I’m pleased with the number of recent PBS series that are dealing with mental health and emotional health topics. This evening I caught part of the first show in the series of “This Emotional Life” and watched stories on attachment (parent-children relationships), friendships, bullying, and love relationships.
I caught part of the segment on parent-child relationships and the importance of early attachment between a newborn and a parent on the baby’s subsequent ability to form attachments in social relationships. I think the message in some of the social studies presented literally teaches us how true is the saying “children are our future”. How we treat our children and take care of them and relate to them and model behaviors for them becomes their template on how to relate to themselves and other human beings. I can’t help but wonder how the most sure way of anyone “changing the world” is by having that positive influence in a young life – babies and children.
The part about bullying was captivating – particularly because today there are more ways to bully (i.e. internet bullying) and we have simply become more sophisticated and smarter at bullying. We have learned how to be more cruel emotionally. I took away three key messages from that segment: one is how important it is for bystanders to NOT be bystanders (indeed, evil happens because all the good people stood by watching!), the other is the link between “popularity” and bullying and how so-called “popular kids” are also doing a lot of the bullying. There was a third message that was surprising to me – but made total sense – bullying does NOT thicken a child’s skin and in fact, makes that child more vulnerable. So that saying about “what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger?” It’s not true when “what” is bullying.
I think it’s because bullying is more than just a one-on-one dynamic. Bullying is a systematic victimization of one person who then gets additionally victimized by those who stood by watching and not intervening. Even the happiest most outgoing “fun” kid will get bullied to the point of suicide – this was what happened with a boy named Jeffrey who hung himself after being repeatedly harassed and bullied by another boy at school. We have ideas of how certain kids get bullied, but this is not true, anyone can be a victim, including those who seem to have great personalities and friends. This makes it all the more important for friends to stick up for each other, and for “good people” to intervene. Because the truth is – any one of us can fall victim and we would be counting on someone else to stick up for us too.
Those of us who have experience with emotional traumas and with mental health issues like depression can appreciate the additional complexity this takes when we first are managing our relationships with ourselves. Sometimes we have to figure out how to manage our own emotions first before we can deal with reading other people’s emotional cues. Some of us feel other people’s emotions with such intensity that we can get overwhelmed and even internalize that intensity and we start feeling those emotions as if they were our own. In the end, much of our emotional strength as human beings are formed through our relationships with others. It makes this series worthwhile to watch.
I’m looking forward to catching the second episode in the series tomorrow night. If you have watched this show – let me know what you think and whether a particular story touched you by leaving a comment below!
