Hello everyone, I am Lin Zi, a psychological counselor. In such a spring meeting, let's talk about a topic that may temporarily weigh our hearts, which is a group of "good" students who are often overlooked in adolescent depression.
You may wonder how the identity of a "good" student is often accompanied by applause of flowers, good learning is obedient and sensible, smooth sailing is enviable, and even happy is not happy, how can it be associated with depression? In fact, "good" students are not only associated with depression, but also have a high incidence of depression.
American psychologist Speller concluded that depression often strikes those who are most ambitious, creative and serious about their work, and this sentence is also a reflection of children. Lin Zi Psychological Agency has received tens of thousands of young visitors over the past 25 years. More than 90% of them are from well-known schools at home and abroad, more than 90% are or have been top students, and at least half of them have had suicidal thoughts.
About 8% even committed suicide. This data is basically consistent with the data released in the 2020 China National Mental Health Development Report. You can see that the incidence of depression in adolescents is 24.6%, of which severe is 7.4%, and the suicide rate of depressed patients is 20 times higher than that of ordinary people, and the suicide success rate is between 15%~25%.
Another set of data comes from UNICEF's State of the World's Children 2021, according to a statistical report
Suicide has become the fourth leading cause of death among adolescents, after road injuries, tuberculosis and interpersonal violence. These data is heart-wrenching and thought-provoking, what makes flower-like children suffer from depression and even choose suicide? And what makes "good" students the hardest hit by depression and suicide crises?
More than ten years ago, I received a visitor, Xiao K, who came from a small mountain town and was expected to change the fate of his family, and was finally admitted to a top university in China, but at the moment he got the notice, not only was he not happy, but he found that the thought of wanting to die that had been hidden in his heart became stronger and stronger.
His parents stumbled upon his suicide note pressed under the notice and urgently brought him in for consultation. He finally revealed his heart and said that the college entrance examination was his only goal before, and now he has done his best to achieve it, and the next life does not know what the meaning is, and the university must be excellent people, they are nothing, there is no value in existence, it is better to die early, help parents save some money to raise their younger brother.
So I asked him, then what do you think parents should do to raise their younger brother well? He cried at once, then removed the armor of a good child, and confided all the grievances and pains he had suffered from childhood to adulthood.
He said that when he was a child, whenever he heard his parents say that our hard work was for you, he would feel guilty, feeling that he had to fight for the first place in his homework to be worthy of his parents, and if he couldn't do it, he would secretly pinch himself. When I was in junior high school, I was better off with a classmate with average grades, and my parents said in front of my classmates, "My little K is going to go to college in the future, you don't affect him, and he has never made friends since then."
In high school, he was depressed and often had insomnia and did not want to live in school, but his parents said that you were so good, and you couldn't overcome this difficulty. As an adolescent, he was very concerned about his image, just like other children, but he did not dare to look in the mirror until now, because his father once smashed all the mirrors in the house, and the sound of glass breaking, accompanied by his father's accusation about sissy, still echoes in his ears to make him feel ashamed.
Little K said that if he died, his parents would not be so stressed, and these things would not have happened to his younger brother, and his parents were on the side, listening, crying, and saying, why didn't you tell us earlier, we love you so much, we don't know that those things before hurt you so much. And Little K said, why didn't I tell you, I locked myself in my room, I didn't talk to you, I always didn't want to go back to school until Sunday, isn't this telling you that I'm depressed, it's that you don't understand. Parents said aggrievedly, we all thought it was your adolescent rebellion.
Little K's story allows us to see the commonality of depression in many "good" students. For example, let's look at the cognitive level, "good" students like Little K do not feel that they are really good. Because their good from childhood to adulthood is wrapped up and suppressed by the single evaluation standard of parents, schools and society, rather than from their real self-evaluation. They always live in the eyes of others, equate their achievements with their own lives, and lack a true sense of self-worth. Once the outside world changes, or their efforts can no longer be exchanged for the original recognition, they will feel that life has no value and meaning in existence.
On the emotional level, little Ks often say tired, lonely, scared. Tiredness is a sign of physical and mental exhaustion due to excessive pursuit of intellectual learning. Loneliness is due to the lack of the most important peer friendships of adolescence. And what to be afraid of, the fear of "good" students may not be the same as everyone thinks, they are afraid of letting others see their imperfections, they often love their parents more than adults think, and they are more eager for parental love, they are even afraid that they are not good enough and lose love, so they will continue to strive for progress until the physical and mental overload falls into exhaustion.
At the behavioral level, little K often show self-discipline and effort beyond their age, but this is not because they all like challenges and self-transcendence, but simply because of habitual flattering behavior patterns, or excessive responsibility in the family, giving too much extra meaning to learning, so that they can not feel the joy of learning, so once they achieve their goals, they cannot experience the fun and direction of living.
For "good" students depression, parents often have two aspects of several manifestations, some parents' performance, I call it, a leaf blind unaware type, their own children's psychological problems, often covered by the aura of "good" students, so adults often ignore their excellent grades and the pain and confusion under the smiling appearance, think that they should be better, and finally create one after another smiling depressed children who look sunny and perfect and never show negative emotions, Such children are actually the most dangerous. And the large number of parents of this type is a key group that needs to be particularly vigilant.
Some parents show that they deny the existence of the problem. They are afraid that admitting that their children are sick will destroy their perfection. And the more adults deny that the child is more painful, the more stigmatization will occur, parents regard depression as a stain on the child, refuse consultation and treatment, the result is that early detection and early intervention will better help the child, but often wait until it is uncontrollable to regret it.
In particular, I want to remind everyone that do not worry about the diagnosis of depression, will increase the psychological burden of children, in fact, only when parents remove the stigma of illness and calmly face the disease with their children, the child will get real support, and will know that he is sick, not his own bad.
If the "good" students represented by Little K we talked about above are in line with the traditions of parents, schools and society about good evaluation, and such "good" students will be depressed. In fact, there are some children, although they are not good in the eyes of their parents, but they are also affected by the mentality of "good" students.
For example, 14-year-old Little D has a cousin who is often regarded as someone else's child, but he himself has always had mediocre grades, and his parents often compare him with his cousin, and he is also very uncomfortable. So he also wants to be as good as his cousin, but no matter how hard he works, his grades just can't go up, although he is very athletic, and has won a lot of sports awards since he was a child, but he just feels inferior.
One day when he got up late, his father casually said, good students like your brother are working hard, what qualifications do you have to be lazy. Little D suddenly collapsed completely, he shouted at his father, yes, I'm not a "good" student, I should die, please beat me to death, dad was really enraged, and really slapped over. Little D opened the window as soon as he turned around and jumped down without hesitation, fortunately the floor was not high, and Little D ended up just breaking his tail vertebrae.
During the hospitalization, his parents no longer mentioned his cousin, but he still had nightmares every day, every time he dreamed of himself, seeing that he was about to get the good student trophy, but suddenly fell from the high podium, the trophy was also shattered around him, there is a "good" student mentality victim group on the Internet, which is a group of young people who are awakening and self-helping, they say, the "good" student mentality includes a high degree of obedience, valuing positive feedback from others, fear of mistakes, habitual fawning, excessive reflection and so on.
The victims of the "good" student mentality are not only "good" students, but also children like Little D who want to strive to become "good" students in the eyes of adults, and they subconsciously accept the evaluation standards of adults, believing that only by being a "good" student deserves to live and deserve the love of adults. As for what you are good at, it is meaningless, when such thoughts meet the adolescent brain, tragedy often happens in an instant.
In order to better prevent the occurrence of tragedies, in the book "7 Lessons of Life Education", I established a mental model of life education, which guides everyone on how to intervene in the crisis from the four levels of habit, understanding, mind and wisdom. In daily life, for children to take immediate action, you can learn specific methods in the book.
And what I want to focus on here today is the first level of habits. The so-called habit refers to some innate characteristics that we are born with as human beings, such as greed. You can ask, what kind of greed am I sitting here today? This level of practice is simple and important, which can help us quickly become aware of ourselves, improve parent-child relationships, and prevent depression in "good" students.
Specifically, every night before going to bed, reflect on what dissatisfaction you have had with your children this day, check which of your greed corresponds to these dissatisfactions, and then slowly let go of your greedy obsession. If you are willing to start this exercise today, you will soon realize that my dissatisfaction with my children is not that the children are really bad, but that I always want them to be better.
In fact, whether they are good or bad at learning, the vast majority of children are doing their best to get recognition. Like adults, they all have their own difficulties, and since life is difficult enough, let's not embarrass the children anymore. As parents, only by letting go of greed can we become the noble people of our children and fulfill their different good, instead of adding additional burden and psychological pressure to our children. Thank you.
We are talking about depression today, of course, we are not helpless for depression, there are several important reminders, I also want to give moms and dads. First of all, we must learn to distinguish the difference between adolescent rebellion and depression, if a certain rebellious state that seems to last for more than two weeks, or the child's sleep quality appetite continues to decline, suddenly loses interest in everything around him, has self-harm and self-injury, etc., often mentions death or I don't want to live, then he is no longer just a simple rebellion. Everyone must remember to take their children to the doctor as soon as possible, and the key to turning a crisis into a turning point is to remember that a principle is not a problem.
Secondly, an important reminder is that if the children around you have been diagnosed with depression, especially moderate to severe depression, you must understand that one of the common characteristics of depression is called morning heaviness and light night, which means that the morning is often the most dangerous and suicidal behavior, so parents should be especially careful and must be accompanied by children at all times. For adolescence, special attention should also be paid to the prevention of impulsive suicide, parents need to learn immediately and immediately, and one of the techniques used in quotation marks is called "closing the mouth" and listening less, especially when the child is emotional, a hug is more important than arguing about right and wrong. Thank you.
During Little D's recuperation, his parents walked into the consultation room, and for the first time began to face up to their own problems, and began to understand that poor grades do not mean that the child is not good, and Little K's parents also accompanied their son to receive long-term psychological counseling, we completed family psychological homework together, experienced their emotions and emotions through role reversal, completed the creation of family songs together, compiled a family culture manual, and re-explored the meaning of living, especially living together as a family.
During the Shanghai epidemic lockdown, Xiao K also called me to discuss how to help my roommates resolve their anxiety, and after the call, he sent a photo, the postscript is that the teacher shared with you my current state, the photo is a pot of flowers raised by this big boy who has been reborn from the crisis in front of the dormitory window.
This pot of flowers reminds me of another photo I received more than a decade ago, a counselor at the Chengdu branch of Lin Zi Psychological Institute, who had just finished a long consultation with a client when he posted the photo, and said that at the moment of the end, the flowers on the table in the consultation room quietly opened in front of his and the client's eyes, which moved both of them. The visitor's eyes shone and said that it was the flower of his life, and my fellow counselor reminded Lin Zi of the unchanging belief of Lin Zi for 25 years, that professionalism and love make every life open like a flower.
In my opinion, life is like a flower, and each flower has the beauty of each flower, so it can be beautiful and beautiful. When more and more adults are willing to let go of the single "good" student obsession in the past test-taking education model, revise and enrich our definition and standards of good, understand that personality integrity and physical and mental health are more important than good grades, children have more opportunities to conform to the natural laws of life growth, blossom their own unique flowers, and become "good" students in the true sense.
At this point, you may understand why the "good" students we are talking about today are in quotation marks, if the single "good" student standard does not change, the problem of adolescent depression and suicide will become more and more intense, and this is the most heart-wrenching.
At a time when adolescent depression and suicide are at a high rate, although as professionals, we have rich experience in crisis intervention, but we often feel powerless, and we urgently want to call on everyone to work together to learn some psychology, master some basic crisis prevention and assistance skills, escort our loved children, and accompany more children to live the true meaning of life, which is why I am standing here today.
This is also my original intention for writing the book "7 Lessons of Life Education", I wrote a wish in the book to use the remuneration of this book to set up a parent volunteer organization, so that more parents have the opportunity to listen to the true voice of their children, so that more children can add a confidence and possibility to live in times of crisis. The world is beautiful because you are in me and I am with everyone. Thank you.