Everyone has problems: men and women, girls and boys. Some people deal with their problems effectively, some don’t.
The first thing to know is that when you’re upset or angry or depressed, rational thought goes straight out the window. At these times it helps if you recognise you can’t always trust your own thoughts.
Here are a few examples:
UPSET THINKING: that teacher’s a complete dickhead. He never believes a word I say. He hates my guts.
TRUE THINKING: I don’t like him much. Our relationship’s been going downhill for a few months now. He’s not a very good teacher but I don’t put much effort in. If I can’t change teachers, if I’m stuck with him, I’d better find some way to work with him, to bring out the best in him.
Here the student may well be showing more maturity than the teacher.
UPSET THINKING: I’ll never love anyone the way I love her/him. If she/he doesn’t give a stuff about me, there’s nothing worth living for.
TRUE THINKING: all moods change eventually. If I can hang in there it will get better. In the meantime maybe I should face up to the fact that I don’t have much confidence, and I am pretty lonely. Maybe I should try to do something about those problems. (If the only worthwhile thing in your life is your feeling for this other person, it suggests your life is a bit unbalanced: you need other interests which you find satisfying and important.)
UPSET THINKING: I’ll never love anyone the way I love her. Now that she’s dropped me, I’m going to make her sorry. For the rest of her life she’s going to remember me and mourn for me, and feel bad about how she’s treated me.
TRUE THINKING: I’m obsessed with her, and that’s not the same thing as love. In fact obsession’s got nothing to do with love. I’m actually in a dangerous and self-destructive state. My emotional health is shot. I’ve lost the plot, big-time. There are people out there who can help me. I’d better find them, fast.
UPSET THINKING: I love her but she’s with another guy, or she lives too far away, or she’s too old, or I’ve never even met her, or . . .
TRUE THINKING: I’m not really ready for a serious relationship so I’m having a bit of a fantasy one. The fact is, this girl’s not within my ‘reach’, so I can safely be totally rapt in her, knowing deep down that I’m never going to get on with her.
You may notice in these examples that I’m not suggesting you use any of that self-esteem rubbish: ‘BELIEVE IN YOURSELF! YOU CAN DO IT! THINK POSITIVE!’
Anyone who’s been seriously depressed or unhappy knows what a waste of time that junk is.
You should recognise however that in some situations depression and being upset may be the right reactions. For example, if your parents separate, if someone close to you dies, if the girl you’re rapt in drops you, if you’ve moved to a new school and don’t know anyone, it’s entirely natural you’ll feel unhappy, maybe terribly unhappy.
Most people think about suicide sometimes. Maybe it’s just a passing thought: ‘I ought to kill myself, then they’ll be sorry.’ Some people think about it more strongly. Some people think about it compulsively. Obviously this last one is extremely dangerous. If it describes you, I can make at least one generalisation about you – that you don’t feel loved enough by your parents. Whether this is a valid belief doesn’t really matter, although I’d guess that it probably is: you probably aren’t loved enough. If you were you’d know it. People who are greatly loved don’t sit around wondering whether their parents love them.
There’s a doctrine in law: res ipse loquitur. It means ‘the thing speaks for itself’. For example, if a factory has eight serious accidents in six days, the judge may say ‘Well, res ipse loquitur, I don’t need to hear much evidence about this: the factory is clearly unsafe, the facts speak for themselves.’
If you have frequent feelings of depression, distress, lack of confidence, and a desire to commit suicide, this speaks to me of a lack of unconditional love from your parents.
This doesn’t mean that they’re total write-offs and so too is your relationship with them. There may be lots of good things about you and them. On the other hand there may not be.
So what can you do about your sad feelings?
Well, the golden rule is, talking always helps. There’s an important point to make about that though: you have to talk to the right person. For serious problems, the wrong people include:
People younger than you
People your own age
People not much older than you
People without imagination
People without understanding
People who go for simple, shallow thinking and simple, shallow solutions
Narrow-minded people
People who have big problems of their own
People who are on drugs
Some of these people don’t have enough life experience to give you the best advice. They mean well but it can be quite dangerous acting on their suggestions. Others are too lacking in perspective or wisdom.
Sometimes your parents and other people close to you can be the wrong people too. Why? Because if you need serious long-term help they are too close to give it. Other agendas get in the way. Maybe they are part of the problem, even if you don’t yet realise it. Whatever, it is often very difficult for someone to be your parent and your counsellor at the same time.
(Equally it is difficult for a parent to be your teacher. It causes a lot of unnecessary tension. Some parents, for instance, can teach their sons to drive, or to read better, or to speak another language, but most would be better off not trying.)
To find the right person to talk to, you’ll need to look around. Some of the possibilities include teachers, religious leaders, family friends, relatives, doctors, counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists.
If you’re talking to one of them about serious problems you might like to ask before you start whether the things you say will be passed on to anyone else. There may be situations where they will have to take action on something you tell them. It’d be good to have that understood before you start.
Talking is often difficult for guys. Many males have a problem with language and feelings. If your father isn’t a talker it might be even harder for you. If you’ve found the right person to talk to, they’ll be good at helping you to talk, at making it easier.
You may make a number of attempts to find someone to talk to, but each time it doesn’t work. Perhaps you chose the wrong person. Maybe they do too much talking themselves, and not enough listening. Maybe they give too much advice, instead of helping you make your own decisions. Maybe they spend too much time telling you about their problems. Maybe they’re unreliable. Danger signals include phrases like ‘I know just how you feel’, ‘I think you’re just feeling sorry for yourself’, ‘Try thinking about something else for a change’, ‘You need to eat healthier food’, ‘Yeah it’s like when I broke up with this girl and her mother said I blah blah blah blah blah’. All these approaches are completely unhelpful for dealing with the serious situation in which you find yourself.
If that happens, it doesn’t mean you’ve gone down the wrong road. It just means you chose the wrong person. Try someone else, and keep trying till you find the right person. Don’t forget the telephone help-lines, which you’ll find at the front of the White Pages, under the heading COMMUNITY HELP REFERENCE PAGE (there’s a whole page of them). Most of these are free. In some places they include a Men’s Help Line, run by sympathetic and supportive volunteers. There’s Lifeline, 24 hours a day, on 13 11 14. There is also The Kids Help Line, 24 hours a day, on 1800 551 800. Most states have a rape crisis line and a domestic violence hotline, both open 24 hours.
If you keep feeling let down by the people you chose, it could of course mean something else: that you’re not being honest. Maybe you find the idea of talking to someone about your problems so scary that you keep finding excuses why you can’t. You blame them instead of looking at yourself. Maybe you’re very nervous about criticising your parents, in case it gets back to them, or because it makes you feel disloyal.
In fact you must find the courage to talk about your relationship with your parents, as well as all the other topics that need exploring. It will be critical that you talk about them; including your positive and negative feelings about them. After all, they are the two most powerful people in your life.
Other ways of reducing depression are largely a matter of common sense. Playing sport, making new friends, meditating, doing something creative. I find that forcing myself to watch comedy videos and comedy TV shows, and reading funny books, can be quite effective.
Isolation is depression’s greatest friend. Depression loves it when you shut yourself away from people. It rubs its hands with glee and thinks: ‘Beauty! Now I can really mess this guy up!’
Isolation in itself isn’t bad – everyone needs to have time on his own, just as he needs to spend time with others – but isolating yourself because you’re unhappy or bitter is opening the door wide to depression.
Another tactic for dealing with stress, anxiety, depression is to make an appointment with it.
What it means is that when you’re getting stressed, you say to yourself: ‘OK, yes, I am hugely stressed about that test or that party or that summons to the principal’s office tomorrow, and fair enough too! So what I’ll do is make an appointment for the stress. At 11 o’clock this morning, I’ll allow myself to feel the full-on stress. I’ll take a bath in it, I’ll give it everything I’ve got, I’ll cop the full load.’
Then, whenever you feel the stress coming on, you say to it: ‘Sorry, you’ll have to wait for your appointment. At 11 o’clock you can have all the time and space you want.’
When 11 o’clock comes you postpone the appointment to two o’clock. And so on.
Believe it or not this actually works. Well, it has for me.
The other thing I find helpful is the kind of self-discipline I talked about before, in the section about testing your courage. In particular, not letting your mind go over and over a mistake you’ve made, torturing yourself by repeating unhelpful abuse like ‘How could I have been so stupid!’, ‘God I’m hopeless’, ‘I can’t believe how dumb I am’.
An old bit of advice says, ‘There are three things that can never be recalled: the spent arrow, the thrown stone, the spoken word.’
I do often remind myself of that advice when I’ve said something especially bad. A few years ago I was at a function where I had to make a speech. I’d been on the road a long time. At the end of the dinner I stood for my speech and began: ‘When I arrived here in . . .’ I suddenly realised I had no idea of where I was. I had to stop and say to the person next to me: ‘Which town am I in?’
He told me, which was kind of him.
It was a pretty rude effort on my part. These people had gone to a lot of trouble to get me there and had planned it for a long time. For the next few days I agonised about it. But there was nothing I could do to cancel my words. They had been spoken, they were out there, people would think whatever they thought, and I couldn’t control that or influence it in any way. It was a waste of energy to keep reminding myself of it.
In a situation where you’ve acted badly – and there will have been plenty already, and there’ll be plenty more in the future – work out if there’s anything you can do to reduce the damage. A dignified apology for example. (Don’t grovel, don’t do a suck job, don’t lie. A second apology a day or two later, following an apology on the spot, sometimes helps a lot.) An offer to do something practical to help the person. An action in some other area that will show people your feelings about the matter.
If there’s nothing you can do, then let it go.
If you commit the same error again soon afterwards, then you’ll need to take the famous ‘long hard look at yourself’. Sounds to me like you have a problem in this particular area, and you need to work on it before it becomes a bad habit.
Another way of thinking about depression is as ‘rage turned inwards’. The anger, fury, despair are inflicted upon yourself. It’s like a cancer. It’s like the crown of thorns starfish. It’s like rust. It eats away inside you, devouring your energy, your good feelings, your sense of reality. You can become depressed, sad, withdrawn.
Some males don’t turn their rage inwards: they take it out on people or objects or themselves. These are all inappropriate and unhelpful ways of dealing with it.
It is true that ‘bad boys are sad boys’. Boys who act angrily, attacking anyone and everyone, are deeply unhappy, at a level they find frightening to think about. They’ll headbutt another player in a football game, give cheek to teachers, start fires, steal, punch their little sister, break windows. Afterwards they’ll often burst into tears, beg forgiveness, say, ‘I don’t know what came over me; I don’t know what made me do it.’
It’s their sadness that makes them do it, but the terror of facing that is too great for them.
The fact that you’re sad is however never an excuse for hurting anyone or anything (including yourself). You have to find the courage to confront your deep unhappiness.
In recent years though I’ve come to realise that depression, as well as having its awful aspects, can be a kind of gift. It gives you a richer, deeper understanding of your fellow humans. ‘You can’t appreciate the light until you’ve known the darkness.’ Depression can also give rise to a lot of creative work, like art, music, writing, dance.
BEING UNPOPULAR
Being unpopular is a great fear for many people, adults included. It can have a huge influence on behaviour.
If your fears are realised, and you become unpopular, it’s quite a nightmare. Some people reading this book might have been unpopular all their lives. All their school lives anyway.
Sometimes it’s a complete rip-off. You’re a genuinely decent guy: good-natured, kind, honest, generous. Yet you’re the victim of a hard time at school, or elsewhere.
You may be the victim of people who have such stuffed-up personalities that they’re taking it out on you. You really are a victim. In this situation you should recruit all the adult help you can. Your own emotional health is very important. Don’t put it at risk by going through weeks or months or years of destructive unpopularity.
If someone was breaking the bones in your body one by one, starting at your toes and working their way up your legs, I hope you’d do something about it.
The same applies to emotional damage. The effect is as bad. You must act to stop it.
But it’s also possible that you’re acting in a way which makes you unpopular. That doesn’t alter the fact that you’ve got to do something. The emotional damage will be as bad even if you’re helping cause the problem.
One of the things you can do is figure out why you’re unpopular. At least then you’re in a position to do something about it, if you want. You might say ‘Well, that’s the way I am, so stuff them all.’ Or you might say: ‘Well, that’s not too good a habit, so maybe I should change it.’
Among the habits that make people unpopular are:
1. Talking about yourself all the time. This can be helped if you get in the habit of asking people about themselves instead – and listening to their answers. People who are good listeners can be very popular indeed.
2. Exaggerating stuff about yourself, and lying. This usually means you have a serious problem with confidence. You might need to see a counsellor or someone who’s an expert in helping people.
3. Bragging, or showing off. Similar to (1) and (2) above, but not quite the same. You may have parents who are obsessed with you, making you feel that everything you do is incredibly important. If your parents have been telling you that you’re a genius or a star or a legend, superior to everyone else, they’re not doing you any favours. In fact they’re setting you up for a lot of problems. It could also be the opposite: your parents aren’t very interested in you. You feel that if you don’t draw everyone’s attention to what you’ve achieved, no-one’ll notice. (They will; in fact the less you talk about what you’ve achieved the more they’ll notice.)
4. Talking, or having attitudes, that are more like an adult than someone your age. A student who is very serious about school work, who doesn’t like it when other students ‘muck up’, who spends more time talking to teachers than students, is in this category. ‘You forgot to set any homework,’ such a student might say to the teacher, as the rest of the class groan. If this is you, you are probably into control in a big way. You have a lot of fears, and losing control is one of them. Your parents may have put too much emphasis on you being a ‘good little boy’. You might have spent too much time with adults, not enough with kids your age mucking around, lighting your farts or whatever kids in your neighbourhood were doing when you were little. Again a counsellor or someone similar might be needed to help you. Be honest when you talk to them.
5. Attention seeking behaviour. This term usually covers a whole lot of stuff, like calling out, insulting other kids, being cheeky to teachers, getting out of your seat in class, or extreme things like breaking windows. True attention seeking behaviour usually means you’re scared no-one loves you. Unconsciously you figure at least people will take notice of you if you’re acting badly, and that’s better than being ignored. If this is you, you’ve probably been like this for years, and you’ve probably been in trouble for years. You’re going to need to take responsibility for fixing this. Decide which teacher you trust most and start with him. There are strategies available, if you really want to make a change. Beware of labels like A.D.D. or P.T.S.D.: forget the label and look for the individual truth about you. You are a person, not a chapter in a medical book. Again, a good counsellor could be a great idea.
6. Stealing. If you steal more than once or twice you are probably seriously unhappy and you should seek help immediately. Happy well-balanced people don’t steal. Another possibility is that you’re confused about values: maybe your parents are equally mixed-up about values and have passed on some bad values to you. They could be dishonest, or, even more confusing, they could pose as highly moral and honest people – but you know they do dishonest things.
7. Being too weak, too quiet, too passive. You should start working out what you believe in and what you don’t. Then stick to your guns. In conversations, give your opinions more, and defend them. Stop trying to please everyone: it’s impossible, and you’re just setting yourself up for a lifetime of grief. ‘I reckon Norths are the biggest thugs in the comp’ is more interesting than ‘I don’t follow any team in particular, I like all of them . . .’
8. Being selfish with your things, or mean with money. You’ve learnt this unattractive behaviour somewhere. Are your parents mean with their things? You might be too fond of being in control, frightened of mess or surprises or people acting wildly. You might be scared that if you give anything away you’ll be left with nothing. There’s probably been a serious lack of emotional ‘gifts’ from your parents to you.
9. Buying friends. Again, this suggests a serious problem with confidence, and a relationship with your parents that may look good on the outside but may be very fragile.
10. Sarcasm, smart comments about other people, gossiping, viciousness, always able to find everyone’s weak spots. This hides massive insecurity. You feel that if you keep attacking everyone, maybe no-one’ll get around to attacking you. Your parents have almost certainly picked on you a lot, regularly noting all your faults. You’ve learnt to despise everyone else. If you’re like this, you’ll probably deny that you have a problem. You have a lot of work ahead to solve it, but the good news is that it can be done. You’ll have to learn to be very honest about yourself – your good points and your bad points – and that’s not easy. The interesting thing is you may find it harder to be honest about your good points than your bad points.
11. Being teacher’s pet. Tough call, because you mightn’t have asked for it (although see (4) above). Students often believe all teachers have ‘pets’, and no doubt a lot of them do. If you haven’t done anything to deserve this honour, and you’re sure the teacher is favouring you, try speaking to the teacher outside class time, and explain that it’s embarrassing. If you’re getting really bad vibes, talk to your parents or a senior teacher you can trust. Don’t be afraid to change classes if that’s possible and no other solution seems available.
If you are unpopular big-time you should keep in mind the option of changing classes or changing schools. This is entirely reasonable if your emotional health is at risk. But think about changing your behaviour before you start at your new school.
If you’ve already changed your behaviour at your present school and no-one’s giving you credit, then again a change of school might help. It is hard to get rid of a bad reputation. People often take a long time to notice an improvement in someone. It’s much easier to get rid of a good reputation.
One last point about friendship and popularity. There’s an old saying that you spend your first term at a new school trying to get rid of the friends you made in the first week. Although you may be lonely for a few days when you start a new school it’s sometimes not a bad idea to wait a bit before rushing into friendships, so you can see which way the land lies.