From helplessness to motivated optimism

The little talked about neurobiological strategy that keeps you stuck

The theory of helplessness is the grand old age of 57 years old.

In essence it is the failure to escape shock induced by uncontrollable events. It is posited that all animals (including humans) learn that outcomes are independent of whatever response they make.

That nothing they do matters.

At all.

This prevents any motivation to try to escape the event that is giving them pain, suffering or anxiety.

Passivity in response is the default to prolonged adverse events and is mediated by serotonergic activity in the dorsal raphe nucleus, which in turn prevents escape.

All animals are sensitive to the dimension of control and this is critical to how helpless they feel in times of adversity.

If there is the ability to escape from an adverse event then this is a protective factor for future adverse events. If there has been a history of the inability to escape from adverse events then there will develop a passivity and helplessness in terms of being escape present and future adversity.

There will be a neurobiological expectation of not being able to control and this will undermine and prevent trying any active coping mechanisms.

Let’s look at this from a neurobiological perspective.

When animals (and humans) encounter threats, then this generally engages defensive reflexes. These reflexes need to be successful if they are to be utilised as something useful and are able to be used as predictive models of behaviour for the future.

This is purely due to the energy needs of active coping mechanisms. They are hugely energy intensive and therefore it may have been more of an evolutionary advantage to inhibit these active coping strategies in preference to less energy using passivity which would ensure survival, albeit under adverse conditions.

This makes sense in terms of the serotonin mechanism underpinning this behaviour. Serotonin is an extremely old neurotransmitter and is involved heavilty in controlling and shifting balance, particularly the flow of energy within homeostasis.

If the adverse events are prolonged it makes sense (for survival) that the adaptive strategy to be one of withdrawal, passivity and conservation rather than those that are energy intensive.

The mechanism for this strategy is this -

There is a threat. This elicits initial defensive behaviour. This activates structures within the brain such as the dorsal raphe nuclei. 5 HT (serotonin) builds up over time. If the 5HT reaches the threshold then the defensive behaviour becomes inhinited behaviour and the energy flow is shifted.

If the animal (or human) detects that control of the situation is possible then this process is inhibited so that active coping strategies can be used.

Plus -

The prelimbic to dorso raphe nucleus circuitry has plasticity to be able to (for future events) have a bias to initially react to all adverse events as if they can be controlled by the individual animal (or human). This prolongs the duration of time that there is active responding.

If the animal (or human) does not detect that control of the situation is possible then the default mechanism seems to be one of passivity and heightened anxiety.

Something interesting to note is that the exhibited factors of helplessness map almost seamlessly into those of depression, with potential for also being part of etiology of post traumatic stress disorder.

Depression is the number one health condition globally, which is extremely telling when you consider the toxicity of the environment that we continue to live in.

So why do we need to consider all of this when looking at motivation?

The three elements of helplessness are contingency - the belief that there is a relationship between events and behaviours, cognition - what thoughts occour because of contigency, and behavior - the actions that happen from observing the relationship between actions and events.

Motivation is highly dependent on the strength of executive function within the brain, learning from previous events in order to acertain how much self-control, self-discipline and will-power there is to achieve the ‘reward’.

Remember, reward is the action taken to meet a need.

So helplessness is going to have a huge impact on the availability on motivation circuitry and may be the answer to why it all seems just too much and too hard.

Your brain may be seeking to preserve energy with passivity rather than utilise energy (that you may not have) to have more active coping strategies.

Why might this be?

Repeated stressful or traumatic experiences, in which an animal (or person) believes that they have minimal or no control is the leading cause of helplessness.

There have been lots of these stressful and traumatic experiences for everyone in the past three years.

You may be reading this and it not resonating with you.

That is great and I am really pleased that you have escaped unscathed from what has been the greatest transference of wealth and power in the history of humanity.

For those who are just about managing to keep motivated and utilise various devices to keep there then just be mindful of your energy expenditure as this can mean the difference between being ok and delving into helplessness.

For those of you who are really struggling with your motivation, your mood, your balance and your feeling of power, then I intend that this has provided some awareness and understanding for you.

Please do keep reading for a strategy to improve things for you.

So how can we gain more control of how we respond to adversity and how we position ourselves within it?

Being able to better prepare for the future is key.

Optimism is literally the future with all of this.

Future mastery and the belief in it will support the movement away from helplessness.

Remember helplessness (passivity and heightened anxiety) is the default mammalian response to prolonged bad events. So if you feel this you are being true to type!

By looking to the future and actively choosing to think about what good things can happen and how you can be in control of that will inhibit the helplessness mechanism and activate the active coping circuitry.

It is imperitive that you begin to think the following -

• Adversity is not your entirely your fault, there often is a perfect storm of factors.

• Adversity is external to you.

• Bad things happen to good people and vice versa. Also. bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people. It is all true.

• There is always something that you can control. Even if it is only what hand you brush your teeth with, what order you get dressed in, what you eat or drink in the morning, what you think about yourself, what media you allow into your consciousness etc.etc.

• The future will come into the present anyway whether your think optimistically or not, the only difference will be that you will be better placed to not feel helpless and be more motivated if you train yourself in optimism.

For those of you who are paid subscribers I have put together a workbook where you can start to train your brain away from helplessness into optimism. When you reach the bottom of this article you will be able to download it. I urge you to just look at it and if all you do is read it daily and not do the exercises that is a good start in thinking about things differently.

I am going to write a more personal perspective on helplessness and why I have been thinking about it recently so look out for that one.

The 56 days of magnificence ARE going to be coming to an end in less than a week for those of you who are paid subscribers and I will write to you all about that shortly.

But.

If you were not compelled to try it or felt like it was all too much then I gently suggest that the proposals within this writing are the underpinning reasons.

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them