The theory of learned helplessness

Anvika was a bright student who had just completed her 10th standard. Eager to pursue a career in engineering, she joined a renowned JEE coaching institute. However, soon after she joined, she encountered a mean teacher who would constantly berate her in front of the class.

On her first day of class, the teacher gave her a difficult physics question from I.E. Irodov, which Anvika tried to solve but couldn’t. From that day on, the teacher would give her and the other students increasingly difficult questions, and Anvika would try her best to solve them, but she kept failing. Every time she failed, the teacher would belittle her, telling her that she was not good enough, that she didn’t have what it takes to succeed, and that she was a failure.

Over time, Anvika began to lose her motivation to try. She started to doubt her abilities, believing that no matter how hard she tried, she would always fail. She became demoralized and withdrawn, suffering from a sense of learned helplessness.

Then a new teacher had come to teach,he was relatively better than the previous one.But Anvika was saying to herself that she cannot do it,she was putting herself in most helplessness position, even though there were solvable just because of previous traumatic experience.She started feeling that she cannot do anything even if the situation were not bad.

This situation helps us in understanding the theory of learned helplessness.

learned helplessness was developed by Martin Seligman,the initial understanding was based on the behaviour of animals when animals were exposed to inescapable or traumatic events,later they were placed in escable situation,but they were not putting efforts.The traumatic event made them passive and surrender to the outside environment without any efforts.Similarily when human being keep facing repeated failures they begun to feel helpless,and leaving everything to outside circumstances.