# Learned Helplessness

Category: Conditions

Also known as: behavioral despair

Learned helplessness is a behavioral and physiological state in which an organism, having experienced inescapable stress, subsequently fails to attempt escape even when it becomes possible. Peat traced the phenomenon to a profound shift in nervous system dominance, where the…

11 passages · 1 author · 2013–2019 · Most-cited: [Ray Peat](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/voices/ray-peat/index.md)

Canonical page: https://bioenergeticoracle.com/concepts/learned-helplessness

## Synthesis

**Learned helplessness** is a behavioral and physiological state in which an organism, having experienced inescapable stress, subsequently fails to attempt escape even when it becomes possible. Peat traced the phenomenon to a profound shift in nervous system dominance, where the organism "gives up" and dies prematurely. [Source 7] He noted that in the classic experiments, rats that would normally swim for days would drown in minutes after an experience of inescapable torture, a reaction Curt Richter had already described in 1957 as a "reaction of hopelessness" mediated by the **parasympathetic-cholinergic system**. [Source 7] Richter discovered that the hearts of these hopeless rats slowed down before death, remaining relaxed and filled with blood, revealing the dominant activity of the *vagal nerve* secreting **acetylcholine**, rather than the expected sympathetic "fight or flight" activation. [Source 7]

Peat argued that this cholinergic dominance is central to the biological damage of deprivation. He contrasted it with environmental enrichment, which increases the enzyme **cholinesterase** to destroy acetylcholine, thereby thickening the brain's cortex and improving learning. [Source 2, 7] Deprivation, conversely, does its harm by increasing cholinergic activity; experiments showed that an anticholinesterase drug successfully mimicked the effects of inescapable shock, while the anticholinergic **scopolamine** antagonized it. [Source 8] Peat identified **serotonin** as being "at the heart of learned helplessness," a state that can be brought on by anything that overwhelms self-regulation, including a medical diagnosis. [Source 5, 9] He observed that a diagnosis often creates a learned helplessness situation where a person lets their serotonin get out of control, seeing themselves as a machine needing fixing. [Source 5, 11]

Hormonally, Peat identified specific interventions that could block the formation of the helplessness behavior. He stated that either **progesterone** or **thyroid T3** would prevent the state from developing, partly by interfering with the production of *nitric oxide*, a free radical increased by cholinergic stimulation. [Source 4] Progesterone increases the activity of cholinesterase, removing the acetylcholine that, under the influence of estrogen, would cause contraction and stress in various tissues. [Source 8] Peat also emphasized that an improved diet shifting away from the serotonin side of things is protective, and that simply correcting suppressed energy processes through thyroid function is a foundational step. [Source 6, 9]

Crucially, Peat stressed that the state is reversible through a change in perception, which he described as an energetic and life-saving matter. He recounted that rats taught learned helplessness would drown in minutes, but just seeing another rat escape would let the informed rat swim for days without drowning. [Source 1, 3] The perception of possibility makes a total difference in the ability to survive. [Source 9, 10] Peat recommended behavioral antidotes such as going to new places, meeting new people, and doing unexpected things out of routine, while simultaneously working to correct the underlying energy deficits. [Source 6] He connected this to a broader social critique, arguing that since the late 1940s, government policy has manipulated mass media to create helplessness in the population, making the recognition of possibility a form of solidarity with life against a system that is systematically murdering people. [Source 1, 10]

## People also ask

### What physiological mechanism did Peat link to the sudden death in learned helplessness?

Peat argued it is a shift to parasympathetic-cholinergic dominance, where the vagal nerve releases acetylcholine, slowing the heart and causing a state of hopelessness rather than a fight-or-flight response.

### How did Peat suggest learned helplessness could be prevented hormonally?

Peat stated that either progesterone or thyroid T3 would prevent the state from developing, partly by interfering with nitric oxide production and, in the case of progesterone, by increasing the enzyme that destroys acetylcholine.

### Why did Peat believe a change in perception could reverse learned helplessness?

Peat noted that rats taught to be helpless would drown in minutes, but simply seeing another rat escape allowed them to swim for days, showing that the perception of possibility is a life-saving energetic shift.

## Related concepts

- [Acetylcholine](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/concepts/acetylcholine/index.md)
- [Eggs](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/concepts/eggs/index.md)
- [Albumin](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/concepts/albumin/index.md)
- [Antioxidants](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/concepts/antioxidants/index.md)
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- [Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/concepts/dehydroepiandrosterone-dhea/index.md)

## Cited passages

Passage numbers match the `[Source N]` markers in the synthesis above.

### Source 1 — Learned Helplessness KMUD 2013

Ray Peat · Interview · 2013 · http://www.l-i-g-h-t.com/files/herb-doctors-learned-helplessness-nervous-system-and-thyroid-questionaire.mp4

> **Andrew Murray:** We do actually have three other callers.
>
> **Caller:** I want to add that Alzheimer's can be the result of iron deposits in the brain; an answer might be a substance removing this iron from the brain.
>
> **Andrew Murray:** Let's get these next callers. You are on the air.
>
> **Caller:** bla, bla, bla... war, rats, learned helplessness... Do you think about that in terms of humanity?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Oh, that was exactly why I decided to write this newsletter right now. I've been following the research actually since 1960. It was especially the social behavior of the government and how they have manipulated the press; and the public helplessness actually, it's been designed since the late 1940s. It's been actual government policy to manipulate the mass media and events [in order] to create helplessness in the population.
>
> **Caller:** bla, bla, bla ... It’s incredible the forces that have been exerted against the people, everywhere in the world!
>
> **Andrew Murray:** That’s the mass medias for you.
>
> **Ray Peat:** People are surely as smart as rats; and rats just needed a little hint of a possibility of escape.

### Source 2 — Dark Side Of Stress Learned Helplessness

Ray Peat · Article · 2016 · https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/dark-side-of-stress-learned-helplessness.shtml

> # The dark side of stress (learned helplessness)
>
> Acetylcholine is the "neurotransmitter" of cholinergic nerves, including the parasympathetic system. Cholinesterase (or acetylcholinesterase) is an enzyme that destroys acetylcholine, limiting the action of the cholinergic nerves. Attaching a phosphate group to the cholinesterase enzyme inactivates it, prolonging and intensifying the action of cholinergic stimulation.
>
> The autonomic nervous system has traditionally been divided into the sympathetic-adrenergic system, and the parasympathetic-cholinergic system, with approximately opposing functions, intensifying energy expenditure and limiting energy expenditure, respectively. The hormonal system and the behavioral system interact with these systems, and each is capable of disrupting the others. Disruptive factors in the environment have increased in recent decades.
>
> Living is development; the choices we make create our individuality. If genetically identical mice grow up in a large and varied environment, small differences in their experience will affect cell growth in their brains, leading to large differences in their exploratory behavior as they age (Freund, et al., 2013). Geneticists used to say that "genes determine our limits," but this experiment shows that an environment can provide both limitations and opportunities for expanding the inherited potential. If our environment restricts our choices, our becoming human is thwarted, the way rats' potentials weren't discovered when they were kept in the standard little laboratory boxes. An opportunity to be complexly involved in a complex environment lets us become more of what we are, more humanly differentiated.
>
> A series of experiments that started at the University of California in 1960 found that rats that lived in larger spaces with various things to explore were better at learning and solving problems than rats that were raised in the standard little laboratory cages (Krech, et al., 1960). Studying their brains, they found that the enzyme cholinesterase, which destroys the neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, was increased. They later found that the offspring of these rats were better learners than their parents, and their brains contained more cholinesterase. Their brains were also larger, with a considerable thickening of the cortex, which is considered to be the part mainly responsible for complex behavior, learning and intelligence.
>
> These processes aren't limited to childhood.

### Source 3 — Learned Helplessness KMUD 2013

Ray Peat · Interview · 2013 · http://www.l-i-g-h-t.com/files/herb-doctors-learned-helplessness-nervous-system-and-thyroid-questionaire.mp4

> **Caller:** *interrupts Peat* rambles on about brainwashing, health and 'all these things'
>
> **Ray Peat:** In one of the studies in which rats had been taught learned helplessness, so they would drown in five or six minutes, just being able to see another rat escape would let the informed rat go for days without drowning. Just the recognition that someone else did it can make all the difference.
>
> **Caller:** bla, bla, bla ... Is raw egg better than slightly cooked or hard boiled egg?
>
> **Ray Peat:** In moderate amounts even raw eggs are fine, very digestible, and they’re antiseptic in the raw state. They have seen that the raw egg yolk killed viruses that other related chemicals weren't able to destroy.
>
> **Caller:** *interrupts Peat* ... bla, bla, bla... Have you heard about not washing the eggs because they will spoil faster?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Oh, yah!
>
> **Caller:** *interrupts Peat* ... bla, bla, bla...which is better: raw or boiled eggs ? What about their PUFA?
>
> **Ray Peat:** If the chickens were fed a more saturated diet, like they used to with orchard waste, apples that were spoiling, and whey from the cheese industry, then the animals eating those foods are... In Mexico, old tortillas are fed to the chickens regularly with chopped fruits and vegetables.

### Source 4 — Learned Helplessness KMUD 2013

Ray Peat · Interview · 2013 · http://www.l-i-g-h-t.com/files/herb-doctors-learned-helplessness-nervous-system-and-thyroid-questionaire.mp4

> **Ray Peat:** In situations where they were studying learned helplessness, which produces increased acetylcholine and nitric oxide, they found that either progesterone or thyroid T3 would block the formation of that behavior, would keep them from dying too prematurely. Thyroid and progesterone both interfere with the production of nitric oxide. In a situation of under-function of the thyroid gland (or system), it's now pretty well established that high blood pressure in a very high proportion of the cases is produced by hypothyroidism. And because of the belief that nitric oxide has a beneficial effect of increasing circulation, as with Viagra and Rogaine, the thought was that hypothyroidism must be lowering nitric oxide. But in fact it increases it, while still causing contraction of the blood vessels, and tightening up, increasing blood pressure. So, the effect of thyroid is to stop excess nitric oxide, or excess cholinergic function, or excess estrogen. But the medical ideas that have been built up on the idea that estrogen is a therapeutic thing across the spectrum, and that nitric oxide is beneficial because it's produced by multi billion-dollar drugs, these interlock. So that they argued that if estrogen produces nitric oxide, then nitric oxide is good, and so on. Each thing is used as an argument for the other. But when you put them into context of thyroid and progesterone, you see that the actual problem, such as high blood pressure can involve increased nitric oxide, even though that goes against the doctrine.

### Source 5 — Ask the Herb Doctor: Brain "Barriers"

Ray Peat · Interview · Oct 18, 2019

> **Ray Peat:** (48:18) Yeah, work really should be a fun exercise. So you. But if you don't have that experience in your ordinary working activities, I think it's good to have the game type of exercise. Okay, cool. Yeah, that makes sense.
>
> **Caller:** (48:44) I feel that, Peter.
>
> **Andrew Murray:** (48:46) Okay. I just wanted to interject there with something I read a little earlier on that mentioned that the whole Learned helplessness concept. Dr. Peat talked about various animal models and the learned helplessness that they experience as a result of just giving up. And it's just all too much. It's actually mediated by too much serotonin. What do you say to that, Dr. Peat?
>
> **Ray Peat:** (49:10) Yeah, and it can be brought on by anything that overwhelms your self regulation. I think a diagnosis often creates a learned helplessness situation and the person lets their serotonin get out of control.
>
> **Andrew Murray:** (49:32) Yep, I think that's a very good point. I've long said for a long, long time now that a diagnosis is probably the worst thing that a person can get. And I think, why do they call it a diagnosis? Yeah, there you go. I don't know. But I often think that as organisms, as energetic spiritual beings that we are, when we get a diagnosis of something that is quote unquote terminal or just serious, I think it's the worst thing in. The worst thing in the world to hear because I think energetically it Just whacks you for six.

### Source 6 — So I just did this, would appreciate it someone would check, I couldn't identify one or two words.

Ray Peat · Interview · Mar 17, 2017 · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJHU730SYHg

> **Andrew Murray:** [invites calls.]
>
> **Caller:** Are there simple things, stepping stones one can use to overcome learned helplessness for a hypothyroid person who feels overwhelmed?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Behavioral things like going to new places, meeting new people, doing very different things that you’ve never done before, but thought you might enjoy doing, at the same time as you try to correct your energy processes that are suppressed, having more enjoyable more varied meals for example and making sure that your thyroid function is good.
>
> **Andrew Murray:** New experiences, exciting things, creative outlets like painting, poetry?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Doing something unexpected, out of the routine, some people actually quit their jobs and learn a new profession, or a new trade.
>
> **Andrew Murray:** Anti-inflammatory things and supporting mitochondria, nootropics?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Getting good rest is part of this work, stopping unnecessary excitatory stimulation. Good stimulation should be fun rather than stressful. Everything that is anti-inflammatory can be relaxing as well as stimulating. Caffeine is extremely protective against all of the defects in Parkinson’s disease and it activates by protecting the mitochondria. Gamma hydroxybutyrate which is in some plants like –

### Source 7 — Dark Side Of Stress Learned Helplessness

Ray Peat · Article · 2016 · https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/dark-side-of-stress-learned-helplessness.shtml

> Their brains were also larger, with a considerable thickening of the cortex, which is considered to be the part mainly responsible for complex behavior, learning and intelligence.
>
> These processes aren't limited to childhood. For example, London taxi drivers who learn all the streets in the city develop a larger hippocampus, an area of the brain involved with memory.
>
> The 1960s research into environmental enrichment coincided with political changes in the US, but it went against the dominant scientific ideas of the time.
>
> Starting in 1945, the US government had begun a series of projects to develop techniques of behavior modification or mind control, using drugs, isolation, deprivation, and torture. In the 1950s, psychiatry often used lobotomies (about 80,000, before they were generally discontinued in the 1980s) and electroconvulsive "therapy," and university psychologists tortured animals, often as part of developing techniques for controlling behavior.
>
> The CIA officially phased out their MKultra program in 1967, but that was the year that Martin Seligman, at the University of Pennsylvania, popularized the idea of "learned helplessness." He found that when an animal was unable to escape from torture, even for a very short time, it would often fail to even try to escape the next time it was tortured. Seligman's lectures have been attended by psychologists who worked at Guantanamo, and he recently received a no-bid Pentagon grant of $31,000,000, to develop a program of "comprehensive soldier fitness," to train marines to avoid learned helplessness.
>
> Curt Richter already in 1957 had described the "hopelessness" phenomenon in rats (“a reaction of hopelessness is shown by some wild rats very soon after being grasped in the hand and prevented from moving. They seem literally to give up,”) and even how to cure their hopelessness, by allowing them to have an experience of escaping once (Richter, 1957, 1958). Rats which would normally be able to keep swimming in a tank for two or three days, would often give up and drown in just a few minutes, after having an experience of "inescapable stress."
>
> Richter made the important discovery that the hearts of the hopeless rats slowed down before they died, remaining relaxed and filled with blood, revealing the dominant activity of the vagal nerve, secreting acetylcholine.

### Source 8 — Dark Side Of Stress Learned Helplessness

Ray Peat · Article · 2016 · https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/dark-side-of-stress-learned-helplessness.shtml

> In 1976 there was an experiment (Rosellini, et al.) that made an important link between the enrichment experiments and the learned helplessness experiments. The control animals in the enrichment experiments were singly housed, while the others shared a larger enclosure. In the later experiment, it was found that the rats "who were reared in isolation died suddenly when placed in a stressful swimming situation," while the group-housed animals were resistant, effective swimmers.
>
> Enrichment and deprivation have very clear biological meaning, and one is the negation of the other.
>
> The increase of cholinesterase, the enzyme that destroys acetylcholine, during enrichment, serves to inactivate cholinergic processes.
>
> If deprivation does its harm by increasing the activity of the cholinergic system, we should expect that a cholinergic drug might substitute for inescapable stress, as a cause of learned helplessness, and that an anticholinergic drug could cure learned helplessness. Those tests have been done: "Treatment with the anticholinesterase, physostigmine, successfully mimicked the effects of inescapable shock." "The centrally acting anticholinergic scopolamine hydrobromide antagonized the effects of physostigmine, and when administered prior to escape testing antagonized the disruptive effects of previously administered inescapable shock." (Anisman, et al., 1981.)
>
> This kind of experiment would suggest that the anticholinesterase drugs still being used for Alzheimer's disease treatment aren't biologically helpful.
>
> In an earlier newsletter I discussed the changes of growth hormone, and its antagonist somatostatin, in association with dementia: Growth hormone increases, somatostatin decreases. The cholinergic nerves are a major factor in shifting those hormones in the direction of dementia, and the anticholinergic drugs tend to increase the ratio of somatostatin to growth hormone. Somatostatin and cholinesterase have been found to co-exist in single nerve cells (Delfs, et al., 1984).
>
> Estrogen, which was promoted so intensively as prevention or treatment for Alzheimer's disease, was finally shown to contribute to its development. One of the characteristic effects of estrogen is to increase the level of growth hormone in the blood. This is just one of many ways that estrogen is associated with cholinergic activation.
>
> During pregnancy, it's important for the uterus not to contract.

### Source 9 — One Radio Network: A Plethora of Wide-Randing Questions

Ray Peat · Interview · Oct 15, 2019

> ## Learned Helplessness
>
> **Patrick Timpone:** How do we take the edge off learned helplessness?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Thyroid hormone is one thing; progesterone is another. An improved diet that shifts you away from the serotonin side of things helps, because serotonin is at the heart of learned helplessness. With animals, researchers would put them in a hopeless situation, such as a tank of water where they were forced to swim. If they had never had the experience of escaping, animals would sometimes let themselves drown in just a few minutes. But if they had ever been in a situation where they managed to escape, that one experience would change their perspective and physiology. They would then be able to swim for many hours. It makes a total difference in the ability to survive just by changing your mental picture of how things work.

### Source 10 — Ray Peat Email Advice Depository — Post 525

Ray Peat · Email · Nov 12, 2018

> ## Thread 4
>
> **Question:** I've been reading Frantz Fanon lately, the psychiatrist and revolutionary socialist. He speaks at length about mental disorders that the colonized experienced for the last ~400 years. He delves deeply into both the trauma experienced by colonizers and the colonized, and I think that even if you live in a western society like the US, you are still internally colonized by capital, with all of the concomitant responses, physiological and otherwise. Unless you're rich. I wanted to ask you - how do you deal with what can be I guess learned helplessness via just, understanding our environment, the social forces shaping it, and the at times, nihilistic outlooks? For instance, I think it's clear that mitochondria are at the center of the organism's response to stress, in both acute and chronic cases. They modulate the organism's response to stress as you've pointed out many times, but I think it's important to emphasize the perception of stress is also experienced, internalized, and reacted to. This much is absolutely true, at least in rats. What is this like over time? Is it possible for us to address these issues with nutritional, supplemental, and chemical means alone, or do we need to organize ourselves, our minds, and our actions in such a way ultimately that leads to better possibilities for us? If our perception of our condition is dark, and this perception and experience is true, as Lenin said, what is to be done?
>
> **Ray Peat:** I’ve been thinking of my November newsletter as a survey of the “substantial" links between our energetic and formative processes and our meaning structures, the reality we live in. The perception of possibility can make the energetic difference, for a rat, of swimming for hours, instead of drowning immediately. The reason I talk more about biology than politics is that the various radical movements generally have inflexibilities that keep them apart. People need to start understanding that the system is systematically murdering them, and understanding that the situation is desperate, they need to see that solidarity with life, against capital, is their hope.

### Source 11 — One Radio Network: Natural Healing

Ray Peat · Interview · Apr 29, 2019

> ## The Mind-Body Connection and Learned Helplessness
>
> **Patrick Timpone:** So it's fair to say there are many different components in the nervous system contributing to gut issues, including blood sugar?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Yes. About 20 or 30 years ago, some psychologists were demonstrating learned helplessness. Training the brain to believe that escape is impossible made the whole organism shut down. The heart would stop beating in a few minutes rather than a few hours if the animal was convinced that escape was possible. The whole organism is either energized or shut down by the perspective of what is possible. Insight becomes a life-saving matter.
>
> **Patrick Timpone:** You can extrapolate that out and think of all the physiological things going on with people who feel trapped in their life, job, or relationship.
>
> **Ray Peat:** I've seen that happen. Just with medical diagnosis, the doctor tells a person that they have an incurable disease and they pretty soon die.
>
> **Patrick Timpone:** Is it any surprise to you that we're so inextricably connected with everything that we think, believe, and feel?

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