What Are We Doing When We Give Up?

When things get too big for us, when we feel out of control, I think our temptation is to escape. When someone presses you into service for one mile, go two miles. This looks like what a psychologist seems, Martin Seligman would call learned helplessness. And so because of that, there's this third step, this conclusion, which is I have this generalized helpless behavior. No matter what I do, nothing matters. So I might as well give up. We all do it, right? We're all tempted to do it. What are we doing when we give up?