Over the past forty years there have been a number
of theories about why a woman stays in an abusive relationship. In some cases, these can be reduced to victim
blaming, putting the total responsibility for the abuse on the victim. Even explanations that make sense can end up
being used in a way that demean, blame, or place the victim in a passive role
that seems to be of her own making. One
of these is Lenore Walkers’ theory of “learned helplessness.” In the 1970's, before we were able to learn about the effects of trauma on the brain and body, Lenore Walker, a
psychologist in the United States, studied the behavior of women who stay in
violent relationships, and hypothesized that women stay in abusive
relationships because constant abuse strips them of the will to leave. This theory, while helpful in helping some
juries understand why a woman may not leave a relationship, does not take into
account that there are many social, economic and cultural reasons a woman may
stay. Learned helplessness has also over
the years become a term that pathologizes victims’ responses to violence,
leaving some to believe that there is something wrong with the victim versus
placing the blame on the abuser.
As
Dobash and Dobash explain, “[w]omen are usually persistent and often tenacious
in their attempts to seek help, but pursue such help through channels that
prove to be most useful and reject those that have been found to be unhelpful
or condemning.” Battered women do not live their lives in a state of “learned helplessness.”
On the contrary, they often engage in a process of “staying, leaving and
returning.” During this process,
women make active and conscious decisions based
on their changing circumstances: they leave for short periods in order to
escape the violence and to emphasize their disaffection in the hope that this
will stop the violence. In the beginning, they are generally not attempting to
end the relationship, but are negotiating to reestablish the relationship on a
non-violent basis. From R. Emerson Dobash &
Russel P. Dobash, Women, Violence and Social Change 222-23, 225, 229-32 (1992).
Learned
helplessness theory was based on perceived characteristics shared by battered
women, such as low self esteem, a tendency to withdraw, or perceptions of loss
of control. Those who espoused the theory, however, rarely took into account
the fact that these characteristics” might be, in fact, the physiological
effects of the abuse on the brain of the survivors.
In
the article Trauma Theory Abbreviated, Sandra
Bloom quotes behaviorist Martin Seligman’s research on learned helplessness in animals to
describe the physiological changes in the brain. “Apparently, there are detrimental changes in
the basic neurochemistry that allows the animal to self-motivate out of
dangerous situation. Change only occurs
when the experimenter actively intervenes and pulls the animal out of the
cage. At first, the animal runs back in,
but after sufficient trials, it finally catches on and learns how to escape
from the terror once again. The animals’
behavior improves significantly, but they remain vulnerable to the stress. As in human experience, animals show
individual variation in their responses.
Some animals are very resistant to developing ‘learned helplessness’ and
others are very vulnerable.”
To
understand what happens after a traumatic event we must begin with the
“fight-or-flight” response that characterizes the way human beings and other
mammals respond to overwhelming stress. The ability of the brain to process
information in this state changes dramatically from its normal state, just as
the body’s response is remarkable and dramatic. The brain is profoundly
affected by the powerful neurochemicals that flood the body as a part of the
normal stress response. In this state, the ability to encode experience in
words often becomes compromised and instead, stress is experienced as strong
emotional reactions, body sensations, and images. In such a state, the person
is geared toward action, not thought and in fact, there is a decreased ability
to think clearly. http://www.sanctuaryweb.com/psychobiology.php
Looking
at the neurobiology of the trauma may also lead to pathologizing a person’s
responses but there is one clear factor that must be taken into account – the
presence of an abuser who created the environment, maintains the power, and
benefits from the helplessness of the victim.
The realization of this returns
us to the main premise of being trauma responsive – “it is not that there is
something wrong with the victim, it is that something was done to her/him” that
has caused that behaviors or adaptations that we, as advocates, may see
impeding a person’s process of change. Our
own responses can, at times, perpetuate feelings of helplessness in
survivors. Lack of housing, daycare, and
other supportive services can also lead to feelings of helplessness. According to Dr. Bloom, “we know that people
can learn to be helpless too, that if a person is subjected to a sufficient
number of experiences teaching him or her that nothing they do will effect the
outcome, people give up trying. This
means that interventions designed to help people overcome traumatizing
experiences must focus on mastery and empowerment while avoiding further experiences
of helplessness.”
