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Hi everyone! I am Nora, a psychology student. Currently I am dealing with depression. I have found this forum to be very helpful and I like people sharing their ideas. I myself am introverted, I don't like to speak much about myself, even dough it really helps. That's why today I decided to share a few pages from my personal diary. These are my own personal thoughs, which are not right or wrong, it's just the way I think and you might have a totally different opinion. I don't write often, but I wonder what other people think about the things I mention below. Please let me know what you think :)
"The things that psychology has made me see"
I wanted to study psychology not only because I wanted to help people (or to satisfy my need to be needed), but also because I was immensely interested in why people behave or think the way they do. For example, criminals or just grumpy people, people with depression or those who are just plain mean or boring... what makes them be the way they are?? Are we born criminals? Are we destined to get depression? Are we raised to be mean, grumpy, lifeless haters? I think not. I believe in the divine potential of every human being to become a beautiful, purposeful, living human being that is here to celebrate life or at least enjoy it in a way that doesn‘t hurt others. What about kids born with mental disabilities? Yes, maybe their capacity to enjoy life is lessened, but is it really? If people who become physically disabled still manage to find ways to enjoy life to its fullest, why can‘t it be same with mental disability? It can. But much depends on the circumstances. And who makes these circumstances? We do.
Some people grow stronger with life experience, some grow weaker, some find meaning and some get destroyed. There even is a saying “not damaged by life”, which usually we call young seemingly innocent people, but sometimes even grownups, who manage to preserve a healthy part of innocence (naivety), good moral values and the belief in goodness in the world. Don’t we all want to be like that?? No, we don’t... and that’s the problem. We might envy such people, but also we believe “that poor soul, it’s only a question of time before it gets destroyed by life” or “I was once like that... one day they will fall to where I am now, just like I did”. In this cruel world, we are not surprised by cruelness any more, and we have lost the belief that purity can be preserved. It is sad how well adapted to cruelty we have become. War is happening. You would think that after such a history that all the humanity has shared we would have learned our lesson... it’s not like we haven’t seen violence. We have seen it and we know what it brings. Yet we stick to it as a chained dog that has learned to be helpless. When we see truly good people, who make a difference in the world, sometimes we think that is far out of reach to us, because we have learned to be helpless.
In my psychology studies I have learned that I am weak. I finally found out all (or most) reasons why I was getting depressed, why I couldn’t make good choices and why I was constantly feeling unhappy seeing my life go in the direction I didn’t wanted. Also I have learned that usually all the help our health professionals can give is to tell you what is wrong and leave you with it. In my case, even that I had to do myself. And what next?
Simply comparing me and my boyfriend, he was getting mentally stronger in life, I was getting mentally weaker. How? He had physical challenges and good emotional-psychological support from his family and people around. That has pushed him to grow safely and to get stronger each day. In my case, I had no physical challenges and also no emotional support, in fact I was raised in a very damaging psychological environment mostly in my family, but it extended to all my social circles and the society in general. I had no push to grow, but I was constantly being psychologically damaged, so I grew weaker. Psychology studies has made me aware of that even more, even though it doesn’t take much brain to see that what was happening in my childhood was wrong. Of course you can always say that other people have it worse. Yes, and I’m sure these other people are even in more pain than me now. But where is the better side of it? How is it supposed to comfort me that other people have it worse?? I don’t want other people to have it worse, I don’t even want other people to suffer like me either, I want people to be able to live happily and free from psychological burdens. Showing the worse, the poorer is not the answer. Show me the better. Show me how good life can be. It can be good, right? Well if it can, I want to see that, I want to see and know what to do to make my life good. I know I can’t change the past, but let me grow now at least. I still want to grow, I still want to be better, to live better, I still have hope and I still see beauty in life, I am undamaged by life. That is what I’m grateful for.
And that is what I saw in one of the patients in my internship. I was only observing a consultation from far. The poor girl was 17, but acted like a 13-14 year old kid. She was so crushed and devastated by her family environment, she didn’t know anything anymore, she was lost, depressed and had no will to fight back any more. The other girl who is doing internship with me told me “look at her, she is giving the vibe that even makes me depressed”. I looked at her and that is not what I saw. I did see she was depressed, that was obvious enough, but that was not the first thing that came to my mind. To my mind came “she is so young! She might feel lost now, but she is still undamaged by life! All she needs is support and seeing that there is another way, there is another life and things CAN be different”. She is not poor, she is not beaten, she is just psychologically frustrated, shouldn’t that be the easiest case to help people? I felt compassion. I felt hope, because I saw a young girl that CAN be helped and she could live a beautiful and meaningful life.
Do you know what was my internship supervisors’, a professional psychologists’, reaction? She noted that the girl was infantile (obvious for me too, but so what?) and all trough the consultation she was pushing her to see that she (the girl) is not doing enough for her own good.
Dear psychologist, the girl KNOWS, she is not doing enough, and people probably tell her that every day. She knows that and that is hurting her. You have just treated her in same way that everybody else has treated her and told her nothing new. You didn’t show her a different approach; you just made her feel more miserable about the current situation. How does that help her? How does that help anyone? She is not stupid, but you made her feel so, by telling what she already knows in a way as if she didn’t, as if she never heard it before or as if she never thought about it herself. At the end of consultation the girl was more devastated that ever and it made me not only sad, but angry as well. I felt that the psychologist judged the girl rather than trying to understand and help her. Of course, she had to give an evaluation, that is her job, but I felt no compassion from her side whatsoever. This is where I got my answer to “how people become like this?” The girl was not always depressed, she grew into it because her parents let her, she stayed in it and even a professional psychologist pushed her more into depression instead of trying to help. How is she supposed to believe it can get better? She would benefit mostly from therapy, but after an encounter like that, I doubt she will ever seek such help. Why damage oneself more?
You know why people become criminals, get depression or become grumpy and mean? Because we let them. We push them to it and then we accept it. We see it as an inevitable truth and we learn to be helpless toward it. It is not their own responsibility. No baby is born a criminal, no one wants to get depression and no one is grumpy and mean by their own free and willing choice. You might say life makes them so, I say we make them so, because we make their life. I have realized now just how much of a difference my daily behaviour makes. Will I make that phone call to my mom or not? Will I smile at a stranger or will I look at him with disgust? Will I give a helping hand? Will I listen to a friend? Will I show with my own example, that there is another way, another life, another way to exist?
There is.