Borderline Personality Disorder and “Learned Helplessness”

The essential feature of Borderline Personality Disorder is a pervasive pattern of unstable interpersonal relationships and self-image. There is marked impulsivity which begins by early adulthood. The root, however, stems from early childhood, when the person experiences what is termed “learned helplessness,” which is a cognitive model of depression in which a person feels unable to control events around him/her.

"Learned helplessness" suggests that a person has been taught to feel helpless and think in self-defeating ways. In other words, the person has been taught that nothing they can do will make a difference, that they can do nothing right, that others know better than they do, and that they have little or no power and control over either their own lives or external events.

Learned helplessness is a psychological condition where a human or animal has learned that it is helpless. It feels that it has no control over its situation and that whatever it does is futile. As a result, it will stay passive when the situation is unpleasant or harmful. In the case of Borderline Personality Disorder, this is at least part of the depression associated with the disorder. Much of the behavior of a person with Borderline Personality Disorder is self-defeating. They also have a very poor self-image and low self-esteem, which can also be attributed, at least in part, to the learned helplessness experienced as a child and carried over into adulthood.

Learned helplessness is a well-established principle in psychology, a description of the effect of inescapable punishment (such as electrical shock) on an animal or person and their behavior. Learned helplessness may also occur in everyday situations where continued failure may inhibit somebody from experiencing the ability to make choices in the future, leading to many forms of depression.

"Learned helplessness" offers a model to explain human depression, in which apathy and submission prevail, causing the person to rely fully on others for help. This can result when life circumstances cause the individual to experience life choices as irrelevant. Chemical dependence (substance abuse), which is also a problem for many people with Borderline Personality Disorder, can also foster this condition.

The theory of “learned helplessness” was developed by Martin Seligman, a psychologist, and S.F. Meir, through experiments going back to 1965.

Martin Seligman's foundational experiments and theory of learned helplessness began at the University of Pennsylvania in 1965, as an extension of his interest in depression, when, at first quite by accident, Seligman and his colleagues discovered a result of conditioning of dogs that was opposite to what B.F. Skinner's behaviorism would have predicted. A dog that had earlier been repeatedly conditioned to associate a sound with electric shocks did not try (later in another setting) to escape the electric shocks after that sound and a flash of light was presented, even though all the dog would have had to do is jump over a low divider within ten seconds, more than enough time to respond. The dog didn't even try to avoid the "negative stimulus"; the dog had previously "learned" that nothing it did mattered.

A follow-up experiment involved three dogs affixed in harnesses. The first dog was simply put in the harness for a period of time and later released. The second dog was put in the harness and given electric shocks, which the dog could end by pressing a lever. The third dog was wired in parallel with the second dog, receiving shocks of identical duration and intensity, but his lever didn't do anything. The first and second dogs quickly recovered from the experience, but the third dog learned to be helpless, and suffered chronic symptoms of clinical depression.

Environments in which people experience events in which they feel or actually have no control over what happens to them, such as repeated failure, prison, war, disability, famine and drought, tend to exhibit learned helplessness. An example involves concentration camp prisoners during the Holocaust, when some prisoners, called Mussulmen, refused to care or fend for themselves.

Present-day examples of learned helplessness can be found in mental institutions, orphanages, or long-term care facilities where the patients have failed or been stripped of the ability to make choices for long enough to cause their feelings of inadequacy to persist. The learned helplessness phenomenon can also be found in people who have Borderline Personality Disorder.

About the Author

David Oliver is the founder of BorderlineCentral.com a one stop source of information on how to cope and deal with borderline personality disorder.

FREE Borderline News,
Tips, Tricks and Secrets

Name:

E-mail:

Other:

This Week's Borderline Personality Disorder News

The Cutting Truth of Borderline Personality Disorder
FYI Living
Cutting and other forms of self-mutilation may be hard for many people to understand. People who self-harm are more likely to have an underlying emotional problems, such as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). According to a study by German researchers, people with BPD may engage in self-injury because they get a sense of emotional relief from physical pain. BPD is a complex set of... Read More

Click here for all Borderline News.

BorderlineCentral
Your One Stop Source For Information On
Borderline Personality Disorder