UnLearn Helplessness!

I felt immediately better once I realized that, as a female pastor, the game is rigged. It just is. But this was not the first rigged game I played. My list is long and boring, I don't need to rehash it - but it is true. What I really need to focus on, and maybe you do as well, is teaching my body that the game may be rigged but I am not helpless.

How do we do this? We DO something.

Remember those animals they taught to be helpless? They untaught them. They forced them to escape by dragging them to safety. Eventually the dogs (in this experiment) eventually learned to escape without human coercion. We can learn the same!

When we feel trapped, freeing ourselves from ANYTHING can teach our body that we are not helpless.

I have a friend who is struggling with past disappointments and abandonment. These past issues are done. She feels helpless over the effects they have had on her relationship with men. What can she DO? Well, she cannot undo her childhood trauma.

But what she did do was join a gym and get fit as a fiddle. She found a therapist who gets her. She is DOING. This helps reduce the stress that helplessness causes.

Today I was feeling helpless over those dang grant applications. I cannot change the outcome. But I did phone a friend and check in with them every hour all day. I did not call them to lament my grant status. I called them to see how they were doing - friendly connection. The goal in unlearning helplessness is to stabilize ourselves.

You can DO something. What are you doing to get out of the trap you feel helpless in?