as good as
Sep. 20th, 2017 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI was reading a couple news items about a survey that reckoned it revealed depression in a quarter of teenagers
and one thing that stuck in my mind to bother me
was they took a statement something like "I will never be as good as other kids"
to be a sign of depression.
Actually I double checked and it's “I thought I could never be as good as other kids.”
Thing is, when you're in school, everyone being graded all the time, you get a pretty good idea of if you're getting top grades or not, and what your range is, and how well your best is going to be received. And you know if you are actually as good as other kids. Because half of people are below average, and not as good... at things they're asked to do and be assessed on.
So, like, the phrasing is so broad it doesn't invite a nuanced answer, and it's trying to pick up on low self worth, but it's got nothing they mentioned to check how realistic they're being if they're interpreting it in grades A-C or other quantifiables.
And it shouldn't be that you hate yourself as a person for low grades, but if acknowledging you have low grades is taken as a sign of mental illness, that is a whole different problem. Like, realism isn't illness.
And maybe some people are good at some things and not others, and maybe some people are good at some socially or financially valuable things and not others, and it's a whole stack of assumptions to say some people are below average at everything they've tried, but, I suspect, some people are below average at everything they've tried, and noticing that isn't ill.
Though it's probably depressing.
I feel like society has lost the balance between striving to be your best and acknowledging that only one person is the best. Like, all this best rhetoric doesn't leave many places for the rest of us to stand, even though we're the vast majority.
And that's what that one survey question made me think of, even though it only had meaning in context added together with questions about miserable crying and hating themselves.
In related thoughts, thinking that the future is not going to get better may be a symptom, but it may also be a consequence of just reading the headlines...
and one thing that stuck in my mind to bother me
was they took a statement something like "I will never be as good as other kids"
to be a sign of depression.
Actually I double checked and it's “I thought I could never be as good as other kids.”
Thing is, when you're in school, everyone being graded all the time, you get a pretty good idea of if you're getting top grades or not, and what your range is, and how well your best is going to be received. And you know if you are actually as good as other kids. Because half of people are below average, and not as good... at things they're asked to do and be assessed on.
So, like, the phrasing is so broad it doesn't invite a nuanced answer, and it's trying to pick up on low self worth, but it's got nothing they mentioned to check how realistic they're being if they're interpreting it in grades A-C or other quantifiables.
And it shouldn't be that you hate yourself as a person for low grades, but if acknowledging you have low grades is taken as a sign of mental illness, that is a whole different problem. Like, realism isn't illness.
And maybe some people are good at some things and not others, and maybe some people are good at some socially or financially valuable things and not others, and it's a whole stack of assumptions to say some people are below average at everything they've tried, but, I suspect, some people are below average at everything they've tried, and noticing that isn't ill.
Though it's probably depressing.
I feel like society has lost the balance between striving to be your best and acknowledging that only one person is the best. Like, all this best rhetoric doesn't leave many places for the rest of us to stand, even though we're the vast majority.
And that's what that one survey question made me think of, even though it only had meaning in context added together with questions about miserable crying and hating themselves.
In related thoughts, thinking that the future is not going to get better may be a symptom, but it may also be a consequence of just reading the headlines...