What Price Do You Pay For Learned Helplessness?

Photo Credit: Pout by Hunny Pie

Around my house, I often hear things like this… 

“Mom, I can’t find my tennis shoes.” 

“You can’t or you don’t want too?”  I reply. 

Even if you don’t know my kid, you know the answer to this question.   He didn’t want to.  For the record, this is a kid who can upgrade his computer hard drive, figure out complex music composition software, and build skateboard ramps using spare parts from our garage.   When he “wants to” he can do anything.      

If he doesn’t want to…fuhgeddaboudit.   Learned helplessness instantly becomes his crutch.    

Maybe he learned it from me.  I am not exactly an ideal role model.   I still can’t get Netflix to work on our TV even though my kids have shown me how to do it at least 20 times.  It’s much easier to just threaten them with lost privileges when they don’t get their booties off the couch and make my movies appear.  It’s pathetic.  I know it.  I suffer from the same ailment as my son. 

I also have the same capability to figure things out on my own—WHEN I WANT TO.  

Because I wanted to, I learned how to write and produce my own blog.  Now, I can even do basic html, which might blow the minds of people who know me well.  Never mind that it took me six months to learn something that my kid could have done in 6 hours.  I ditched the learned helplessness, took charge and did something that has empowered and changed my life.  

Sometimes HE doesn’t want to.  Sometimes I don’t want to.  We are our own worst enemies.  

So I started wondering if this “syndrome” might be creeping into our culture like ADHD.   Could this be the next trendy label we adopt so that at parties, job interviews and first dates so we can say things like, “Please excuse my shortcomings.  I suffer from severe bouts of learned helplessness and I left my meds on my nightstand.”  

There must be millions suffering from this phenomenon.  Maybe it’s time for the medical community to jump on the band wagon.  Please, give us a metric to measure the severity of our infliction so we can qualify for prescription meds and get a bumper sticker for our cars.  

In all seriousness, as it good as it might feel to cop out on things, I wonder what price we pay when we don’t step up and just DO what we know we could do if we weren’t so darned lazy.  

I realize that my flat-out refusal to take responsibility for certain things is keeping me from being the person I could be.  I see how this behavior limits my son, and it makes me flipping mad because I know he isn’t living up to his potential.  But, when I do it, it’s my God given inalienable right. 

I can see I have two things to work on:  my double standards, and my refusal to take full accountability for my own actions. 

Is this nasty habit affecting you?  What price are you paying for learned helplessness?

Article first published as What Price Do You Pay For Learned Helplessness? on Technorati.