Very often, many clients asked me that given the same family environment in their childhood with their siblings, why not all siblings in the same family suffer from the same mental disorders? Are they weaker or having more defects? In our culture, comparison with peers is very common and we are programed to compare with others. We learned comparison as a survival mechanism since we were young within our families or in our school. In fact, we need to accept the fact that every one of us has a unique combination of factors contributing to our characters, core values and action tendencies. We need to be more compassionate on our maladaptive behavioral patterns, such as shopaholism, workaholism, procrastination, temper outbursts, or self-harm. It is because, before we could manage these maladaptive patterns and our emotional disturbances, we need to let go of the judgment we put on ourselves, so that we can honestly prevent our own denial.
To manage our maladaptive behavioral patterns, we need to be more aware of our tendencies. Before learning to be more self-aware, it is important for us to understand the most common factors contributing to our unique “self”. First, parenting in our childhood is one of the most important factors impacting our personality and identity development. For instance, it is common for adults to become perfectionists if their parents were having authoritative parenting style, with high level of demands and high expectations. If parents tended to be overprotective in ones’ childhood, ones would tend to have low level of self-confidence and develop dependency on others in adulthood. Another factor is peer influence in ones’ environment in childhood. If a person was studying in a very competitive school that mainly emphasized on academic achievements, this person would learn to compare with his or her peers throughout one’s life. This person might also put all his or her effort in striving in study or work, without really enjoying one’s life. It is not uncommon for people finding out themselves having no interests at all in midlife after striving for success for too long.
There are also some other factors that are out of the control of the individual throughout the development. Cultural influence on one’s beliefs and values is very important on one’s action tendencies. For instance, if a culture tended to value a particular profession in the society, many elite children might choose to study in subjects related to this profession. Furthermore, these children might only see this profession as the authority without considering opinions of other less respected professions when they become adults. Indeed, this might narrow the perspective of the adults in making important decisions. Environmental influences are broad and even out of our control throughout our childhood. We cannot control which neighbour children we could play with in the park downstairs our home. In fact, we are also influenced by these neighbours. If these children enjoyed gaming, we were more likely to engage more in gaming in our childhood. On the contrary, if these children enjoyed reading, we might become bookworms.
What’s more is our individual differences. For example, it is common for different siblings to have very different temperaments. This explains why some siblings in an abusive family did not have mental illnesses in their adulthood, given other siblings were mentally ill.
If we have more understanding on these multiple factors on a person’s mental health development, we could be more compassionate to those with mental illnesses. We should not tell them to be stronger and conquer their emotional disturbance and maladaptive behavioral patterns with will power. In fact, in helping those with mental illnesses, the first thing we need to do it to put down our judgment and let go of an authoritative stand.
