Helpfulness vs. helplessness

Another word for helpfulness is efficacy.

Efficacy, mastery, and control over the environment are all markers of wellbeing in adults.

I don’t mean control behaviors run by OCD. I mean actually having choice over and control of everyday life, including what to eat, drink, wear, and buy, what you do for work, what you learn, with whom you associate and socialize, and what you do in your leisure time.

Childhood is a prolonged period of helplessness. In the best of circumstances, I hope the adults around you didn’t make you too painfully aware of it. Both physical and emotional abuse and neglect create traumatic feelings of helplessness. A traumatic memory is an emotional-laden memory that gets stuck in time and space. Despite being an efficacious adult, certain combinations of triggers, thoughts, feelings, and sensations, may send you right back to the helplessness of when you were 5 or 15 years old. Their helplessness is a traumatic memory.

You don’t need more efficiency via rules and perfectionism in an attempt to prevent this feeling. Use curiosity to observe your triggers and your consequences. It will be less intense and less threatening next time if you learn from it this time and offer yourself healing compassion. Feeling helpless doesn’t mean that you are. Oftentimes you don’t need more problem solving to get out of helplessness. You may just need to acknowledge it, show yourself compassion, and come back into your present life.