Learned Helplessness

So, I think I figured out what triggered my most recent depressive episode. Now, I have severe clinical depression but I kind of mark that as separate but kind of part of the condition I suffer from. On the one hand, it's a discreet situation and on the other it's a bit of breakthrough symptoms that are otherwise well-controlled by my medication, therapy, and natural supports. I hope that makes sense.

Anyway, lack of adequate sleep contributed to this for sure, so did lack of exercise. However, this merely set the stage for the real trigger to swoop in and cause a lot of damage. I can't/don't want to get too much into it but basically I was threatened with bodily harm. Those of you who know me know about my history of child abuse and how this continues to affect me to this day despite the fact that I've resolved much of the core conflicts that it created for me. But yeah. Someone very clearly communicated that they wished to do bodily harm to me.

Now, I'm not that helpless little girl any more so instead of fear I felt rage - raw and unfiltered. I wanted to be violent. I wanted to show this person exactly who they were messing with, because I am powerful and full-grown and you can't just push me around now. However, I could not do a damn thing without risking my job and my reputation. I vented as much as I could. I even hit some nerds in consensual battle sport. It wasn't enough.

Why, you may ask? Well, there's this psychological concept called learned helplessness which this Wikipedia article sums up nicely:

"Learned helplessness is... where an animal endures repeatedly painful or otherwise aversive stimuli which it is unable to escape or avoid. After such experience, the organism often fails to learn or accept "escape" or "avoidance" ... In other words, the organism learned that it is helpless in situations where there is a presence of aversive stimuli and has accepted that it has lost control, and thus gives up trying... Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses may result from such real or perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation."

Imagine being a fraction of the size of your abuser. Imagine being dependent on your abuser. Imagine being threatened with death or even worse abuse any time you speak up, even to beg for mercy or cry. Imagine even when they promise it'll never happen again, it does, but you have no choice but to believe that maybe this time it's different. That's what I come from. That's my experience. That's my learned helplessness.

So, I was angry at this person, but I couldn't be angry at this person without consequences or aversive stimuli. I began to feel helpless, and like everything I did was pointless, and that I was worthless. I drew into myself and I shut down - an old defense mechanism that protected me from my very strong feelings as a child, but also laid the groundwork for my depression. It took time and care to get me through this, and I feel better now, so now I can understand what happened.

It's frustrating, knowing all of this and not really being able to stop it from happening all of the time. It's frustrating, not being able to gain this kind of awareness while it's happening because my brain has shut off the ability to do so out of habit, believing it's essential to my survival that I not think too hard about it. It's frustrating, knowing that one day this reaction could kill me - could lead to me killing me just to make it all stop.

I'll keep fighting and learning and growing, but this is what I have to claw my way back from. This is what pulls me under again and makes it look like I haven't made any progress at all. This is my learned helplessness.