This was a very good thread Byz. These therories is how I lived my life and I raised my daughter to do the same. I also looked for what I called the weak spot in students and I challenged them without their knowing it. It was a part of my teaching that I enjoyed the most. And it is why I only liked to give private lessons.
I have to say that when I lost so much it affected me in ways that I could have never imagined. And when I was diagnosed with PTSD, I really thought it was temporary and did not realize how it progressed without my really knowing.

I have been doing nothing but working at identifying it and slowly pulling it apart for the past 5 months. This group of articles is a gift, something I have been working on and even waiting for. I have been talking about it ever since I came to PC. It wasn't anything I read, it was just what I believed and was often critisized for having and yet it was depended on. I never used to dwell on what I couldn't do in life, I just kept going forward to see what I could do. And I was presented with a lot of obsticles in my life. But somehow I just kept pushing past them, and it wasn't easy. The one connection I have had with that part of myself is coming here and addressing different questions. And I have been working on the faith that the brain can heal, but it takes time and effort.

THE INCREASING RATE OF DEPRESSION AMONG THE YOUTH OF TODAY?
THE ANSWER IS THERE, IT IS STARING US IN THE FACE.

I have talked a lot about the harm that is caused to so many children out of so much ignorance. And I have seen the handing down of child rearing methods that only lend to a constant elimination of producing a child with a healthy outlook on life.
And I can't help but consider this fact to be one of the main reasons for the numbers of children expressing depression today. All I hear is the youth of today constantly saying they feel terrible because they don't know who they are, they dont have any core and the self esteem levels are so very low. So many messages are being sent to them to actually know who they are and see if their image falls in line with what is considered desirable today. And my never ending message is, stop worrying, your not going to know for a while so give yourself a break.

The expectation level we put on our youth of today is much too high. And we have been so flooded with images of what we should be that it is understandable that so many feel that they will never measure up. Why? Because they are given images that are not even real, just avatars and they are presented with images of a prefered look that is never going to be them, as we are all unique and we are not designed genetically to all look the same with the same features and body types. Children grow up with so much subliminal imagery that when the time comes that they begin to look and take note of their own image they have difficulty relating it to all the imagery that has been handed to them since early childhood. And a lot of what I hear is the dis-satisfaction of self image.
It never gets beyond that and it becomes a major obstacle for self hatred.
THAT IS WRONG. This literature only just touches on that but it is a start. I would like to see a stronger addition to this that helps our youth to counteract how they are unknowingly being presented with what they should look like and all of a sudden they should just know who they are, that is not realisitc. Reality is you learn and take in knowledge first and you learn about who you are by slowly applying knowledge in a unique individual way. The celebration (as these articles describe) is in the uniqueness of ones self, not the conformity of an unrealistic expectation prescribed by the commercialization of imagery, what is valueable and deemed successful.

I think this information should be somewhere that it remains accessable to everyone that comes here full of questions. Maybe we could have new a forum, the Library of answers forum or something to that effect.

Open Eyes