World Book Day: Children love to read psychology books, which can be a red flag, and parents should pay close attention to it!

In order to promote more people to read and write, since 1995, April 23 has been established as "World Book Day" every year.

Today's teenagers are the "natives of the digital planet", and most of them like to pick up their mobile phones and watch short videos anytime and anywhere, even if they read, most of them are reading fragmented text on the Internet.

So, if your child still maintains the habit of deep reading and likes to read, it is really very rare. Not all books are suitable for teenagers, though. We have previously analyzed that there are certain categories of books that may have a negative impact on teenagers, especially philosophy books.

In addition, if the child likes to read psychology books, parents should also pay close attention to it: this is likely to mean that the child has mental and psychological risks, and may even have "smiling depression"!

The following provides some analysis and suggestions from the perspective of precision psychopsychology, which I hope will be helpful to parents.

This image is AI-generated

01. Children love to read psychology books, and they are likely to want to save themselves or others!

Children are very fond of reading psychology books, which means that children are likely to have suffered a lot of superimposed psychological trauma, inner pain, depression, and mental and psychological problems. They want to learn psychology to understand why they have problems, and even want to help themselves.

Some of these children may have been diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder, etc. They received mainstream psychiatric treatment and counseling/psychotherapists, but their condition did not improve significantly. The child feels that it is better to ask for others than to ask for himself, and it is better to learn and help himself.

Some children have never been diagnosed, have not even seen a psychiatrist, and usually behave normally, even appear sunny and cheerful. Their parents often feel that their children are purely interested in reading psychology books, so what's the problem?

Indeed, it is not excluded that there are some teenagers who are mainly motivated by interest. However, some children are likely to have "smiling depression", which is depressed for a long time, but deliberately disguised and covered up, and even the parents are not aware of it.

It is hoped that parents will learn how to recognize "smiling depression", such as observing whether there are traces of self-harm on their children's bodies and whether they will cry alone at night.

In other words, if parents find that their children are studying psychology to help themselves, they must first realize that their children have serious mental and psychological problems. The effect of a child's "self-help" is often very limited and may even be counterproductive.

Parents should quickly and deeply self-reflect, change and improve, learn "self-family therapy", consciously improve the family atmosphere and parent-child relationship, and create an environment conducive to the recovery of the child's illness.

Parents should also deeply reflect on whether they have adopted simple and rough family education methods in the past, which have caused superimposed psychological trauma to their children. If there is, parents can sincerely apologize to their children, which is conducive to breaking the ice of the parent-child relationship.

Parents should also know how to use the three steps of benign communication - empathy, listening and positive guidance, strive to enter the inner world of children, understand the difficulties and frustrations encountered in the process of children's growth, guide children to face them rationally and positively, and repair their superimposed psychological trauma to a certain extent.

All in all, parents should master accurate knowledge of mental psychology, understand their children's mental activities and behaviors from the level of implicit memory, understand the root causes of their children's problems, and try to avoid detours, so as to find a suitable rehabilitation roadmap for their children as soon as possible.

02. If the child insists on watching, parents can guide them like this

After the parent-child relationship improves, parents should also guide their children to have a rational understanding of "psychology books".

On the one hand, if the child insists on reading such books, even if the parents do not approve of the content of the books, it is not appropriate to block them strongly.

But parents can tell their children that there are more than 400 schools of psychology at home and abroad, and most of them can only understand people's mental activities and behaviors from the level of people's explicit memories (that is, memories that people can remember). It is difficult for them to penetrate into the level of people's implicit memories (memories that cannot be remembered), and it is difficult to touch the real source of mental and psychological problems.

The psychology books on the market are basically based on mainstream schools of psychology, especially psychoanalysis. Even if the child has seen a lot and has some views on mental and psychological problems, they may not be able to find the real cause and solve it.

Even if they agree with what the book says, it is difficult for them to achieve the unity of knowledge and action until the major superimposed psychological trauma has been repaired.

If a child is not aware of this, they may be hopeful at first and find a whole bunch of psychology books, only to find that this does not solve the problem. They will be very disappointed, even hopeless.

Moreover, it is better for teenagers not to read books of the psychoanalytic genre. The psychoanalytic school tends to overemphasize the negative effects of the family of origin, especially the child's life experience before the age of 6. If children lack a rational understanding of this, they will be "awake hypnotized" while reading books, blaming their parents for their own problems, which will worsen the parent-child relationship and worsen their emotional symptoms.

In addition, the content of psychology books may activate the superimposed psychological trauma in children, causing them to think about their own experiences, leading to greater mood swings.

So, parents should find ways to lower their children's expectations of psychology books. If the child must be seen, it is best to see it after the condition has entered a stable period and the parent-child relationship has improved significantly. Parents can also consciously guide their children to learn precise spiritual psychology knowledge with them to increase their rationality and self-awareness.

03. Children want to learn psychology to save others, which has many hidden dangers

There is another situation, children read psychology books not to "save themselves", but to "save others", they want to help friends with mental and psychological problems.

Some parents can't understand this and worry that it will affect their children's time and energy for learning. They will immediately deny the child's approach, "You take care of yourself first", "Why do you care so much about others?", "You can't help him, don't think about it". There is even a small percentage of parents who may say, "They are mentally ill, you stay away from them!"

These words can make children feel very disappointed in their parents, and may even despise their own parents from the bottom of their hearts, making the parent-child relationship even more alienated. This increases the risk that your child will also develop mental and psychological problems later on.

Therefore, for this situation, parents should first affirm the starting point of their children. They value friendship very much, and feel that if a friend is in trouble but does not help him, he will feel guilty, and even self-denial and guilt. The child is kind, warm-hearted, compassionate and empathetic, which is a good character and virtue.

Parents should first see these emotional needs and shining points of their children, and understand them and affirm them. Then, parents find an opportunity to rationally analyze the matter with their children: are we capable of helping our friends, will it have a negative impact on ourselves, and if we really want to help, how can we help?

First of all, if the child does not have the knowledge of accurate psychiatric psychology and has a weak self-awareness ability, the child is likely to suffer psychological harm while helping others.

For example, friends with mental and psychological problems have suffered a lot of superimposed psychological trauma, a large number of negative emotions have accumulated in their hearts, and a lot of bad cognitions have been formed.

If the listener is an adolescent, because their minds are not yet mature and they may have suffered some superimposed psychological trauma, they are likely to be influenced by friends, have some irrational cognitions, and even have mood swings.

For example, when a child listens to a partner accusing his parents, the child is likely to agree very much, and even think of some of his own experiences. If the child has read books of the psychoanalytic school, he will even agree with the psychoanalyst Wu Zhihong's view that "both parents are evil", and the two of them complained, complained, and even hugged their heads and cried.

In this process, the child will become more likely to agree with psychoanalytic theories and believe that all his misfortunes are caused by his parents. Children can easily become paranoid because they identify with their friends, and then identify with their distorted views, similar to "love the house and the black".

In fact, this kind of help is difficult to play a substantive role, and it will even make the condition of the little partner more serious, and the child himself will be negatively affected.

Over time, children will find that they can't help their peers, and they are likely to become frustrated, irrationally self-denying, and may even induce depressive episodes. If this happens, it means that the child himself has also suffered a lot of superimposed psychological trauma, but it has not changed from quantitative to qualitative before, and there are no mental and psychological symptoms.

Moreover, if parents find that their children have strong empathy for others, and they will also be sad when they see others sad, it also indicates that the child is likely to have suffered superimposed psychological trauma. The sad, sad, and lonely appearance of others actually activates their superimposed psychological trauma.

Therefore, for this situation, parents should guide their children to understand that being a human being is to be kind, but kindness should be based on wisdom, and to help friends in a scientific way within the scope of their ability.

In terms of children's abilities, it is very difficult to directly reverse the condition of a friend. Especially for teenagers who also have minor mental and psychological problems, don't blindly help their friends, otherwise it is likely that the mud bodhisattva will cross the river - it will be difficult to protect themselves.

On the other hand, parents should pay attention to whether their children's strong empathy means that they have suffered a certain amount of superimposed psychological trauma, and whether it is related to the parents' improper family education methods.

Of course, if the child still wants to help his friend after the parents have guided him, the parents should give some support. Parents can communicate with the parents of their children to find friends, and try to get the other parent's attention in time. Parents can also work with their children to collect public welfare organizations that provide psychological services and psychological assistance in the society, and provide them to their friends and their parents, which may be able to provide some help.

However, in the colleagues who are doing these things, parents need to guide their children to realize that we can help our friends within our ability, but in the end, whether they can move towards recovery, or even whether they and their parents will accept our help, is not something we can control. We can just hold the mentality of "actively working hard and going with the flow", even if we can't help, don't blame ourselves.

Although today's teenagers have a wide range of knowledge, are more "precocious" than our generation, and have a broader horizon, if they become interested in psychology books too early, especially psychoanalysis, this does not conform to the laws of adolescent psychological development, and it is likely to be a dangerous signal.

It is hoped that parents can pay attention to the books their children read, find some hidden dangers and danger signs in time, and give positive guidance in time to help their children grow up mentally and physically healthy.