“Learned helplessness” is a quasi-popular-therapy word for this.
It’s a terms that means something else:
Learned helplessness is a psychological state in which a person (or animal) stops trying to change their situation after repeated experiences of powerlessness, even when escape or improvement later becomes possible. The concept originated from experiments by Martin Seligman and Steven Maier in the late 1960s: dogs exposed to unavoidable shocks later failed to avoid shocks they could escape.
In the situation the OP talks about it’s possible to change the situation by signaling being in pain to other people and then getting help from those people or those people otherwise accepting behavior of the person to change the situation that they might not otherwise expect.
I’m not entirely sure how this relates to seeing this pattern in others. If they’re your friend, you typically take a two-pronged approach: help superficially and get them to address the root problem to the extent you’re aware of a root problem.
Who’s that “you”? There’s stereotypical situation where a wife tells her husband about one of her struggles and then the husband tries to superficially help which actually doesn’t lead anywhere.
I think a good default response is listening and holding space for a person that suffers. There are also higher skill options that involve not accepting the frame. If you want to understand more in that regard jimmy’s sequence is good.
It’s a terms that means something else:
In the situation the OP talks about it’s possible to change the situation by signaling being in pain to other people and then getting help from those people or those people otherwise accepting behavior of the person to change the situation that they might not otherwise expect.
Who’s that “you”? There’s stereotypical situation where a wife tells her husband about one of her struggles and then the husband tries to superficially help which actually doesn’t lead anywhere.
I think a good default response is listening and holding space for a person that suffers. There are also higher skill options that involve not accepting the frame. If you want to understand more in that regard jimmy’s sequence is good.