Podcast Summary
In this episode I share the following:
- Why I couldn’t get out of bed until 11.15am (on a school day!).
- My indulgence in rumination of the negative kind.
- How I skilfully used social media to distract myself and delay facing up to the day.
- The negative emotional downward spiral I launched myself into because I couldn’t drag myself out of bed.
- An explanation of how I set myself up for this LAST NIGHT!!!
- What Learned Helplessness is – the research behind it and how it affects us (especially if depressed)
- My complete embarrassment at being honest about what happened this morning.
- How I considered giving up on this podcast after just 2 episodes, but why I know I have to keep going
Podcast Transcription (Edited)
Welcome to today’s episode of the Hope, Help and happiness podcast.
I’d planned to use today’s episode to give an overview of the interaction I’ve had with the health service since I went to the doctors on my birthday when I was thinking of ending my life. I was going to catalogue all the interactions I’ve had and show you the relative futility of that effort.
That was my plan today. But that got stymied by me.
My alarm went off at 6.30am this morning but I snoozed it. I woke up again about half an hour later and then started ruminating. I let my mind mull over the things I’ve got to do, the situation I find myself in, the difficulties I’m having, what I’m going to be doing this week and the wide variety of things currently on my mind.
My mind was turning over thousand miles an hour, which is typical at the moment when I let it do that. And I found myself just lying in bed and staying there. I think I’ve mentioned in a previous episode, it feels like I’m giving up and that is how it felt this morning. It just seemed too difficult to get out of bed and do stuff. ,
So I just opted for the easy option, reached out from my phone and I thought I’d check my messages. I checked my Facebook messages – no one had contacted me. I checked my WhatApp messages and no one had contacted me. I’ve got loads of email because I’m subscribed to all sorts of lists but none of them from a real person.
Then once I’d got bored with that, I then flipped over to the BBC news website and topped up with more negativity with what’s happening with the UK leaving the European Union and the air crash in Ethiopia and all the other terrible things that are happening in the world.
Once I’d had enough of that, because there’s only so much negativity I can stomach in the morning, I went back to my Facebook feed and just scrolled through it. I got sucked into watching clips of old episodes of Friends that are supposedly the “Best Ever Episode In The World”. I watched episodes of the Big Bang Theory. I saw videos of planes taking off and landing in difficult weather conditions and also watched all sorts of mind numbing and useless (though extremely engaging) crap.
I got sucked into all of that and clearly I was using it as a distraction during that time. By the way we’re not just talking a few minutes of distraction. It’s taken me a few minutes to describe that, but I’m talking about this was going on through eight o’clock, nine o’clock, 10 o’clock and even close to 11 o’clock this morning.
During that time I also had two telephone calls. The first one I answered because it looked like it was from a genuine local number but a girl tried to sell me a business loan I didn’t even ask for. So that ended quite quickly. And the second one, I didn’t even bother answering. They didn’t leave a message so it can’t have been important.
So everything just feels like it’s too difficult.
I think the seeds of this were sown last night. I went to bed quite positive because I’d been out. Before retiring I did a little bit of reading on a couple of the topics I’ve been researching for this podcast and for a project I am trying to kickstart trying to get back into doing something professionally.
I felt that I was making some progress. I remember as I was about to turn the light out, I was thinking I should really plan what I’m going to do tomorrow. But I decided against it, naively thought I’d be ok in the morning, turned the light off and went to sleep.
Of course I woke up this morning and all this has happened.
Now during that I had feelings of helplessness. It’s learned helplessness – I know that, and I’ll expand on that shortly. I started feeling that things are way too difficult for me to attempt. Things were just too overwhelming for me. And because of that I felt like I couldn’t do anything.
This meant I got frustrated with myself because I know I can’t keep doing this. I know I can’t allow myself to let these feelings overwhelm me and take control. And the frustration meant I got angry which created negativity in me. And so it compounds and goes on and on and on and on meaning I feel worse and worse and worse.
I think it was around about 11.15am when I finally got up and had a shower. I then had some breakfast and started to think about whether I should continue to do a podcast about my struggles. This is because it suddenly felt completely overwhelming doing this because it does take some effort.
But I know if I don’t do this, I’ll just keep hiding away from the challenges I face. I’ll just keep shutting things out and going to distractions, kidding myself that things will be okay and really they’re not and they won’t get better. Things are going to get worse.
I suddenly thought, “have I bitten off more than I can chew with this podcast and blog?” Am I creating something that’s going to be too complicated? Because I have a pattern of doing that and my plans never materialise.
I have seriously thought:
“I’ll just pull it two episodes off. I’ve already done and just stop it and just go and hide”.
But I know I can’t do that. I know because that’s just going to lead me down the same path I’ve previously trod in the run up to my birthday when I went to the doctors. I was so low that I did want to take my own life.
So I’ve got to move forward.
Now ironically last night I was searching for some information whilst flicking through a book called You Are Not So Smart by guy called David McRaney. He’s a journalist and basically he’s identified a number of false beliefs we have about our abilities and how we think and actually explains the science behind those fallacies and why we are completely wrong.
You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney
There’s a whole section on learned helplessness and he says the misconception is that as human beings we think if we are in a bad situation then we’ll do whatever we can to escape it.
The truth is based on the research that he goes into, which I’ll summarise shortly, is that if you feel like you aren’t in control of your destiny, you’ll give up and accept whatever situation you’re in. Which feels like where I am now.
He talks about some experiments that were done in the 1960s using dogs. Now I’m not a supporter of testing on animals like I’m about to describe, but this was back in the 1960s when it was deemed acceptable to do that. However, the lessons drawn from it are relevant to us today. So I’ll share them with you.
I first encountered these experiments over 20 years ago when I heard Tony Robbins talk about them. They were done by a guy called Martin Seligman who wanted to follow up on the research of Pavlov. Pavlov was the guy who did the salivating dogs experiments. He found that when he gave dogs some food, they would salivate because they were hungry. Every time he gave them food he also rang a bell.
Eventually he got to the point where he didn’t have to give them food for them to salivate. He just had to ring the bell because the expectation of food triggered by the bell was enough to get them to salivate.
Seligman’s updated experiments were designed to explore if that go the other way. Was there a negative slant to the stimulus/response mechanism Pavlov discovered?
To do that he took a dog, restrained and put it in a box. He would zap them with an electrical shock at the same time he rang a bell. He repeated this over and over until each dog subject had become conditioned to associate the bell with getting an electric shock. Because they were restrained and could not escape their predicament the dogs became resigned to the fact that a bell meant an electric shock.
The next part of the experiment had him place a conditioned dog unrestrained in one half of a box divided by a small fence. Seligman expected the dogs to jump over the fence to escape an impending electric shock when the bell was sounded.
But they didn’t.
Even though they had become conditioned to associating the sound of the bell with the unpleasant electric shock, all they did was brace themselves to receive the shock they thought was coming.
He then extended the experiment by actually applying the electric shock after the bell was sounded. Even though the dogs could escape the shock by jumping over the small fence, they still sat there and received the shock. This was because they had earlier been conditioned to accept the shock.
The repeated this part of the experiment with dogs that had not been conditioned. When the bell rang, they did nothing because it meant nothing to them. However as soon as they received the electric shock, they jumped over the small fence to escape the discomfort. Something the conditioned dogs could also have done, but didn’t.
According to David McRaney, we are also like those dogs. Here’s what he says in his book:
“If over the course of your life you have experienced crushing defeat or pummelling abuse or loss of control, you convince yourself over time there is no escape and escape is offered, you will not act. You become a nihilist who trusts futility above optimism…. Studies of the clinically depressed show they often give in to defeat and stopped trying… an extended period of negative emotions can lead to you giving into despair and accepting your fate.”
But he says there is a way out of this:
“Choices, even small ones can hold back the crushing weight of helplessness. But you can’t stop there. You must fight back the behaviour and learn to fail with pride and get things wrong.”
It’s interesting I came across that quote, because I can see that’s exactly where I am. I’ve developed learned helplessness.
I think I already knew this, but I think it’s comforting to be able to define it in a way that makes it clear it’s a recognised thing. There’s something real I can start to deal with.
But it doesn’t help me knowing that I’ve got learned helplessness because I’m still struggling to actually take the steps to put things in place. So my challenge to myself is to work around that as well as overcoming the feelings of the general negativity that’s around my brain and finding something to move forward with.
Dealing with learned helplessness is probably the way forward. When I say “probably the way forward”, it’s a bloody stupid thing to say – it is DEFINITELY the way forward because I’ve got to get out of it. Otherwise I’m just going to be here in six months time when my money runs out and that’s it. So I’ve got to change this to
I’m embarrassed I have to reveal this. I would like my podcast episodes be all about progress and moving forward and sharing my successes. But I suppose I’ve got to be brutally honest with you and myself that whilst I might have positive days like that, it’s not going to be like that every day. I have to learn to see these apparent setbacks as just staging posts on the journey forward.
These setbacks are probably what everyone goes through and I think I’ve just got to develop my ability to deal with them and overcome those challenges to move forward.
So that’s today’s episode.
Not what I wanted to talk about, but I figured I’ve got to be honest with me, with you, and show you the good and the bad side of what I’m experiencing. Because hopefully if you’re going through this yourself, you might be able to take something from what’s happening to me.
And when I find a way forward, it might help you too.
So until tomorrow.
