Learned helplessness

[aries_jordan]

The most important thing I've read today:  "Learned helplessness is the experience of passive resignation and depression following recurring failure or punishment, especially when it seems arbitrary and not contingent upon one's actions."

How many of you have jobs like that?

Comments

[lordgloria]

I have a life like that. :P

[jrittenhouse]

Sometimes, that's what things feel like to me, too.

[lordgloria]

I'm sure we have a lot of company! Hang in there.

[alchemi]

I don't have one now, but I have had them in the past.

[caprine]

That was my job at the Salk Institute, under the lab director who screamed and threw things and eventually put me in the hospital.

I only survived by practicing the following meditation technique each night as I went to sleep: the air I inhaled was positive energy, and the air I exhaled was negative energy, which took the form of a large carrion bird with each breath. The birds flew up to La Jolla, shit on her car, and roosted on the roof of her house until morning. When she opened the door to go to work, they descended upon her, pecked out her eyes, and tore all the flesh from her bones.

This form of meditation helped me survive three years in her laboratory.

[aries_jordan]

That's some vivid imagery for meditation!

Whenever I had to imagine horrible things happening to someone in order to help me get to sleep, I pictured sewing the person's lips together, like Loki.

[corvis_corvax]

I usually visualize beating them to death with a claw hammer. I think it's from a book I read (beating someone to death, not visualizing the beating) or possibly TV or Movie. Either way I have an incredibly detailed, full sensory, and occasionally rather disconcerting set if images that go with it.

[wordweaverlynn]

The last few years of unemployment have been like that. Nothing I can so seems to help.

[aries_jordan]

*hugs*

[hotmarscube]

Back when I worked for an abusive boss I created a mantra: DFM. It stood for "Doesn't Fucking Matter." I would just repeat DFM in my head whenever the boss would have some weird rant or requirement.