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Originally Posted by My kids are cool
Well, I did it with my T's help because he picked up on that problem relatively quickly. He helped me brainstorm responses to my parents' various manipulations and attempts to control me. I gave you the example before of suggesting ways to respond to my parents' efforts to force to move to their house for the summer. My T had me start small and start building. Pick small tasks that ordinarily I would avoid because I didn't think I could do it. He encouraged me to just put in two applications for jobs, then two more, etc. So maybe you could start by asking your surgeon there for a referral to a surgeon in the Boston area, and finding the driving school to come to you.
Learned Helplessness « You Are Not So Smart
Learned Helplessness And The Road To Recovery | Spirituality and Self Help
There are other websites as well if these two are not helpful for you. |
Thanks for the links.
I have been thinking about whether or not my problem is learned helplessness for a while now actually. I'm still not 100% convinced it is. I do things all the time to prepare myself for the future. I do have plans to escape this place even if they might take a little longer than I need them to, I work hard on my music, I actively reach out looking for music jobs regardless of my fear of telephones, I am quite proactive within the school looking for help both emotionally and academically.
I am currently in a situation that I am helpless to escape. However, this doesn't mean that I can't ever escape this situation or even that I have to be horribly depressed the entire time I am here. Granted, it's very difficult to not be horribly depressed because I am quite extroverted and I desperately need social interaction in order to feel whole inside. Social isolation is extremely damaging for me. I've contacted my old friends from high school to see if they wanted to get together, but I’ve gotten no response yet. I am still trying to contact them and I am still giving myself projects to do within the household to keep me busy. I set up five driving lessons for this week and I actually already took one. I’m hoping to take the test for the first time in 3-4 weeks.
I consider learned helplessness to be like my problem with obesity. When I was living here as a child, I developed binge eating disorder and I would eat attempt to fill the emptiness I felt inside with food. It was my primary coping mechanism and it was so out of hand that by the end of my freshman year of college, I needed to lose over half of my overall body weight to be healthy. I had completely given up on my ability to live a healthy, normal life. I didn’t believe I could ever lose the weight so I stopped trying. I started to accept that I was stuck living at that weight and I started to accept that I would probably never have a love life or live past 50 years old. But then, I realized that I don’t have to accept that. I didn’t exhaust all of my options yet. I told my doctor that I wanted to look into gastric bypass in order to literally save my life. It was really hard to give up all of my food and everything I used to self-medicate myself and to develop an exercise routine, but I’m sitting here today only 8 months out from surgery and down 70% of the weight I need to lose to be healthy. I definitely still have a long way to go not to mention maintaining it, but I don’t think someone with learned helplessness would do something like that.
Yes, I am in a situation right now where I am helpless. However, I’ve already been working on plans to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I am practicing a LOT and already working on festival audition material for next summer. There are places I can go for free that are much more competitive and much MUCH longer than where I went this summer. I could easily get out of this house for 10 weeks that way. If I can’t do that, I already know of a few places I could get a summer job in Boston as an excuse to stay in my apartment all summer. When I’m not in this house, I am free. I am not manipulated or controlled by my mom. You see, she doesn’t actually care about me. She just wants to control me so she can feel important so when I’m out of the house, she loses all interest in me. If I can limit coming back here to short periods of time just so I can see my doctors, I think it is worth it to not ruin myself financially.
Sorry for the long response. I think I definitely do have problems with social anxiety and low self-esteem, but I'm not sure if it is exactly learned helplessness. I dunno. I know I've been very mopey on here. Do you think that’s my problem?