From the author: We often see a picture where a person, having everything he needs, does not make any attempts to improve the situation. He gives up and gives up... Why? There are no apparent reasons for this! About this in this article. A wolf cannot break traditions. Apparently, in childhood, blind puppies, We, wolf cubs, sucked the she-wolf And sucked in - “You can’t touch the flags!” V. Vysotsky “Wolf Hunt” Just yesterday I read in the news that a professor, dean of the faculty of psychology, suffered from incurable cancer illness, committed suicide. He left a short suicide note in which he explained his action by saying that he was tired of a fatal illness and asked not to blame anyone for what happened. How could this be? The man refused to try to continue the fight for life, although he had all the conditions for this: medicines, observation by doctors, not to mention all kinds of knowledge of a psychological nature. There is the concept of so-called learned helplessness, when (definition from Wikipedia) “an individual does not make attempts to improve his condition, although he has such an opportunity.” This phenomenon was accidentally discovered in 1967 by Martin Seligman, conducting experiments on dogs. He tried to develop a fear reflex in dogs to a high sound by passing a small but sensitive current discharge through the cells. When the cages were opened and the dogs “should have been scared” by the high sound accompanied by the electric shock and ran out, the animals remained inside. The dogs made no attempt to escape, although it was not difficult to do so with the door open. It’s as if they “learned” helplessness. Oddly enough, this phenomenon is also characteristic of humans. From the outside, his passive behavior seems unreasonable. I want to exclaim: “how can he tolerate this?” or “why did you give up, because not everything is lost?” The situation with the professor’s suicide from the first paragraph is one such example. Even deep knowledge of psychology did not help us gain internal resources in the form of faith and cope with depression. How do we learn helplessness? The basis of this phenomenon is the loss of a sense of freedom and control over the situation. And as a result of this, there is a loss of faith in one’s own strengths. This is why knowledge in the field of psychology alone will not help here, since they are weakly related to faith, which is difficult to systematize, classify and logically analyze. Nevertheless, for example, Robert Dilts described in their books ways of working with faith through changing beliefs. He wrote that beliefs are a kind of structure that unites our internal states, values, expectations and sensory experiences. At the same time, limiting beliefs or “thought viruses” arise due to a breakdown in connections with one’s values ​​and experiences. Indeed, faith in oneself and one’s strengths can be gradually lost due to a repeated unfortunate event. A person acquires a negative, traumatic experience of pain or failure, and with it harmful beliefs that “it won’t work out anymore.” This is where negative expectations are formed. This, in turn, turns a person away from his values, because “it’s bad enough, there’s no time for them now.” As a result, a state of despondency and depression arises instead of faith in oneself and one’s capabilities. The result is a vicious circle: the psyche adapts to bad experiences, learning helplessness and acquiring negative beliefs. Now any success begins to seem like an accident. And the expectation of defeat becomes the norm against the backdrop of a depressed and powerless state. How to get out of the vicious circle of learned helplessness? Here you can use the Dilts model, which in its essence is not so cumbersome, but, on the contrary, compact and quite capacious. It is necessary to influence all components of the psyche that are associated with beliefs. Sensory experience. Here it is worth remembering all your own successful examples from life when you managed to cope with difficulties. In this way, we will switch to a positive experience, realizing that there are exceptions to any rule. Moreover, it will not be useful here