In his book “Cognitive-behavioral therapy for borderline personality disorder,” M. Linehan writes about behavioral patterns, including active passivity. Active passivity is “a tendency towards a passive style of solving interpersonal problems, including the inability to actively overcome the difficulties of life, often with attempts to involve members of one’s environment in solving one’s own problems; learned helplessness, hopelessness” (2008, p. 38) And I want to talk about learned helplessness, since this term is used and heard quite often, it has become common among the people, since 60 years have passed since the experiment by Martin Seligman and Stephen Mayer, where The behavior of dogs in situations of exposure to electric current was studied on their ability to influence the situation. The concept of learned helplessness was taught at psychology departments, broadcast in various scientific articles, but it turned out that everything is not so simple. In 2000 (as much!), 40 years later, Seligman discovered an error in an experiment where it was not the experience of helplessness that came to the fore, but the ability to control and optimistically look at solving problems, self-confidence. He conducted a series of new experiments and published new data in 2016, where he says that what is learned is not helplessness, but control, or, conversely, the inability to control, which affects the ability to take any actions to improve the situation. Seligman says that a person is initially born helpless, but he learns to overcome obstacles and solve problems throughout his life. By gaining the opportunity to learn from the consequences of his actions, a person learns to recognize threats and keep under control various factors that regulate the consequences. Experiments have shown that it is the ability to control external circumstances in a situation of exposure to painful and negative factors that helps to successfully learn to cope with life circumstances. Conversely, the inability to control one’s life, the lack of the right to make decisions and feel one’s competence leads to a loss of meaning in life, to depressive and anxious feelings, and self-harming behavior (from an experiment with elderly people living in a nursing home). Thus, returning to Linehan’s idea, we can talk about the significant influence of a disabling (unsupportive) environment on a person. I have already written about this in the attached post. Invalidation is non-recognition, depreciation, recognition as insolvent, inferior or unreliable, failure to take into account. That is, borderline personality disorder is caused by a combination of two main factors - a biological component, predisposition (predisposition, sensitivity, sensitivity) and a disabling environment. An invalidating environment and a situation with unpredictability and uncertainty create such preconditions for development - children without a biological predisposition develop hypercontrol, perfectionism, obsessions and other components of the neurotic spectrum, and for those who were born more sensitive, such an environment leads to the feeling that life always turns out differently. under control, and nothing can be done on your own. In the process of raising a child, a balance is important between the opportunity to influence something, one’s responsibility and natural consequences after one’s decisions and basic safety in contact, where the family remains a reliable “safe haven” for the child.