Learned Helplessness at Fifty: Insights from Neuroscience

One important insight into how and why we forget our ability to choose comes out of the classic work of Martin Seligman and Steve Maier, who stumbled onto what they later called “learned helplessness” while conducting experiments on German shepherds.

Seligman and Maier stumbled upon a phenomenon they called learned helplessness. The dogs had learned that pain and suffering were outside of their control. They had no power over what was happening to them, so their only point of recourse was to sit there and take it.

I was reading about “learned helplessness," a psychological condition that arises when one is not able to effect a change in one’s environment. It is characterized by “a drop in zest, decreasing clarity, withdrawal from connection, less self-knowledge, and a decrease in sense of self-worth.” To me, this is what it feels like to be on my sevent