Sublime

Many mentally ill patients have suffered all their lives from a feeling that they are not, in and of themselves, good enough. They are likely to have worked hard for decades and become extremely high achievers in order to prove to someone who was skeptical about them at the outset that they are respectable and worthy after all.

the book The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller.

I understand a healthy self-feeling to mean the unquestioned certainty that the feelings and needs one experiences are a part of one’s self. This certainty is not something one can gain upon reflection; it is there like one’s own pulse, which one does not notice as long as it functions normally.

When Mother doesn’t give love or praise easily, children often go to great lengths to conform to what they think Mother wants. They monitor themselves carefully and create high standards they hold themselves to.

conscious parenting goes beyond techniques aimed at fixing a specific behavior, speaking instead to the deeper aspects of the relationship between parent and child.

The trap is in trying to hang in there for the good while trying to overlook the bad. Wrong. This can never work.

In too many schools approval-seeking is the way to success.