Looking at Learned Helplessness through a Trauma Lens

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.”

Reference:http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/svaw/domestic/link/healtheffects.htm