It occurred to me today why so many people rely on blame.

And, since I’ve written about blame before (LOOK HERE), I’m going to try avoiding the beating of a dead horse.

Instead, I want to talk about learned helplessness.

My students are studying learned helplessness in the Psychology class that I teach. The gist of learned helplessness is that we sometimes stop trying to change our circumstances when we think that change is impossible. People are lead to believe that change is impossible, depending on the attributions that they make: when our attributions are internal, global, and general, we are more likely to believe that change isn’t possible; when our attributions are external, local, and specific, we see change as more likely.

Attribution is a fancy, psychological word for blame.

In other words, people are more likely to view change as possible when they blame the external (others rather than themselves), the local (temporary rather than permanent), and the specific (one situation rather than all situations).

Change ends up seeming impossible when people blame themselves for overarching traits that they think will never change.

In short, blame prolongs hope. Think about it:

When things don’t turn out the way that we want them to, we blame. And that blame –I blame my teacher for my poor quiz score because my teacher is a hard-nosed jerk, or I blame the fact that I didn’t study for the quiz because I would have done better if I had studied, or I blame the fact that I got in a fight with my boyfriend last night because it distracted me from the test– allows our hope to stay alive. Because those circumstances will not always be our circumstances; I will have other teachers who aren’t hard-nosed jerks and I will have days when I bring my A-game and I will have days when I am totally focused. The bad situation that we are in is set in its proper context, rather than being blown out of proportion.

If you read my other post on blame (linked above), it has some frustration in it, because I think blame is often pointless and futile. But, I can see that it serves a certain purpose for people who have almost lost their hope.

I could see why the topic of learned helplessness, especially as it applies in situations like domestic abuse, is a very serious discussion; people in those situations desperately need hope. They need to believe that change is possible, that the “here and now” is not the “all there is”.

So, why is hope so dangerously weak in so many people? Where are we looking for hope that so many people are having such a hard time finding some? If we blame to preserve hope in our lives, isn’t there somewhere else we could be looking to supplement the hope that dwindles? I know the answer to these questions, but I won’t force my answer on anyone.

Additionally, I don’t know if I’m ready to drink the kool-aid on blame as a necessary part of life, at least not in the quantities that you tend to see it in our society. I still think that blame is often meaningless. In fact, I wonder if, rather than taking action to make changes happen when we are dissatisfied with our circumstances, we blame to excuse our inaction.

I mean, let’s face facts, we do tend toward inaction, many of us. The obesity epidemic in America, social injustices that continue to plague us, even the honey-do list that never gets done; it’s just easier for us to do nothing.

The grass might be greener in someone else’s yard, but they aerate in the spring and they fertilize and they spread weed killer every other week and that just seems like so much work…

Sound familiar?

Somewhere along the way, our desire for ease got larger than our desire for progress. We want something better (ask the marketing executives whether or not the public is interested in something better), but we are only interested in it if it’s also easy and quick.

The problem with that philosophy is this: real, substantive change is probably never quick or easy.

On New Year’s Day, I set the goal for myself for 2020 to run an average of one mile per day. Looking back, I don’t remember why I set this goal, but I’ve been getting after it ever since. I think part of me was hoping that I would lose some of the extra weight that I’ve been carrying around for all of my adult life.

Do you know how many pounds I’ve lost since I’ve run the equivalent distance of more than five marathons this year?

Not one ounce.

Pursuing this goal of mine has been neither easy nor quick. But, I’ve learned that the pursuit of progress, just to end up being in a better places down the line than you were when you started, can be its own reward. The faith that it takes to believe that you will be better off, if you just keep trying to make a little progress is what leads to eventual success.

And, I’ve started looking at other parts of my life and thinking to myself, “How can I make some progress happen in this area?” The whole concept of being about progress is starting to become a growth mindset.

* * *

When it’s all said and done, I don’t mean to belittle circumstances where people with no hope are stuck in places where no person should ever be stuck. It would be shameful for someone to suggest that people in those situations should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make change happen. But, I also think that people do tend to play the victim sometimes when they really could be doing more to make things go better in their lives. If the blame game is keeping you from progress, you need to develop past that.

Learned helplessness doesn’t affect whether or not change is possible, it only affects whether we believe change is possible.