Growing up and another approach to coping

Growing up is about fighting our own demons, keeping them in check and coping with the damage that we unintentionally psychologically inflict upon ourselves.

Amidst the prevalence of advertising today that markets instant gratification, and social media mechanisms that highlight the glamorous parts of the lives around us, it is easy to forget that everyone is facing their own problems too - though they might choose to outwardly display only positivity, even if they're not always happy. And it's okay to not always be or feel happy.

For those of us who might seem to have a lower "baseline of happiness" or often tend to "relapse" into negativity and pessimism, it is important to be wary not to continually seek the narcissistic gains derived from pride in one's own despair, and instead be mindful of these destructive cognitive dispositions that we tend to assume.

However, consuming dedicated self-help and self-improvement material might, counterintuitively, serve to perpetuate our feelings of helplessness and listlessness (a problemless person has no need to self-help, thus it follows that persons who consume such material have problems, which might induce a deleterious self-fulfilling prophecy). Moreover, resources dedicated to such cognitive restructuring tend to patronise the reader by minimising or catastrophising their problems, conversely perpetuating their dire interpretations of them.

I'm no expert in mental health and emotional stability - quite the contrary, but I guess what has been working better for me is to read such matters from a scientific, clinical and practical (practitioner) perspective as opposed to consuming "vanilla" self-help material. This enables and empowers me to both be the counsellor and the client, better building independent coping mechanisms, as opposed to only being the client and looking to the psych todays, healthlines and lifehackers of the Internet for guidance.

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