt come naturally, its something I have to actively do and uses up more energy than I would like. Would prefer if it was different, but I can only play the cards I've been dealt.

In a nutshell one way learned helplessness can develop is from not having a place for your true voice to be heard in childhood.

My nickname was "baby", I was addressed to as "son" and likened to a blackhole. I remember being impervious to this kind of help, in my mind people fell into 3 catagories, angels / trolls / people lacking in perspective who offered up annoying platitudes.

Those who manage to climb out of the hole won't necessarily be capable of helping others. I meen the underlying patience and care needed to help is either there or it isn't. I'm like, "try taking my last spoon and I'm gonna bop you on the head with it", so its best to let others help and not offer up platitudes of my own.

You are doing a good job helping others, even if the words don't go in, the care does.

Defeatism is a poison that still lingers in my body, despite the long way I have gone.
My mother is an eternal defeatist and she passed it on all the family. It's still hard to overcome this "you can't do it perfectly, so you shouldn't do it at all".

I hate that kind of mindset but i was that way for a loong time too.
For me i'm really stubborn so nobody forced me to get out of it but when my problems actually got even worse i was forced by "life" to actually do something about them. I started to go to a psychiatrist since i was suicidal and unable to eat etc. and take action in my life instead of waiting to die. I started to do something in my life even though it doesn't count for anything in other's eyes. I thought at least i will know that i made some effort. ANd it actually made me peaceful because at the end of the day you have to live with doing the best you can and it gives you a peace of mind. And when i do my best and take action in life, i don't have the time to wallow in misery. I feel like i'm an active participant in my life as opposed to being a tool. Even though i fail, I will know that i made an effort and in my mind, every effort means something. Especially if you're doing it because you want to do it, not to prove anything to anyone else.

[url]https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/10th-public-talk-30th-july-1967[/url

Well I almost hate to admit this because I'm not into Gurus and such like but reading this guy helped me more than leaning on people ever did.

The Truth will always be the Truth, no matter who speaks it.

Executive dysfunction and learned helplessness CAN be independent from one another. I've experienced and had observed this.


This is just my personal piece of data...

While good executive function deters learned helplessness, and learned helplessness deters good executive function as if it's a self-fulfilling prophecy...


Getting rid of learned helplessness doesn't seem to always solve executive dysfunction.
Anyone can be confident and trust themselves to be capable, yet it doesn't always translate in practical terms; knowing one's self, self-regulation, etc.
Getting rid of learned helplessness alone, at best, mainly encourages one to try everything, to try again after failure and see past their condition through adaptive and more coping techniques.
In other words, being more receptive or open to suggestions -- whether or not it works.

Yet getting rid of executive dysfunction and it's roots, can and more likely solve learned helplessness, especially with the right support.
No executive dysfunction means not only you're able to get things done and gives sense of accomplishment with it, but you're also likely emotionally intelligent to know your limits instead of being hung up on circumstances.


My personal aim is the latter.
Because I already found it's a real possibility, and experienced what it really was like in real life in my case; a life without executive dysfunction, a life of autism without disability -- I've experienced and know the contrast.
Hopefully permanently without drugs, aide, or health maintenance, because that's what literally happened.
I just had to find out why and what vital I was kept missing out for years, only to suddenly have it once or less every year for weeks long or less.

So much of the above thread rings bells with me.

Ref roots or origins, in context of impaired Executive Function; I think that very early/infant/babe in arms experience, ( eg of rigidly timed/clock-driven breastfeeding which never paid attention to baby's hunger rhythms ) determines to a great extent one's locus of control, whether internal or external, whether one believes that what one does actually makes a difference.

I think that it's possible to escape that conditioning, for a while, perhaps most commonly in teens/early adulthood, during "rebellion" periods, but that later supposedly more mature "rapprochement"/reconnection with parents/family, and concomitant acceptance/tolerance of their values, is likely to revive it, and cause paralysis.

At least that is my experience.

The more that I have supposedly "grown up" and forgiven my parents, become friends with sister, become "reasonable", the more I have felt helpless to turn my life around, the more resigned to changing nothing, achieving nothing. What matters more, to me ... ? The family "reunion" stuff or "personal"/individual stuff. It is almost as if have to choose between them .... with my upbringing and/or neurological makeup.

As if I took my infant experience, ( eg. of my cries to be fed making no difference at all to when I was fed ), very very literally, and in classic all or nothing/black and white ASD way believe that if I subscribe to any of the world view responsible for that treatment, it if I accept my parents' values at all, then I ( re ) enter that world, in which nothing that I do makes any difference.

PS. I really loved your post, Fnord, in which you describe process of asking self what want, then what must do to achieve that, then what must do to achieve that etc etc etc until in present. .... What do you do to work out what you want?

Continued! .... or that might just be a story I tell myself to explain certain physical/metabolic effects ....

I don't know if there is any connection between the "learned helplessness" described in the OP and having an external ( as opposed to internal ) loci of control, but I do know that there is a strange but very strong correlation between loci of control and blink rate, ( which is lower in people with external loci of control ... and also, it seems, in people on the autism spectrum, who don't "entrain" blinking socially as neurotypicals do ), and dopaminergic systems.

Apparently people whose internal/relatively independent/endogenous reward system/dopamine pathways are impaired/dysfunctional blink significantly less frequently and experience themselves as relatively helpless/as not being in control of events, perhaps because literally more dependent on the outside world for a sense of satisfaction .... if only biochemically.

I don't know whether this condition, of disordered/impaired dopaminergic systems, and its correlate, external locus of control and associated lower blink frequency, is learned or genetically/epigenetically determined.

Am wondering if damage to the dopaminergic systems can be achieved by systematically/repeatedly forcing a baby to wait, helplessly, for food when hungry. Or whether that metabolic disruption must be reinforced by a period of weaning in which are systematically fed a lot of dopamine-triggering foods ( eg sugar, dairy ) in order to achieve the fully externalised, ie dependent-type, locus of control.

And whether being on the Autism Spectrum might make one more susceptible, or not, to this, seeing as our blink frequency/rate is apparently not the same as Neurotypicals'. Also wondering about various other possibly related factors, like addiction behaviours, and Autist "inertia", ( failure to "refresh"? ), and attachment to routines etc.

At 62 , and with a very late recognition that I was on the spectrum, that negatively impacted on the mental health care and support I received, I see my life as being about maintaining the level I'm at .

It may not stack up to the level a good number of you are at , but it's better than what was expected when I was a youngish psychiatric patient .

What may,or may not, connect with this is I find it hard to think of goals. The only one I had about 4 years ago was to lose weight, as I was about 5.5 stone overweight . I lost about 9lbs in 8 weeks , and then the weight loss stopped .

It seems that I'm losing weight now, at least according to my stepdaughter and granddaughters, but I'm not so sure. I'm not consciously dieting, just trying to eat less junk.

I got intrigued by the "loci of control" concept.
I found this test: http://www.psych.uncc.edu/pagoolka/LC.html
On a scale from 0 to 13 I scored 6 - I interpret it as "balanced" locus of control, external events and individual's efforts are roughly equally important.

However, I wonder if there is measurable variation in locus of control placement between different cultures.

Yeah, sort of. I keep on losing stuff. It's getting to the point where I don't want to buy replacements for the stuff I lost because I'll probably lose those too.

7 whatever that means .

Similar to mine, in the middle - a belief that life is affected by both external factors and personal efforts.