the.com/powerlessness
The feeling right before you realize you were just asking the wrong person.
means The state of having no real control over or influence on what happens to you.
from Built from 'power' (via Old French 'pouvoir', from Latin 'posse' — to be able) plus the negating suffix '-less' and the noun-forming '-ness'. So the word is literally 'the condition of being without ability' — a straightforward construction that gets its sting not from exotic roots but from how plainly it names an absence.
- not weakness
- Weakness is low ability, this is low control
- learned version
- Seligman's dogs stopped trying after inescapable shocks
- fix attempt
- Small chosen actions restore it faster than big ones
- paradox
- Admitting it often returns more control than denying it