Do you feel helpless in life? Why do some people resort to seeing themselves as a victim of circumstance?
David Emerald argues that many people suffer from a helpless mindset that prevents them from finding happiness, building lasting relationships, and achieving their goals. He claims there are four key characteristics of the helpless mindset: seeing yourself as a victim of circumstance, focusing on problems, responding to problems, and viewing others as either oppressors or saviors.
Keep reading to learn about these characteristics of feeling helpless and out of control of your own life.
Characteristic 1: Seeing Yourself as a Victim of Circumstance
Emerald contends that when you’re feeling helpless in life, you see your life as being determined by external circumstances beyond your control. You blame others for personal problems and see yourself as an unfortunate victim in the story of your life. In looking back on your life, you focus on all the bad things that have happened to you, and use these bad things as explanations for your problems. You perceive these setbacks as having permanently limited who you are and what you can achieve. For example, a student with a helpless mindset might think, “I failed this test because the teacher doesn’t like me. There’s probably nothing I can do to pass the class.”
Emerald explains that this outlook leaves people feeling out of control, stressed out, and depressed. After all, if your life is determined by external circumstances, that places you in a position of powerlessness, where all of your actions are futile.
(Shortform note: Psychologists have found that those with a helpless mindset may have learned this mindset through experience. In 1967, psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier identified a phenomenon called “learned helplessness,” which occurs when individuals repeatedly face negative, uncontrollable situations and eventually stop trying to change their circumstances, even when it becomes possible to do so. Their research, initially conducted on dogs subjected to electric shocks, revealed that animals who learned they couldn’t escape the shock stopped trying in later experiments. Further research has found that, similar to the dogs subjected to repeated shocks, humans with learned helplessness have often experienced repeated failures and trauma.)
Characteristic 2: Focusing on Troubles
Furthermore, Emerald explains that when you have a helpless mindset, you focus primarily on the troubles in your life. Any negative circumstances tend to consume your attention, so that you’re unable to see pleasurable life experiences, new discoveries, and opportunities to pursue personal goals. This mindset not only directs your attention but also influences how you interpret your daily experiences: If you have a helpless mindset, you’re more likely to see experiences as problems. For example, if someone is given a particularly challenging project at work, they may focus on how stressful and difficult the task will be, overlooking the opportunity to develop their skills and impress their supervisor.
(Shortform note: The inclination to fixate on negative experiences is a fundamental aspect of human psychology known as the negativity bias. Research has shown that humans tend to pay more attention to negative stimuli, learn more from negative outcomes, and make decisions based more on negative information than positive data. This bias is believed to have evolved as a survival mechanism, allowing our ancestors to remain vigilant against potential threats. Research in neurology supports this theory, demonstrating that negative stimuli elicit a larger brain response than positive ones.)
Characteristic 3: Responding to Worry and Fear
When you focus on your troubles, all of your energy goes to trying to “solve” them. However, Emerald argues that much of this energy is wasted. This happens because, with a mindset of helplessness, you’re likely not actually responding to the situation itself, but rather the worry and fear your situation causes.
This wastes energy in two ways. First, by focusing so much on your feelings, you may not be looking clearly at the issue itself. This inhibits your ability to find a solution. Second, when responding to fear, your body has three default solutions: fight, flight, or freeze. Often, these responses fail to solve the problem. At worst, they exacerbate it.
For instance, imagine you’re facing a looming work deadline. Instead of calmly assessing the situation and creating a plan, you become overwhelmed with anxiety. You spend hours worrying about potential consequences, procrastinating out of fear, or frantically working without direction. This emotional response consumes your energy and time, leaving you less equipped to complete the task efficiently.
| The Self-Reinforcing Cycle of Anxiety In Unwinding Anxiety, Dr. Judson Brewer explains why it can be so difficult to respond well to situations that make us anxious. He argues that we experience anxiety as a self-reinforcing loop that can get cumulatively worse over time, making our responses stronger each time we experience an anxiety-inducing situation. Here’s how the cycle works: When we face a stressful situation, such as a looming deadline, the brain tries to prepare itself by thinking through frightening “what if” scenarios. These thoughts then prompt the brain to record the experience as stressful and frightening. Next time we have a similar experience, our brains remember how awful the experience was last time and produce even more anxiety than before. This leads to a loop where our anxiety—and resulting flight, fight, or freeze response—become incrementally worse every time we confront a stressful situation. Notice that in the anxiety cycle, the reinforcement learning wasn’t informed by the situation itself, but rather the “what if” scenarios we created. Like Emerald, Brewer asserts that situations aren’t causing anxiety, our minds are. With a helpless mindset, the “what ifs” can become even more catastrophic, as the disastrous scenarios can be worse when we feel out of control of our lives. |
Characteristic 4: Viewing Others as Either Oppressors or Saviors
Emerald explains that a helpless mindset also shapes the way you see and relate to other people. In this mindset, you tend to view others as only one of two roles: oppressors or saviors. This is because you’re so focused on your troubles that you only see other people in terms of how they relate to those troubles: Are these people alleviating them or exacerbating them?
In this section we’ll briefly explain each of these roles, why they’re detrimental, and the harms of this outlook in general.
Role 1) Oppressor
Emerald defines an oppressor as someone you blame as the cause of your troubles in life. Viewing someone as an oppressor creates feelings of resentment and hostility, often encouraging you to lash out—which may even lead them to see you as an oppressor. For instance, an employee who constantly blames their boss for their lack of career advancement may develop resentment, leading them to underperform or speak negatively about their supervisor. This behavior could then cause the boss to view the employee as a problem, creating a cycle of mutual antagonism.
Role 2) Savior
A savior is someone who solves your problems—or someone who you expect will solve them. Emerald challenges the conventional view of the savior as a positive figure. He argues that while saviors may have good intentions, their actions can inadvertently reinforce the helpless person’s feelings of dependency. For instance, a well-meaning friend who constantly offers to complete tasks for a struggling colleague may unintentionally prevent them from developing necessary skills and confidence—ultimately reinforcing their sense of inadequacy and reliance on others.
The Harmful Effects of the Oppressor/Savior Outlook
While many see saviors as good and oppressors as bad, Emerald argues that both are bad, and this is overall a harmful way of categorizing other people. With this outlook, you don’t take responsibility for your problems: Oppressors are responsible for causing them, and saviors are responsible for solving them. This reinforces your mindset of helplessness.
Furthermore, by reducing other people to these roles, you may no longer see them as complete human beings with whom you can have deeper and more meaningful connections. Thus, this outlook can lower the quality of your relationships with friends, family, and romantic partners.
Conclusion: A Helpless Mindset Is a Self-Reinforcing Cycle
Emerald explains that each of these four characteristics creates a self-reinforcing negative cycle for anyone with a helpless mindset. Recall that seeing yourself as a victim leads to stress and depression, focusing on troubles leads you to miss out on opportunities, responding to your fear and worry can exacerbate your troubles, and viewing others as saviors and oppressors limits your ability to have fulfilling relationships. All of these can leave you feeling more persecuted and out of control, reinforcing the helpless mindset.
