Learned Helplessness in Immigrant Families: Why You Feel Stuck Even When Life Has Changed

A really messed up experiment was done with dogs back in 1965. Martin Seligman set up an experiment where dogs were administered a light shock.

But the results of this study has led to us understanding something we now call “learned helplessness.” What this means is that if we condition someone to believe that their actions have no impact, then a person would not take action to change their negative circumstances.

In other words, if a person takes repeated action, but the action doesn’t result to a change in their circumstances, then the person would be less likely to take future action to change their circumstances. They learn that they are helpless, and therefore, won’t bother to do anything to change their circumstances.

But the problem is, a lot of us develop “learned helplessness” at a young age. As a dependent, we have limited impact and power in changing our circumstances, cause, you know, we’re kids. So when we grow into adults, we carry this sense of learned helplessness with us. Except, we’re adults now. And as adults, there is a lot we can do to change our circumstances.

For many people, this pattern begins in childhood environments where their emotions, needs, or sense of agency were not consistently supported. This does not always look like obvious trauma. Sometimes it shows up as learning to minimize your needs, avoid conflict, or believe that your circumstances cannot change.

This is one reason emotional neglect can be difficult to recognize. You may have grown up in a family where your parents loved you, worked hard for you, and provided for you. But if your emotions, preferences, or attempts to create change were repeatedly dismissed or ignored, you may have learned that your actions do not matter.

I explore this deeper in my guide, Signs You Grew Up With Emotional Neglect (Especially in Asian Immigrant Families), including how childhood emotional experiences can shape your self-worth, your relationship with your emotions, and your ability to believe that change is possible.

Learned helplessness hits us even harder if we have marginalized identities. Here is my immigrant experience with hot summers and air conditioners.

I never grew up with air conditioning. The general approach by my mom is that air conditioners are too expensive. So we just never got one. For the most past, we learned tricks to keep the house cool. But every summer, there are always a couple weeks where the heat wave makes it impossible to keep the house cool. So we would sit in the house and sweat. Or go to my cousin’s, who had air conditioning.

We were immigrants after all. And we always had to sacrifice comfort for survival. Or sacrifice our comfort to help us manage our fears around scarcity.

I didn’t realize how much this affected my views of my personal comfort until this year’s heat wave. I rent a home that came with a portable air conditioner. But I never used it. Somehow, I convinced myself that the air conditioner would create more heat than it was worth.

For a week, I literally sat in my home and sweated, refusing to turn on the air conditioner. On the hottest day, I went to the library to cool off in their air conditioning. Just like how I used to go to my cousin’s house.

Then, one day, I turned it on. And I toyed with the settings to see what worked. And my home cooled. And I felt comfortable. A part of me criticized myself for being such an idiot for not trying it sooner. And so, I sat down and journaled. And realized that my attitude towards summer heat, accepting discomfort, and believing air conditioners won’t work…all of this was due to my learned helplessness as a child.

So much of this is related to our feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. At a young age, we learned that our circumstances – racism, controlling parents, abuse, etc. – are unchangeable. But as adults it’s not true. We now hold a lot of power to change our circumstances.

So harness that power, cause you can change the circumstances in your life. You can live the life that you want.

Continue Exploring Learned Helplessness, Childhood Experiences, and Feeling Stuck

Feeling stuck is often not about a lack of motivation or discipline. Sometimes, it is the result of years of adapting to environments where your needs, emotions, and choices did not feel like they had much impact.

Understanding where these patterns come from is the first step toward changing them. You can explore my guide, Signs You Grew Up With Emotional Neglect (Even If Nothing Traumatic Happened), where I explain how childhood emotional experiences can shape your sense of self, your relationship with your emotions, and your ability to trust your own needs.

You can also explore my guide, Why You Can’t Stop Overthinking, Even When Life Feels Fine, where I discuss how these learned emotional patterns can continue into adulthood through overthinking, anxiety, self-doubt, and difficulty taking action.

You may also notice that feeling stuck can eventually lead to exhaustion and burnout. When you spend years adapting to circumstances you feel unable to change, it can create a constant state of pushing through, over-functioning, and carrying more than you realize.

I explore this deeper in Why You Can’t Slow Down: Burnout, Self-Care, and the Pressure to Always Be Productive, including how responsibility, achievement, and survival patterns can make it difficult to rest even when life has changed.

Healing from learned helplessness means rebuilding a sense of agency. It means learning that the circumstances that shaped you are not the same as the possibilities available to you now.

Hi, I’m Harry, a psychotherapist in Toronto. I work with 1.5 and second generation Asian Canadians navigating trauma, identity, and the emotional patterns shaped by family and culture.

If you recognized yourself in this article, I created a free guide called The Invisible Pressure to Be the “Good One” to help you understand why you overthink, people please, and feel responsible for everyone else, and why these patterns have been so difficult to change.