How to Overcome Your Childhood
The School of Life Institute has been a great influence on me in the past two years. The works of Alain de Botton and his colleagues are amazing. The YouTube channel and their books are simply a pleasure to read and connect with.
One of the interesting books is, “How to Overcome Your Childhood”. It is a call for understanding the impact of childhood, our parents and the deep impact it leaves on our psyche. The indelible effects of our childhood on our adult life, thoughts and habits are truly amazing to me. I never thought that my current problem stems from the experiences of my past.
But for a psychotherapist, this is just another pattern. I think a therapist will be able to understand our current self and connect it with the deeper impact of our past and let us overcome it. I got some great insights on parenting from this book. This book is also a good introduction to the British therapist Donald Winnicott. I have been intrigued by his work and writings.
This book gave a good idea of his philosophy behind therapy. What particularly stood out for me was the child’s “true self” and “false self” and why “good enough” is the best parenting technique. We don’t have to be great parents. We just need to be good enough. More than controlling the tantrums of the kids, we need to know as a parent how to react to it. It is much more important on how we handle the tantrums rather than managing the kid. Because the kid just observes and learns from us.
Another insight from this book was: the positive reinforcement or the golden child syndrome. How big a mistake it is to shove our expectations and dreams on the kids. A kid needs to enjoy life because she/he is a card-carrying member of the human race. Period.
A kid need not be a wizard, need not become a startup founder at the age of 17 or have a YouTube channel with 5M views to feel special. The kid deserves to be praised and loved because they are a kid. It is the same case with us too. We don’t have to feel worthy because of the promotion we got for all our hard work or the stock that we predicted became a super multi-bagger or we published a book or edited a video or we reduced 50 pounds in lockdown. We should be happy because we are human and we are alive. We deserve the love of people and we don’t have to devalue ourselves when things go bad.