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Good Mood: The New Psychology of Overcoming Depression Chapter 5 |
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Page 4 of 4
The Child As A Failure
If a child strives unsuccessfully, and hence develops a record of failure to achieve encouragement and affection, this record is likely to leave a heavy mark on the adult. A special case is the infant or young child who had no parent to respond to the child's strivings. One can view the lack of a parent as a separation or deprivation which by itself predisposes the adult to depression. Alternately, one may see this as the child not being able to successfully induce its environment to respond positively to its efforts to obtain the gratifications it seeks, leading to a sense of being helpless.
Such unsuccessful striving evokes the emotion of sadness. It also may produce the general conclusion about one's life that there is a negative balance between what one seeks and what one gets. It is reasonable that this leads to the disposition to evaluate oneself negatively relative to one's aspirations, hopes, and obligations.
Rigid Goal-Setting in Childhood
By 'goal,' I mean an aim that is broad and deep. For example, it is a goal to be the greatest tennis player in the world or to win a Nobel prize. And a goal often is abstract - for example, to make a contribution to humanity or to contribute something important to culture. Goals can be fixed rigidly in childhood in at least three ways: 1) Parents may stress that the child can and must make great achievements, and the parents may suggest to the child that the parents' love depends upon the child accepting those goals. 2) Children who lack love during their childhood may conclude that by achieving great successes as adults they can win the admiration and love from the world that they do not receive as children. (3) Children may decide on their own that they must achieve greatly or else they are worthless.
Goals and goal-setting are very complex. If your goals are too high, you will fail to reach them; negative self-comparisons and sadness will ensue. But if your goals are not high enough, you may not stretch your capacities to the fullest and thereby deny yourself full and satisfying self-realization. But you cannot know in advance which goals are reasonable and which are not. Furthermore, your goals are interwoven with your values and beliefs, which -- if they are really values and beliefs-- are not chosen simply on the basis of what will be most comfortable for you. We can be sure, however, that parents who press high goals on their children, and condition their love on the achievement of those goals--thereby creating a situation in which the adult cannot alter his goals to fit his capacities--may predispose the child both to adult depression and to significant accomplishment. That's complex! One more complication: Some people will, as adults, more frequently be in the coping-evaluating mode than will others because of more competitiveness and pressure applied to them as children.
Values, which are closely related to goals, get special treatment in the following chapter.
Summary
This chapter discusses the relationship of earlier learning and experiences, and especially those in childhood, upon the propensity to be depressed. Understanding the various mechanisms can sometimes throw light upon one's present makeup in a manner that can help one alter one's self-comparisons to overcome depression.
next: Good Mood: The New Psychology of Overcoming Depression Chapter 6
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Last Updated( May 01, 2009 )
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reviewed by: Harry Croft, MD
Psychiatrist, HealthyPlace.com Medical Director
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