When life gets challenging, we all need to step back and rebuild our confidence and strength before taking further actions. But what if we get stuck in the recovery stage? And is this a bad thing?
What are the causes of feeling helpless?
As I've said in the last three posts, our Chimp has drives that it wants to pursue and our Human has goals it wants to accomplish. We develop habits that we feel will meet the most urgent needs. However we can't do everything on your own.
We might need:
Time to process things on our own
Extra information, skills or insights
People who have them already
Emotional support
Energy, sleep or strength
There are many legitimate reasons why we need help to achieve our goals so inferiority doesn't accompany this every day.
When we wait hours, weeks, years before pursuing something, we can wonder why we waited so long or regret that we missed an opportunity. Hindsight can be cruel.
When does an excuse become a life lie?
Dr Tim Pychyl defines an excuse as a strategy that justifies acting against our values (cognitive dissonance). He depicts three main types and encourages us to reduce dissonance by letting our values dictate our behaviour instead:
Here are some examples of excuses:
They come in many guises and can encourage every other dependency in the model:
Dependency on Approval - no one will respect me if I don't get a promotion
Dependency on Put downs - I had to hit him back because he made me so angry. I'm angry so you have to clean it up.
Dependency on Addiction - I'll be ready to quit if I just have one more
The uniting factor is that excuses place the locus of control outside ourselves and prevent us from solving our real problems.
Alfred Adler is the founder of the inferiority theory. He defines an inferiority complex a being when someone is using the logic "A is the situation so B cannot be done" on a regular basis. Examples:
I'm not well educated so I can't succeed.
I'm not attractive so I can't get married.
When I've earned enough then I'll start a family.
He calls these excuses Life Lies, as they complicate life and prevent us from doing what we actually want to do. Change is scary, unknowable, unpredictable and there are many arguments that will excuse us from the inferiority that stops us changing, even if we really want to. In some ways, he argued, these excuses make us special cases who deserve to be superior but who are held back by certain factors.
When we make the step to reject life lies, Adler says life becomes much simpler.
Steve Peters would agree, although he calls excuses Gremlins (or Goblins if they're deeply held) because they are unhelpful beliefs that cause your Chimp to be less stable. He admits it's almost impossible to reject Gremlins when you're extremely stressed but they can be "reprogrammed" when the Chimp gets to that point.
Since there are so many different excuses and applications, I'll spend a large part of this post looking at examples.
What about if you actually need help?
This is one of the hardest concepts in the inferiority theory. If someone says or thinks "I can't", who can say otherwise? There are many conditions that are in the early stages of being explored and the beauty of diversity challenges us to accept that our experiences are all different. I found it hard to accept that the Chimp model that helped elite athletes to achieve gold medals could help 6 year olds who refuse to pick up a pencil. Let's have a look at 4 cases where people are asking for help:
Those in need of constant care. Some people will face a lifetime of relying on others for help. For medication, medical supervision, universal credit or emotional support. The Inferiority Theory says we should avoid dependency and become self-reliant. Adler said that the worth of a person does not depend on their contribution to society or ability to earn, but the role they play for others. Even on life support, we are grateful for our family members to carry on living.
Debilitating anxiety. In The Courage to Be Disliked, the philosopher analyses the case of a man who never goes out because of a debilitating anxiety. Controversially, he argues that the man must have the goal of not going out and relies on his anxiety to ensure that he is looked after and treated carefully. There is no incentive to overcome the anxiety when it keeps him feeling safer and special. Whilst I cannot argue with the difficulty of someone's reality, if they give up trying anything then their problems will only increase.
Emotional based school avoidance. A key example and very topical at the moment. There aren't many beliefs held as tightly at the one that children should be in school, any school. In Changing Our Minds, Dr Naomi Fisher describes school like a cult with traditions that can't be replaced. Facing the front, obedience being valued highly, regular ranking and judgements - many schools are detrimental to curiosity, diversity and problem solving skills. Attendance had been falling for a while but the COVID lockdown gave us all a reminder of the important things in life. Especially after the lock downs ended, we faced a choice about whether school was worth the risk to our safety. The illusion that everyone goes to school because we always go was shattered. For many families, that belief has never been imprinted and they keep children at home. It can be for a made up reason (needing to wait in for a repairman loses credibility after the third time) or for genuine anxiety. This underlines the importance of setting up schools to support mental health. Everyone benefits when they keep learning, but schools have to change too.
Pervasive demand avoidance. This is a different situation. Threats are perceived everywhere and a person is constantly in a state of flight or fight. Relaxing and following their own interests is helpful but not enough to build up resilience to tolerate adversity. I'll try and find a diagram that shows what has happened in the brain.
What exacerbates the dependency on others' help?
The two worse things you can do for someone reliant on help is to do their tasks for them and to fuel their need to be special.
Adler believed all problems are interpersonal relationship problems and advocated for the separation of tasks and only taking responsibility for the ones we have to do.
If I know my job is controlling my emotions and not yours, I won't rely on you to calm me down or keep me from getting in trouble.
If I know that studying benefits me and not my parents, then I won't wait until they force me to do it.
If I understand that accepting loss is part of life, I won't go looking to a parent to mitigate my disappointment. Bluey pass the parcel.
If I know that no one is born to make me happy, I'll have more motivation to accept myself as I am instead of expecting a partner or parent to fix everything. See Jay Shetty's 8 Rules of Love for more.
Conclusion
We can become dependent on other people's help because it makes life feel easier or makes us feel special. But this means that we avoid the chance to solve our own problems, grow in our own way or stand up for what we believe in.
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