Helplessness: Definition, Theory, & Emotions

By Kelsey Schultz, Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Feelings of helplessness can be debilitating and enduring. Learn more about the science of how helplessness develops and how we can protect our sense of agency in an unwieldy world.  
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You’ve probably had the experience of feeling stuck before, like nothing you did made any difference. This is what it is like to feel helpless. Helplessness is the sense that there isn’t anything we can do to change a bad situation and we stop trying. Often helplessness arises in times when we really don’t have control, but this feeling can turn into an enduring perspective of ourselves and our environment.
In response to an uncontrollable situation, we can sometimes arrive at the conclusion that all situations are out of our control; that we are powerless. Luckily, by understanding what the science of helplessness shows us about how it's developed and maintained, we can create strategies that will help us manage feelings of helplessness.

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What Is Helplessness? (A Definition)

Helplessness is the belief that you lack agency in a situation. When we feel as though nothing we do will have any effect on our circumstances, nothing is what we typically choose to do. Though there are certainly emotional components to helplessness, researchers typically focus on the cognitive and behavioral components. In other words, the science of helplessness is mostly about the sense of uncontrollability and the inaction that follows.

Referring to helplessness as a “belief” might sound like it discounts the possibility that helplessness is a reality. After all, there have certainly been times when I believed that I didn’t have control over a situation and I was right. For example, being with a loved one while they’re in the wake of grief makes me feel helpless. I can be present and provide love and support, but there isn’t anything I can do to alleviate their heartache. However, scientists define helplessness in terms of a mental state because research has shown that after experiences in which we lack control, the sense of helplessness can become a disposition. In other words, being helpless in one instance can make us feel helpless in all instances, leading us to become withdrawn, a-motivated, and depressed (Pryce et al., 2011).

What Is Learned Helplessness? (Theory & Research)

The term ‘learned helplessness’ refers to the tendency to stop trying to change a bad situation after being exposed to uncontrollable stress. Martin Seligman, the pioneer of learned helplessness research, defines learned helplessness as “the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn’t matter.” In one of his earliest writings on the topic, he lays out 3 basic consequences of learned helplessness (1975):
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  1. Reduction in motivation to control the outcome
  2. Interference with learning that responding controls the outcome
  3. Production of fear for as long as the uncertainty and uncontrollability last followed by depression  

Learned helplessness has perhaps most commonly been studied in rodents. The typical experimental design includes a training phase in which the animal is exposed to an uncontrollable stressor followed by a test phase in which the animal is exposed to a stressor that is controllable. 

For example, the most common paradigm usually goes like this: a mouse is put in a cage with a floor that can produce an electric shock (this might sound terrible, but the shocks used are a very low voltage meant only to be stressful or uncomfortable, but not painful. Think of the static electricity on a sweater fresh out of the dryer and then reduce that by several orders of magnitude) (Landgraf et al., 2015; Tiede, 1988). When the mouse is first exposed to these mild electric shocks, it will typically explore the cage, looking for a way to avoid them. This stressful situation lasts for a few minutes at a time and is repeated randomly over the course of a couple of days. In the testing phase, the mice are put in the same situation but this time they do have a way to avoid the shocks (like moving to a different part of the cage or pressing a lever). However, after this time, most mice have learned that there isn’t anything they can do, so when the stressful situation arises again they don’t bother trying to avoid it; they’ve learned they’re helpless (Pryce et al., 2011).

Humans often develop learned helplessness in a similar way, but usually with less electricity and no levers that will improve our situation. We’re in a situation in which we learn (or are taught) that our actions don’t hold any significance for our current context and we start believing we’re powerless in all contexts (Pryce et al., 2011).

For more on Learned Helplessness, check out this video from Project Better Self:

Video: Learned Helplessness – How You’re Unconsciously Destroying Your Life

Causes of Learned Helplessness

The causes of learned helplessness are varied and sometimes very specific to individuals. In general, learned helplessness can result from any situation in which you don’t have (or feel as though you don’t have) any control. Some common examples include:
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  • Addiction
  • Illness
  • Chronic pain
  • Abusive relationships
  • Poverty
  • Grief
  • Stress
  • Isolation

Research shows that, in addition to the situational examples above, learned helplessness can be caused by personal biological and psychological characteristics. For example, studies have shown that genetics can contribute to the development of learned helplessness. That is, genetics could structure our minds in such a way that we would be more likely to feel helpless (Vaugeois et al., 1996). Psychological factors such as being pessimistic, having low self-efficacy, and having the tendency to attribute favorable outcomes to causes that are unstable, specific, and beyond personal control are also closely linked to feelings of helplessness (Gurefe & Bakalim, 2018; McKean, 1994).  ​

Is Helplessness an Emotion?

As mentioned previously, scholars typically approach the topic of helplessness from the perspective of how helplessness affects behavior and motivation rather than what it feels like. However, if you’ve ever experienced helplessness, you know that it is a feeling as well as a belief. So, while scientific inquiry into helplessness focuses on causes and consequences, helplessness can certainly be understood in terms of the emotional experience associated with it.

What Does Helplessness Feel Like?

Helplessness might feel different for different people. For some people, helplessness might make them feel like giving up whereas other people might be compelled toward anger and violence in response to feeling helpless. Here are a few common feelings associated with the experience of helplessness:

Opposite of Helplessness

​The opposite of helplessness is essentially any feeling characterized by confidence in a positive outcome. Some examples might include:

Is Learned Helplessness a Mental Illness?

Learned helplessness is not considered a mental illness on its own, but it is a common feature of depression. It isn’t in itself categorized as an illness, but it is often associated with them and could potentially cause mental illnesses like depression and anxiety.
​
Learned helplessness “induced by a life event of major emotional significance can function as an etiological factor for generalized helplessness, which can in turn function as an etiological and maintenance factor for depression” (Pryce et al., 2011).

Dealing With Helplessness

Helplessness is a painful feeling and, when it becomes generalized, can be debilitating. Luckily, we can learn to identify how to manage and prevent feelings of helplessness.

Identify the source of the feeling​
When you are feeling helpless, it can be useful to take time to consider why. Are you dealing with an atypical amount of stress? Are you recovering from a recent traumatic experience or triggered by a more distant one? Are you in an uncontrollable situation? Identifying the source of the feeling can give you a better sense of what strategies you might employ to manage it.

Focus on what you can control
When we fixate on the things we can’t control, we lose sight of the things we can. The more time spent ruminating on our feelings of helplessness, the more likely we are to make it worse. Giving ourselves a moment to take stock of where our power lies can help us identify the steps we can take to improve our situation and inspire us to keep trying.

Remember your strengths
Reminding ourselves of our skills, talents, and capacity for greatness can be exceptionally challenging to do when we are feeling helpless, but can also be exceptionally helpful for helping us regain our power in every way possible. Keeping a list of your moments of triumph, special skills, or even just things you like about yourself can come in handy the next time you’re in need of a reminder.

Check in with your body
Stress, trauma, and depression affect our bodies as much as they affect our minds. By developing a deeper awareness of how our bodies respond to these common causes of helplessness, we can begin to identify patterns and tend to our needs sooner and more effectively.

Be aware of your self-talk
Sometimes when we feel helpless, we tear ourselves down further and keep ourselves down with the way we talk to ourselves. Being as kind and gracious with ourselves as possible can help us avoid being pulled into a depressive episode. And in times when kindness and grace aren’t easy to come by, I like to invoke the old childhood maxim: if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

Quotes on Helplessness

  • “It is hardly possible to build anything if frustration, bitterness and a mood of helplessness prevail.” – Lech Walesa

  • “Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.” – B. H. Liddell Hart

  • “Our online news feeds aggregate all of the world's pain and cruelty, dragging our brains into a kind of learned helplessness. Technology that provides us with near-complete knowledge without a commensurate level of agency isn't humane.” – Tristan Harris
 
  • “Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.” – B. H. Liddell Hart
 
  • “Ultimately what I end up writing about is helplessness and the flipside of that, empowerment.” – Joss Whedon
 
  • “Often, we feel helpless in lots of situations in our lives. The way anger gets a grip on us is it seems to be a way to extricate ourselves from helplessness.” – Martha Nussbaum
 
  • “Helplessness is such a rotten feeling. There's nothing you can do about it. Being helpless is like being paralyzed. It's sickness. The cure calls for a monumental effort to stand up and start walking somewhere, anywhere. But that takes some doing.” ― Chuck Barris
 
  • “It does not take a great supernatural heroine or magical hero to save the world. We all save it every day, and we all destroy it -- in our own small ways -- by every choice we make and every tiniest action resulting from that choice. The next time you feel useless and impotent, remember what you are in fact doing in this very moment. And then observe your tiny, seemingly meaningless acts and choices coalesce and cascade together into a powerful positive whole. The world -- if it could -- will thank you for it. And if it does not... well, a true heroine or hero does not require it.” ― Vera Nazarian
 
  • “To feel helpless is to acknowledge our limitations, but it does not have to be an acceptance of them.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough
 
  • “Never underestimate the power of helplessness!” – Marilyn French
 
  • “What a terrible feeling to love someone and not be able to help them.” ― Jennifer Niven

Articles Related to Helplessness

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Helplessness​

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Helplessness

Helplessness is a state of mind we might all be familiar with. It can be caused by anything from addiction to being stuck at work late on a Friday. Sometimes, our experience of helplessness can start to feel like a general truth about our reality. When our feelings of helplessness are generalized beyond the context that inspired them and we feel as though we’re generally powerless, we lose motivation to try, and risk missing out on our best life. Fortunately, there are some strategies we can employ to manage our feelings of helplessness like focusing on what we can control and being gentle with ourselves. For more on how to manage feelings of helplessness, check out this video from mental health professional Tamara Hill:

Video: How To Move On From Learned Helplessness – Psychotherapy Crash Course

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