Learned Defenselessness, Or How To Get Used To Abuse
When we talk about battered women, often the question we all ask ourselves is: “why don’t they run away?”
For us, it is easy to flee, and we imagine an escape similar to the one staged in the film Nights with my enemy , where Julia Roberts pretends to be the victim of a premeditated shipwreck.
However, for a person who is continually subjected to mental and / or physical torture, fleeing is not so easy as it can be explained, among other things, by a phenomenon that psychologist Seligman studied in the 1860s, known as the name “learned defenselessness”, or “domestic Stockholm syndrome”.
What is the learned lack of defense?
The learned defenselessness is the result of a series of laboratory studies carried out with animals according to the principles of the psychological stream of behaviorism.
Seligman subjected several animals to electric shocks that they could not escape. Little by little, the animals have learned that whatever they do they cannot be spared, so they stop acting.
After a while, even when it was possible to avoid the shocks, the animals did not move and let it go, since they had previously learned that it was impossible to flee. This passivity, conditioned by the fact of not having been able to flee at a certain moment, stabilized over time.
The learned lack of defense immobilizes the victims. And this does not only apply to couple relationships, but also to father-daughter relationships, relationships at work, etc.
As Juan José Millás rightly says in his magnificent book entitled The Nevenka Affair, A History of Harassment , we humans are like colorful fish; despite their beauty, some have a behavior that could be described as cannibal:
“If as you say Ismael hit you, why didn’t you defend yourself? they asked Nevenka. […] The existential process that invaded Nevenka could not have been very different from that of the colored fish […] One day, shortly after the start of the relationship, the fish surrounded her and bit her fin. It was an unexpected bite […]. The harassment did not happen overnight; it is a slow process. When they hit you, you’re already nobody. It is not your fins that you lose, but your will. ”
What can be done to combat the lack of learned defense?
What to do when the learned defenselessness process takes hold of your soul, and you feel that no matter what you do, nothing will change?
Breaking out of this vicious circle is not easy. Indeed, who says lack of learned defense says total lack of self-confidence. There is no point in asking questions like “why not run away?”, Since that only allows one thing: to push the victim more than she already is, she who is convinced that she does not. worth nothing and that nothing and no one can change this situation.
The first thing to do is learn to recognize this learned lack of defense, and ask for help, since this phenomenon affects our psyche, and it is very difficult to flee from ourselves. If behavioral psychologists are to be believed, anything that has been programmed can be deprogrammed.
In this way, by getting help, you will be able to overcome the lack of defense learned through techniques like systematic desensitization, which will allow you to move slowly but surely towards the end goal, namely independence.
This learning, or “unlearning”, it all depends on how you see things, must necessarily be accompanied by essential work on self-esteem ; you have to believe in yourself and your abilities. What more ?
