18: Unlearning Learned Helplessness

Can work be a place of healing?

Certain workplaces are traumatizing in themselves.

But at its best, work is an ennobling experience. It confirms our sense of agency. It helps us gain confidence. It confers meaning on our time.

When work is like this, it can even serve as a place of healing for past wounds—particularly the wound of learned helplessness.

By God’s grace, work is often where we discover how much we really are capable of. 

Sources: Deuteronomy 31:6 (ESV)

Psalm 118:6 (ESV)

Hebrews 13:5-6 (NIV)

Shanna B. Tiayon, “Four Ways We Can Be Sensitive to Trauma at Work,” Greater Good Magazine, October 12, 2021.

Mary D. Salter Ainsworth, Mary C. Blehar, Everett Waters, Sally N. Wall, Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation, Classic Edition (New York: Psychology Press, 2015).

Toby Cushing, Sarah Robertson, Julia Mannes, Nicole Marshall, Mark James Carey, Robbie Duschinsky, and Richard Meiser-Stedman. “The Relationship between Attachment and Posttraumatic Stress in Children and Adolescents: A Meta-Analytic Review.” Development and Psychopathology 36, no. 3 (2024): 1055–69.

Martin E. Seligman & Steven F. Maier, “Failure to escape traumatic shock,” Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(1) (1967): 1–9. 

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