Julie allowed herself to freak out and get upset to the point of showing complete helplessness, but when the long-awaited call from the editorial office suddenly rang out, in a matter of moments she got up and put herself in order.
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Sometimes a helpless person is really helpless: if you are paralyzed, you will be surprised how helpless and dependent on others you will be. There is nothing terrible or shameful about helplessness in itself, it is a normal reality of life: even a strong and self-confident man can be helpless in the kitchen. Well, at least in front of the nuclear reactor control panel. And his elderly mother, who suffers from senile psychosis, is already generally helpless, and this is just age.
But.
But more often, in life, we meet with a completely different helplessness, helplessness as a personal weakness or a game of helplessness. If a girl makes a helpless face and refuses to think, if an employee plays a fool in front of you, this is a game, this is a composed, demonstrated or acted out helplessness. When a person does this for a long time, it becomes already habitual learned helplessness, becomes a character trait, when a person himself does not notice how he allows himself to give up, how he turns into a child, lowers his hands, goes into the position of the Victim, begins to justify himself and blame others …
The playful nature of personal helplessness is especially clearly seen in situations where helplessness suddenly becomes clearly unprofitable. Then the “helpless person” suddenly changes dramatically, helplessness abruptly disappears, “subsides”, and the person instantly turns into a completely wealthy and reasonable person. It became necessary — came to his senses.
Watch the video from the film “Julie and Julia”: Julie allowed herself to freak out and get upset to the point of demonstrating complete helplessness, but when the long-awaited call from the editorial office suddenly rang out, she immediately got up and put herself in order. The hysteria passed instantly.
What are the origins of the helplessness game? The habitual state of helplessness, like the habit of falling into helplessness, is by no means innate, it is all found or learned in early childhood, usually before school. This is learned helplessness — habitual behavior, either thoughtlessly copied from others, or reproduced by virtue of a conditional or real benefit. The game of helplessness is intended to attract attention and relieve oneself of responsibility. Sometimes — to hang responsibility on others.
Personal helplessness is usually accompanied by a «bouquet» of additional problems. First, in a state of personal helplessness, a person often allows himself to stoop to a capricious, incapable of anything child, demonstrating his protest and throwing tantrums. Previously positive people suddenly turn into negativists, for whom everything is bad, who do not see any opportunities and are ready to scold everyone and everything, especially starting with themselves. In addition to negative patterns of vision and behavior, a variety of psychological defenses are usually included in a state of personal helplessness.
Well-mannered and responsible people usually do not allow personal helplessness in themselves, because they understand that if I do not solve a difficult situation, someone else will need to solve it. And educated people consider it unworthy to shift their difficulties onto the shoulders of those around them.
And what to do with it? There are two different questions here: what should I do with myself (myself) if I am prone to playing helplessness (women are more likely to play helplessness), and how to wean other people from this game, especially our loved ones?
Weaning others is not easy, but it is possible. If you have authority and you yourself do not play helplessness, you can use your leverage and make reasonable demands: “If you need help, ask for help, but you don’t need to play helplessness.” If a person has already acted out a tantrum with a state of personal helplessness (as in the case of Julie in the video), it is usually useless to criticize him and shame him for this — the person scolds himself for this and at the same time justifies (“What else could I do? I was upset! «). However, the situation can be prevented for the future. For the hysteria that has occurred, it makes sense to hang on a person an enhanced mode of the dictionary of Victims and Mistakes, but you can scold, but for something else: “Why didn’t you call me when it was difficult for you and you needed help? I was there! You have to promise me that the next time in a difficult situation when I’m around, you won’t freak out and get upset, but call me. Deal?» — after which to ensure that this agreement is remembered and implemented.
But the most important and first thing is to make sure that the game of helplessness does not accompany your life. Oddly enough, there is nothing complicated here: practice the Mistake exercise, listen to your inner and outer speech, and remove the Victim’s vocabulary from your vocabulary. Use the help of others, this is normal here: ask your friends or loved ones to pay attention to your face and intonation — when they notice your helpless facial expressions or unhappy intonations, let them tell you. You correct your face and intonation, thank your friends and cheerfully resolve all issues.
You can do everything!