How Can Health Care Professionals Address Learned Helplessness?
Clinicians often ask us, “What about people who aren’t interested in recovery, and who have no interest in peer support and other recovery concepts?” What we often forget is that MOST people find it undesirable to change. It’s hard work! People have gotten used to their identities and roles as ill, victims, fragile, dependent and even as unhappy. Long ago we learned to “accept” our illnesses, give over control to others and tolerate the way of life. Think how many people live like this in one way or another that don’t have diagnosed illnesses. It’s easier to live in the safety of what we know, even if it hurts, than it is to do the hard work of change or develop hope that conceivably could be crushed. Our clinical mistake, up to this point, has been thinking that if we ask people what they need and want, they will instinctively have the answer AND want to change their way of being. People who have been in the mental health system for many years have developed a way of being in the worl
