Feeling helpless is often incredibly depressing. You then feel that you have no control over a particular situation. You do not have the power to change anything about a situation, and because of this, you cannot influence the outcome.
Since we all love the feeling of being in control of our lives, this can be incredibly frustrating.
Feelings of helplessness are often used as an indication, or signal, of another larger problem. For example, it is a feeling appropriate for people suffering from anxiety or depression.
Then there is also the question of whether you are truly helpless, or whether you have been wrongly taught somewhere that you are helpless.
Learned helplessness
Especially in people suffering from depression, feelings of helplessness are a major problem. One speaks of learned helplessness. You then stop behavior, so to speak, to stop awkward consequences.
For example, you don't try harder to live healthy, pay bills on time, clean your house and the like. Over time, this starts causing problems.
This is then because during depression you feel that none of it matters anyway.
Feeling like nothing matters, for example, is because they have experienced something traumatic, which causes them to feel like they are... despite all their good behavior.
- Got sick
- Bills couldn't be paid
- The house became a mess (due to a natural disaster, for example)
The feelings and thoughts about that over which you feel you have no control anyway then play a major role[1].
Helplessness in disease
There are diseases of old age that you can't do much about, such as dementia and Alzheimer's. Or there may be another disease that makes you think no one can help you.
In cases like this, it is often difficult to provide care because the patient has to do something for themselves.
Consider physical therapy during rehabilitation, for example.
But if someone genuinely believes they can no longer do something, it's difficult to relearn anyway.
With Alzheimer's and dementia, people may also suffer from this. In that case, reducing stress plays a big role in getting people out of the feelings of learned helplessness and getting them to still cooperate with treatment[2].
This can also have many implications for people suffering from serious illnesses such as cancer , but those feelings of helplessness often act as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you suffer from this, your chances of healing become less[3].
Therefore, it is also important to apply positive psychology during this type of illness and remove feelings of helplessness. This can improve your chances of survival anyway.
Turning helplessness into decisiveness
Fortunately, you don't have to linger in helplessness. So it may be that you have been through so much in your life that you think it doesn't matter anyway whether you try your best or not to get out of a bad situation.
After all, being passive is not really natural, it is learned through a negative feedback loop (from all those bad events).
Fortunately, you can break that feedback loop by stimulating another part of your brain so that you can see again that you do have control over your life.
You must have at least the expectation again, that you can exercise control[4].
Hypnosis for transformation
Hypnotherapy is used for numerous problems. Also for people who suffer from helplessness, such as being depressed.
Hypnotherapy, for example, helps reduce agitation and thinking back on certain events, making you feel more powerful and less bothered by helpless feelings[5].
In fact, when hypnosis is combined with cognitive behavioral therapy, it works more strongly than cognitive behavioral therapy without hypnosis[6].
Combine hypnosis with mindfulness, which also helps to stay in the here-and-now with your thoughts, and so that also helps to reduce memories of helplessness and therefore be more powerful in the now. That also helps well against depression, and thus against feelings of hopelessness[7].
Are you suffering from a traumatic event that also causes you to suffer from pain? Like due to fire? In that case, hypnosis also helps ease the pain, and people can also use self-hypnosis, making them feel less helpless[8].
So hypnotherapy works, but what about it?
Events in your life give you all kinds of beliefs about how life works, and if you have learned helplessness, you have acquired very unhealthy limiting beliefs.
A hypnotherapist will help people figure out what those limiting beliefs are then, where are they coming from.
Initially, there is a preliminary consultation in which you can talk more about your helplessness and your own ideas about the cause.
This gives the hypnotherapist an entry point and ideas for what techniques are best used for you to reduce helplessness.
In any case, what will happen is that you can relax completely for a while. After all, that's what it takes to get into deep hypnosis. The hypnotherapist will help you with this.
Then get help to imagine a safe place to further deepen relaxation and hypnosis.
Only then will therapy be applied.
There are a variety of techniques for this as well. Depending on the cause of the feelings of helplessness, a technique, or combination of techniques is used until the feeling is gone.
Or until you feel at least a little stronger.
Strengthening the ego is also an important part of hypnotherapy and often takes place fairly near the end of a hypnosis session.
Visualizations to feel stronger again
Visualizations also play an important role in helping you feel stronger again. For example, a hypnotherapist can think with you about what your ideal life would look like and what small steps you can take in that direction.
Visualizing desired behaviors can actually make a person feel better that these behaviors are actionable.
A case study of someone who suffered greatly from helplessness shows that 7 sessions were enough to eliminate those feelings, and to experience positive feelings again.
And that while in real life the client didn't even change very much. They were mostly changes in thinking and feelings[9].
Self-hypnosis against helplessness
In addition, you can get (or just start) homework on self-hypnosis. A study in Scotland compared self-hypnosis to antidepressants for depressive symptoms.
What transpired?
Self-hypnosis had similar effects to medication.
But without the side effects. How cool is that? It was still a small study so you can't tell the results yet that it "always" works that way, but it is a hopeful study[10].
Helplessness due to illness
You may think when you hear the term "learned helplessness" that your helplessness is not learned at all, but real helplessness. For example, if you have a serious disease, such as ALS for which there is no cure, somewhere it makes sense that you feel helpless.
Hypnosis can also provide relief from these feelings in such cases.
In a study of the effect of hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis on people with ALS and their caregivers, it was found that their quality of life improved and people with ALS even experienced a reduction in their symptoms.
This does not mean that hypnosis cures ALS, but it can therefore have some impact on the course of the disease. This was a pilot study so no major conclusions can be drawn. However, the results are hopeful[11].
Learn Hypnosis
Want to learn hypnosis to make life easier for yourself and others? At the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands, there are three courses you can take sequentially to become the best hypnotherapist.
Want to learn more about hypnosis? Come to a free master class.
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