"Taught" Helplessness [and the Risks of Assertiveness] - Part One

The Washington Post recently featured an article I've longed to see for years - no; make that decades; I've been a dissenter at the altar of self-help since the early 1980s. Which probably seems ironic, given the nature of this blog, but bear with me and all will be made clear.

The Post article, by Jennifer Niesslein, was titled "Take This Advice and Shelve It". In two succinct Web pages, she gets to the heart of the matter.

The premise of much, if not all, popular self-help literature is that the individual seeking help is somehow to blame for having created their problem in the first place.

The proffered solutions are rarely anything more than variations on a theme of self-deception.

The purpose of the self-deception appears to be to prevent people from realizing that there are, truly and actually, situations in which adult human beings are essentially powerless.

In other words, much of the game is rigged, and a successful outcome for the game-rigger depends upon keeping the marks from seeing or believing this simple truth.

I call this "taught" helplessness, to distinguish it from the term "learned helplessness". "Learned" helplessness, after all, assumes that your perception of helplessness in a given situation is largely illusory - and that you are somehow at fault for creating the illusion. Thus, it is only you - your outlook and perception - that is in need of repair. Once you unlearn the fallacy that you are helpless [the theory goes], you can seize control of the universe, or at least those parts of it that are currently bothering you.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? And isn't it convenient for everyone around you! You take all the blame, they get to feel superior, and they need not lift a finger to help you.

Reframing this concept as "taught" helplessness places the appropriate share of responsibility onto the school system, family of origin, workplace, abusive spouse, etc. Rather than presuming that the person who feels helpless isn't really helpless at all, and merely desires to feel that way, it implies, much more accurately, that other persons, groups, or systems may be, consciously or subconsciously, actively or passively - or passive-aggressively - encouraging the target to feel helpless.

Let me give you a personal example. Two, in fact.

I developed a dental abscess recently. For a day or two, I wasn't sure whether it was an infection or a neuritis, but I soon had no doubt as to what was going on. I called the dentist, and was fobbed off with no antibiotic, an appointment scheduled 24 hours later, and advice to take ibuprofen while enduring the wait.

I tend not to seek medical help until I NEED it. So by the time I made this call, I was experiencing electric shock type pain all along both the lower and upper mandibles on one side of my face - referred pain through the cranial nerves. My poor tooth was screaming for help, with all its friends and neighbors joining in. Moreover, due to the risk of gastric bleeding, I need to avoid NSAIDs [aspirin, ibuprofen, etc.] whenever possible, and because of an enzyme deficiency, Tylenol [acetaminophen] isn't an option.

I carefully and clearly described all this, in a calm and gentle - but by no means falsely cheerful or Pollyannaish - tone of voice, without drama. None of it was apparently heard, processed, or responded to in a constructive way.

Several hours later, at the point where the pain had become literally head-bangingly unbearable, I tried again, and this time aspirin was recommended.

The following day, the abscess finally received the recognition it deserved, and I was referred to an endodontist for emergency treatment ASAP. I was helpfully encouraged to call them myself and make the appointment, thus assuring that it would be less likely to be taken seriously than if the dentist's office placed the call and requested immediate assistance. I made three calls to the endodontist's office over a 75-minute period, waiting until after their official 'opening time'. As you might have predicted based on the rest of the story so far, none of my calls were returned.

This is not one, but two "taught helplessness" scenarios.

I asked, repeatedly and in an appropriate manner each time, for assistance that was desperately needed.

I asked precisely the persons I should have asked.

I asked in an adult, self-controlled, calm and competent fashion.

I described symptoms, without proffering a diagnosis, and I did not minimize my discomfort, nor did I exaggerate it.

I behaved, in other words, exactly as a responsible adult is - theoretically - supposed to behave in this type of situation.

The result, each time, was that my problem was trivialized, dismissed, or ignored outright, and I was thus given the clear message that I deserved nothing better than I was receiving - which was to say, almost nothing, or nothing at all, in the way of help.
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No, I didn't accept this, and I'll explain how I handled it in a moment.

It's important at this point to shift the focus from the specific to the general. Because this type of situation, and this type of message, isn't something that just happens to middle-aged bloggers with abscessed teeth. It occurs all over the landscapes of our adult lives.

-Your child is bullied at school, and when you contact the principal or other administrators, you are told that your child must somehow have instigated the bullying. None of these behavioral masterminds was present during the actual incident, but they are unanimous in foisting the blame onto your child. Nothing is done to the bully. Your child, however, is targeted even more ferociously once the bully finds out that an intervention was attempted.

-You are bullied at work by an arrogant new hire, and when you attempt to discuss the problem with your supervisor [who of course hired the jerk and is more invested in defending that decision than in protecting your wellbeing], you are told that you "take things too personally", that you should "just let it roll off your back", that you "need to learn how to work with difficult people". When you attempt further resolution, for example via on site mediation, you discover that the 'impartial' mediator sides with the bully, and that your efforts to describe the pattern of bullying behavior are dismissed as 'an unhealthy preoccupation' on your part. If anything happens to the bully, it is probably a promotion.

-Your adult daughter marries a man you consider overly controlling and potentially vicious. She can't see this; he's playing up his controlling as fascination with her, his potential viciousness as sensitivity and neediness. They marry and move out of state, and when he begins to batter her, their church - and yours - takes the position that she is not being sufficiently submissive to his God-ordained 'headship'.

None of these scenarios is exaggerated, and I can assure you that none of them is fictional. These things happen, to real people, every day; and to take the position that the people to whom they happen have somehow conspired against themselves to cause these things to happen to them is obscene, if not frankly blasphemous.
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[Part Two of this post follows immediately.]

"Taught" Helplessness [and the Risks of Assertiveness] - Part Two

I was lucky. I had a work-around available to me, and am old enough, cynical enough, and shameless enough to use it. I went to the Web, printed the information I needed from the reliable professional reference that I had already located, and contacted someone who knows me, respects my intelligence and ability to report events accurately, and is legally permitted to prescribe medical treatments in my state of residence. This might have been my primary physician. It might have been a colleague who works in a teaching hospital. It might have been a suitably degreed colleague in medicine or dentistry, two floors above or below me in the place where I work. No matter; the bottom line is that I obtained a hearing, made the appropriate professional arrangements, and began a course of antibiotics and pain relievers 30 minutes later. By the time I saw my regular dentist the next morning, I had been able to sleep through the night, the pain had diminished, and I was confident that the antibiotics and pain relievers I had in hand would protect me until the endodontist could 'fit me in' to her schedule that day, even if nothing more was prescribed.

It was wise to make these clandestine [but legitimate] arrangements, because my dentist prescribed precisely the same antibiotic and pain reliever when I saw her. Because I am 'pushy' and 'don't know my place', I actually began taking the necessary medications more than 24 hours earlier than I would otherwise have had them. No, I didn't admit this. Had I done so, the second set of prescriptions would probably have been withheld, and as it turned out, I was going to need them. Because, after two hours with no callback from the endodontist, I drove directly to her office, where I discovered that she was out for the day, and her staff was ignoring voicemail.

Because this endodontist is absolutely brilliant, I booked the first available emergency slot, watched to see it entered in the appointment book, and filled the second set of prescriptions immediately. [My insurance company, of course, refused to pay for them, since I had filled identical scrips 24 hours previously. That's the same game, on a different field; take careful note.]
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Once you reach a certain age, you realize that 'all's well that ends well' is less accurate than 'all's well that ends'. Bringing resolution to problems of this type is a fortunate event, much more dependent on luck than skill, and deserving of celebration.

I did not 'cause' my dentist or the endodontist's office staff to take my situation less seriously than it should have been taken, or to ignore their voicemails. This was a predisposition on their parts, perhaps due to stress, perhaps to overwork, but entirely unconnected to me in any causal fashion. However, in this case it could have had serious, even fatal, consequences for me. And in the Learned Helplessness / Self-Help paradigm, it is I who would be considered blameworthy. That is obscene.

Similarly, I did not 'cause' the availability of a helping professional who knew me personally, took me seriously, and was willing to 'run interference' for me so that I would have the medication my condition required while waiting to be seen by my regular practitioner. This was luck, resulting from my childhood fascination with science and medicine, my good fortune in being able to pursue a degree that places me in contact with working practitioners of various specialties in various locations, and my even better fortune in knowing several such people who are willing to help on occasions like this. I did not 'attract' the help I needed. Many people who are just as deserving of this kind of help, this kind of luck, simply do not have it, and suffer terribly as a result. That, too, is obscene.

I am glad to see writers like Ms. Niesslein, and Kathy Krajco, and Anna Valerious, and Meg [please see links to: What Makes Narcissists Tick, Narcissists Suck, and Brisbane Christian Fellowship, for Kathy's, Anna's, and Meg's blogs], standing up and roaring about the vile social gospel of blaming the victim and using that blame to justify withholding assistance, for which the victim is then further blamed and taught to blame themselves! Their reaction is humane, decent, and desperately needed. May their words and voices gather strength until they cannot be ignored.

One final note, regarding 'the Risks of Assertiveness' in the title of this piece.

Classical assertiveness training teaches you to continue beating your head against a wall in situations like this. The idealized assertive outcome would have been that I stood up for myself and my rights in an adult, non-confrontational way, a miracle occurred, and I was seen and treated by my dentist and endodontist on the same day that I made the original phone call. My choice to resort to what was, effectively, a 'second opinion' from someone I trusted to take me seriously, would be considered a non-assertive, and thus somehow inferior, approach to the problem. Never mind the fact that it worked, and in the circumstances may quite possibly have saved my life...

It would be lovely if we lived in a world in which asserting ourselves to those who don't want to hear us actually worked - but, of course, we don't. For one thing: this is the position I started from. I did all the correct assertive things in presenting my symptoms when I first called. I was adult, I was appropriate, I was calm and non-aggressive. Net result? I was blown off, essentially told to go sit in a corner and fester. Which I was lucky enough to be able to avoid having to do.

Continuing to do the same thing in these circumstances and expecting a different outcome - trying over and over to get a hearing from people who are not listening and are not going to begin listening because they do not want to listen- isn't 'assertive' at all.

As pretty much any serious recovery group will tell you, it's simply insane.