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Social acceptance and anxiety

10 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Davit you had a hand in my success and I will always remember and remind you of that. You made sense of things for me at a time when a lot of stuff was not coming together.

10 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Hey Davit,

Thank you for saying that about inspiration. I take in every compliment with gratitude. Thank you.

I have strong beliefs about children, childhood, children's rights and their development and needs. I know some are "radical" but that is ok with me.

That is awful about the young men you knew who fell into crisis because they felt they needed those material things. I would definitely encourage anyone who is interested in being happier or more content to learn and think about marketing. Learn about what is done to manipulate you, and the children. Children are targeted with marketing. It is immoral in my opinion. with the internet or any local library you can read about marketing and you can develop your own awareness of what is really going on. then you can laugh at ads that try to tell you mouthwash will make you happier.

A mainstream magazine isn't going to have an article that tells you to stop wanting a new car because...well.. just count the number of car ads in that magazine.

I try to use the words need and want accurately around children. Its one thing anyone can do to help kids. When a kid says "I need that toy" I just say "You want that toy". I know it sounds really simplistic but you just keep doing it. It's not going to change the world but it does something. Kids are smart. If you do that enough, and then you slip up and say "I need that new cell phone" they might be within earshot and correct you "You want that new cell phone". !

Problems are a lot easier to think about if you inject some humour into them right?

For me, that materialistic culture is the emperor who has no clothes. It is an illusion. If you make friends based on both liking the same type of car or whatever, its not much of a real friendship at all. In order to be happy you just have to root your life in real things, there is no way around that. I think that some people who suffer from anxiety have a feeling that a lot of the stuff around them is an illusion but they don't know what to do about it. This is why cultures had elders, people to guide the young. I hope I can be of use to others.

I like this website because other people who want to do the work come here and they are trying to be happy, they want relief from their anxiety and it can be done. I will say that over and over.

10 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

In Ontario, you can put your child in school at the age of four. The only Province I think. This is terrific if it is to give them interaction. But it is bad if the only reason is so they can have higher grades than anyone else. The child will have an extra year before seven to build personality and attitude. What do you want it to be. When they go out the door each morning you no longer have control, it is up to them to use what they have learned from you. Mentally and emotionally.

People do have wants beyond their needs. I blame that on marketing. Marketing uses people in the field of the psych to decide how best to get people to want what they don't need and how best to part with their money or as now with money they don't have. Some of this is done with questions in seemingly innocent surveys and programs. Some is just plain repetitive "you needs". And the subconscious one "you want". How much stuff do you have because you wanted it, not needed it. Like a second or third car. Cell phones are convenient but how many really need them.

Lord I know people that have committed suicide because they couldn't afford the toys they wanted wanted or couldn't afford the payments. Young people just starting down the road of life. Where was their support? Who were their teachers? Both young men with seemingly nothing wrong with them.

Coming from my background and family (broken) I would not want to try to make it today with todays pressures and no help.

loves trees, you are certainly a success storey, an inspiration to everyone including me.

Davit

10 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Hi Hugs,

Yes we hear a lot in the media today about youth and how technology has changed their lives. From my experience being a parent, yes, the kids have devices and smartphones etc... but their social, emotional needs are the same as they have always been. I don't think it has ever been "easy" to parent well and ensure kids real needs are met (not their superficial wants) and I think that parents have to be very clear with themselves about their values and be resolute in their values even if it is not the status quo or what the other parents are doing.

Davit, that sort of leads into what you are talking about too. Once you get to be an adult, and a parent, you really need to know how relationships work and as you hit the nail on the head, some of us did not. I have been through the hard part which was operating without the knowledge of what was going on. Attracting the wrong people to be friends with, wondering what went wrong when they were not kind, considerate etc... Those people are not in my life anymore and its just because I've grown past that and I now require genuine respect and affection out of my relationships and I do get it but not from everyone i meet obviously. People who are petty just don't interest me anymore.

I agree that knowledge is not enough to break a pattern because of the feelings and core beliefs. I think I am good at explaining the knowledge I needed to go through this process of building new core beliefs but I find it much harder to articulate what it was like to manage the emotional aspect of the process. I love writing and I also have a real desire to help others who are struggling so I continue to challenge myself to articulate my process and put it into words.

I stand on my own two feet now emotionally and it was a process to get here. When someone tries to make me feel badly about myself, I either barely register it at all , or I sort of look at them funny without even thinking about it. My first reaction now is "you're wierd" when someone is being negative, condescending, disrespectful...before I built new core beliefs my first reaction would have been panic. "oh no, maybe they are right, maybe what i am doing / saying is stupid" and "oh no, they are not going to like me anymore". You can see what core beliefs were operating under those two reactions.

Also, I can laugh at myself and that has never changed. If I did say something stupid, i.e. didn't think about it enough before I said it, I have no problem admitting I made an error. We are humans, we are not machines and even machines malfunction sometimes.

I completely agree with you that the modern family lifestyle with 2 parents working full time makes it very very hard to ensure that peoples emtional needs are being met within that family. This is a touchy subject because some families need 2 paycheques to pay for the needs, but a lot of families could get by with less money if they thought through their values and their needs vs. wants. The materialism in this culture is very seductive. And I don't think our culture values childhood. You only get once chance to experience being with your child when they grow up. I have noticed a lot of messaging in our culture about children is about how to prepare them for the future. As if the only value in putting them in hockey is that they might become the next hockey pro star. There is inherent value in your child being a child, playing sports, and you watching their sports. It just requires valuing a) the present moment and b) childhood.

Valuing childhood would go a long way towards healing and interrupting dysfuctional legacies within family generations. As you have talked about before, those first 7 years are very important. I truly believe that as well. Its easier to lay a good foundation than to renovate later on.

I believe the roots of my anxiety took root before age 1. It has been a real challenge to develop new core beliefs and new pathways regarding my response. And I was not surrounded by supports as I was doing that work so anyone here on this website who feels alone, do not let that stop you. I did not have anyone around me say "oh, you are struggling with emotional responses that your brain developed for survival when you were just a baby. Let me help you with that". No, I was blamed for things I did not have any hand in and I still made it out of the fog and the mess I was in and I believe people can do it. It can be done. The body does want to heal.

10 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

Hello loves trees

Very profound. You have been studying. It starts in childhood but doesn't stop as teens unless corrected. If it gets as far as adulthood then it becomes difficult because of the difficulty not only of forming lasting relations but of knowing what a relationship is supposed to be. So one uses what one has learned. Life is a learning experience and if we learn the wrong way how do we know with out a stable life to learn from. You can not learn from someone who knows as little as yourself. (personal experience) With both parents working now there is little home life unless time is set aside for it. Oh it starts out as a grand plan this family thing but life just gets in the way, yet some families manage to fill everyones emotional needs. Children from these families carry it on, except that when they marry the order gets diluted 50% by who they marry. Or more if that person is dominant. It can go either way or if they are similar, emotionally stable it can be very stable. And there are no safeguards. You are where you come from and you add on to it as you grow with it as the pattern.

Knowledge is not always enough to break the pattern. Especially if a person thinks they are defective. Especially if some one has made use of that thought for their gain. I'm sure by now we all know how core beliefs work and how strong they are. But you and I know how strong we can be with the will. Life can change. Keeping it changed can be tough with the pressure from past experiences but it need not. And one need not hide from social and emotional experiences if they know what they are experiencing. Unfortunately teens don't have the experience and often no one to go to that has it to know what exactly they are experiencing.

Some how we manage to pick up the necessary knowledge it just takes some of us longer to sort it out. And once sorted out it is up to us to decide if that is what we want.

(making bread, my yeast just ran all over the counter)

It sounds like you know what you want and how to get it. It also sounds like you know what is realistic. Knowledge is a fine tool, it is amazing what you can build with it.

Very good to hear from you. Visit with us, your experience can do wonders for others.

Davit.

10 years ago 0 +0 / -0 4027

A number of losses caused high school to make it harder for me, although I distinctly remember feeling "shy" as a pre teen.

Life goes on. Youth can be more connected wirelessly, but the changing family must give youth more stress, and marketing is making youth unreasonably demanding, so that economic opportunities will be fewer. Europe is worse, but I think North Americans are going to be more stressed as the economic need to be austere spreads through the internet demands of consumers to be frugal.

10 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Hi Ashley,

Here I am again, popping back into the site to share my thoughts with others. :)

In the process of working with myself, I have come to understand more about unmet emotional needs and their role on our behaviour and personality. I know that many people in psychology study 'personality' as something fairly fixed about a person, but I have come to personally believe that if someone has unmet needs from childhood that they find a way to meet / get met, i.e. heal some wounds within themselves, this can actually alter some aspects of not just their behaviour and maybe their personality. I wanted to put this out there because once I got the physical aspects of panic under control, I had a much greater capacity to understand what caused me to become someone who had so much anxiety in the first place and this led me to learn about unmet emotional needs.

This leads me to my answer / thoughts on your question. Being accepted by peers is an emotional need especially as we move from childhood to adolescence and adulthood. It makes sense to me that the researchers found this link with acceptance and lower anxiety and depression as I believe those are relational conditions. For me, they were a result of relationships where I was told none of my needs existed, never mind mattered.

I will just put this out there for others to hopefully comment on. Harbouring unmet emotional needs causes us to feel frustrated. I have worked hard to investigate and better understand my frustrations and it has helped me a lot. I do not experience much social anxiety at all anymore and I used to. This might even seem quite obvious, for me it took a while to really map out how this all works for me.

To directly answer your question about high school, I was not accepted by my peers. I had very superficial interactions with people when I was age 15-20 and did not experience any real friendships. My own personal experience is that in childhood when normal identity formation was supposed to happen , much of mine was thrown off course by parents with mental health issues. So I had unmet emotional needs, no experience with healthy intimacy, and no experience with skills needed to foster healthy relationships or friendships with others.

I am not surprised that I did not have healthy friendships as a teenager. But it is never too late to work on yourself, get those needs met, understand yourself, and then meet people and make friends with people who you can enjoy time with, not look to for giving you a certain thing or feeling. It takes time, and CBT lets you develop new habits of thinking more clearly, realistically and positively about yourself and your life.

Honestly I think that most youth today do not have enough influence from a healthy, happy, wise elder person in their life to guide them. A group of 16 year olds cannot raise themselves but we leave them alone a lot to figure things out for themselves. Many teenagers will seek intimacy or a feeling of acceptance even if it involves risky behaviour or unsafe behaviour. I think they need spaces where their self esteem is truly nurtured. This is apparently a tall order in our culture. I think that they need someone who knows where to channel their energy which they have a lot of. I think we need to find ways to help teenagers foster less superficial friendships with one another.

I think we need to be careful not to use them to project our adult cynicism onto especially about art and music not being important (because if I had a dollar for everytime an adult discouraged a young person out of the arts, I think I'd be rich). Teenagers are really creative people and that should be encouraged. We all know that there are not too many famous painters (or skateboarders) who do not have a day job but people I know who are happy have a creative outlet that they do for themselves, or that lets them connect to the community which enriches their life outside of the inevitable 9=5 paid work grind. Yes we want to prepare youth for adult life but we should encourage them to have outlets so that when they do go to college and then their careers, they have something that makes them happy. I believe this can help them be more resilient and if there is one skill / trait that helps us manage life, it is resilience.

10 years ago 0 +0 / -0 11212

A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota & Vermont have found that there seems to be a link between social acceptance and the incidence of depression & anxiety.

According to their findings, teens who were readily accepted by peers were less likely to internalize emotions and develop anxiety or depression in young adulthood.

What do you think? What was high school like for you? Did you have trouble connecting to others? What solutions do you believe may help youth today?

Here to help :)

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Social acceptance and anxiety