Sometimes, the conversation between my brain and I goes something like this:
Why don’t you leave this situation if you’re uncomfortable?
I can’t.
Yes you can. Just go.
I’m stuck here.
No you’re not.
Yes I am. Literally glued here. Stuck forever. This is my life now.
What on earth…ok, listen, just move your right foot and then your left. Head towards the exit. Slow and steady.
I can’t feel my legs. This is the end. I don’t even think I have legs! AHHHHH-
Great!
This thought process is called learned helplessness. Essentially, a person is stuck for a prolonged time in an unpredictable and harmful situation they cannot escape from.
Imagine a loop, except the loop is made of anxiety and trauma. When you start to make laps around the loop, this is when learned helplessness is created in your neural pathways – the deep grooves in your brain that form when you repeat something over and over. Consider yourself a professional athlete, but in the worst game of all time.
Learned helplessness, from its name, is learned. It is not innate or permanent. Thus, with effort over time, it can be unlearned.
For me, retraining my brain and learning to rewire my thoughts towards hopefulness and positivity has been indispensable in my recovery. God, more than any one thing has freed me from my own prescribed victim narrative as well as my family. I wouldn’t have made it through the difficulties in my life without them. Because of my husband, and our children, I emerge hopeful over and over. This has been a constant. Nothing — and no one — can destroy us. Not even the memory, and the surging triggers, of my father’s abuse.
B 🤍
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