>I actually do understand what you are saying and the concept you describe as "learned helplessness" is hardly some new revelatory insight. Wikipedia is hardly necessary in this case. I'm old, reasonably well read and for a number of years have been married to a woman who is both a clinical psychologist and a social worker who has been dealing with these issues for years.
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>I am not unsympathetic to those whose life experiences have caused them to be disappointed with what they feel are "intrinsic promises" of childhood. But am also not into enabling what I find to be ultimately self-destructive thinking i.e. that their problems are the result of life happening to them and therefore out of their control.
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>It is exactly the thinking you describe that give others the power to create stress in you.
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>My contention is that buying into any kind of victim mentality is self-destructive and the only compassionate thing to do is discourage it in others and the only successful life strategy is to guard against it in oneself.
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>As Bill tells his friends - help me to change the things I cannot accept - accept the things I cannot change - and to know the difference.

Exactly right. While the U.S. may grant freedom and control, that doesn't necessarily mean the freedom to control other people. She has control over her own emotions and state of mind. If she has decided to give up that control to a third party, then it's a decision she's made on her own, and crying that there is no other choice is a perfect example of victim mentality.

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>>Hmm, it's a pity that I didn't succeed in letting you surf on the internet, searching for "Learned Helplessness", for example in Wikipedia.
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>>Your things that one cannot control reminded me of the concept. Read the texts and you should notice that there are quite a lot of strategies people use when confronted with things they think they cannot control. All strategies have advantages and disadvantages, consequences for the short term and for the long term. E.g. the strategy to kind of accept that one cannot control how some other here reacts and that it's therefore better to let it go, has as disadvantage that it gives at least some food to the idea that this is an uncontrollable and chaotic world where one will ultimately not get what's intrinsically promised (in childhood, by parents and by all other adults) when one behaves "just". That idea causes severe stress and it's not fair of others to merely blame that to the person himself. (The word 'fair' is not meant here as ethical. Rather, it's meant as 'doing just'.)
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>>Has it ever occurred to you that Naomi is a fairly new immigrant, who comes from a country where people were not really free and that she has (or now perhaps had) a strong belief that the U.S. would give her freedom and control?!
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>>>This has nothing to do with "an apathetic state". It is about a sense of proportion and bounderies. Your and Naomi's insistence that people interact with you when they clearly don't want to is exactly the reason you get twitted. People find it creepy and intrusive.
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>>>If people don't like you or want to talk to you they have no obligation to do so and your feelings about that are your problem, not theirs.
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>>>We come here voluntarily and for the most part there is no problem interacting. But we also reserve the right to ignore anyone we care to. You have the same right.
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>>>You do not have a right to cause other people to feel or behave as you want, but your attempts to browbeat other people into believing that you do is exactly what causes people to shy away from engaging you.
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>>>>>But my point still is that for one's personal happiness it is better if one doesn't invest too much emotion or energy in things that one cannot control. It is the very definition of stress.
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>>>>That reminds me of the concept of Learned Helplessness in psychology. When confronted with a stressful situation that (apparently) cannot possibly be solved, animals and people develop an apathetic state. They get desensitized. They won't become happy, but the gain is they won't get depressed too much. They will survive and that's what the body wants in the first place.
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>>>>Your advice sounds fine, but there is a problem here. For one, our society is built on the presumption that we all do have actual real influence on our environment. For two, the apathetic state is a primitive defense mechanism of the body, built in our DNA, and it cannot be reached by conscious wish.
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>>>>Take for example a handicap. In the beginning there's always a search for a solution, by doctors for example, and denial that it will be for the rest of your life. As time passes by, the handicap is to some extend accepted, even when the level of pain is quite high. That 'acceptance' is hardly done with conscious thinking. Rather, it are primitive mechanisms of the body, a body that is built to ADAPT, to whatever the environment requires of it.
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>>>>In the long run even Naomi (Naomi's body) will adapt, but most advice given to her here will not help her much in that process. Rather, it will victimize her even more.