Learned Hopefulness...

I came from a family situation growing up where I was the youngest by a pretty large margin. My family wasn't affectionate, but being the youngest, I was Dad's favorite and he treated me well. My brothers and my sister resented how close he and I were. They seemed to hate me a great deal of the time, and ridiculed everything I said and did. In fact, my brothers tormented me, picked on me, beat me up, and ran me down. My mom was very hyper-critical and negative about everything I did. You'd have thought it would kill them to say something nice to me. My mother forbid me to play sports, or go on to college, but my one brother was in sports, my sister went to college... I wasn't allowed to get my driver's license until I moved out, but my brothers and my sister were given cars when they turned 16. Once my siblings had all grown up and left home, dad (who traveled a lot, and wasn't home much anyway) abandoned my mom and I. I was 11, and hardly saw him again until I became an adult. My mom had mental health issues that came about from all the stress, and she was not "there" for me from that time on. I moved out at 18, 3500 miles away, as fast as I could.

I can still feel very much like a small child when I am around my brothers and sister, and they treat me as such. So I don't go around them. Never. I for-go "family" in order to feel good about myself. Living with criticism is worse than living without any support from family. I can't even fathom what it's like for those who have connections that are helpful instead of spiteful. My mother's father gave my siblings money, land, cars, my sister went to college right out of high school. I don't know what it's like to be treated with decency or to be offered a really great opportunity, or inherit money or property. My grandfather hated my father, and since I was my father's favorite, I suppose I was a pariah. My siblings have way more success by their own standards in life. They've all held their same jobs at the same locations for over 20 years. They all make 3 or 4 times the money I've ever made with "secure" retirements ahead. They consider me "a joke" because I've held a string of jobs doing all sorts of things. If I feel terribly taken advantage of, underpaid, or disrespected, I leave. I am capable of hard work, and I have strong ethics that actually seem out of style to many. When I was laid off from my last employer they sent me packing after an investigation began since they thought I might testify against the owner's wife who was brought up on charges of fraud for stealing money from a sick old man's bank account, so... bad luck? My family would tell you I'm lazy and lacking in work ethic. I don't believe that's what is wrong.

Some people never have role models. Some have been let down too many times. Some people work very hard to overcome some of the hard knocks life throws their way, but a lot will learn that being helpless is a way to accept reality. Change is so much harder than accepting "what is", especially when it seems like you have very little that's good to go on. Sometimes what you believe is what others should want in life is not what they need for themselves. It's probably far more complicated than you can tell from his complaints or from just observing what a person does or doesn't do at work... Learned helplessness is compelling problem. I worked with women who were victims of domestic violence, and had stayed in very dangerous relationships despite all rational perspectives... I learned that people and their lives are often very compelling stories that build up to become the whole baffling person you see.

I used to complain about the lack of opportunity, the injustice I have seen, and felt at times like there was some club I was blackballed from at birth... I"m around 40 years old now, ;) Still playing "catch up" in my life, trying to fit into several career paths at once! I refuse to "learn" helplessness. Started my own online businesses. Going to build a place on some land in Maine in a few years.Staying active and vibrant. Doing whatever I darn well please. I have integrity. So though it was rough on me that my dad left, I did forgive him, and I did understand what he did when I got older. It was only dad who said, you're great, brat! Never compromise! It was he who always believed in me, and he who did just whatever he darn well pleased. If it weren't for that example, if I went on what other examples I saw, I'd probably have become a drunk, or found a way to end my life by now. I guess you could say my dad spent his whole life in a kind of "learned hopefulness"... and now I try to always do the same.

I was surprised to learn awhile back that there are some methods in therapy where a counselor demonstrates for the client the most radical things about that client, affirming the reality of some radical tendency or showing them that it's a legitimate part of their gestalt about themselves... (you might have heard of gestalt therapy). This is something used to recognize barriers a person builds around themselves that "block" them, mostly "psychically" from making needed changes in their lives. Find out what someone imagines, dreams of, or feels he could do but "can't" that would be "revolutionary" in his or her life. A change in attitude might make a difference... but maybe it's far more frightening, such as leaving behind family members that drag him down. (As I do. As my dad had done). That might be a radical idea, and he may even have guilt for thinking such thoughts, right? But it can also be a very rational, well reasoned course of action, and one that brings about the motivation needed for someone to make changes in life.