To think personal responsibility no longer exists

[Wondermule]

I know this is going to be a controversial post, so I’ve got my hard hat on 🪖

It has really dawned on me how little personal responsibility people take now. Every other thread seems to be someone posting to offload their problems (financially dependant relationship, COVID worries due to high BMI, hellish mother in law among the most common) yet there is always an excuse about why they can’t the advice given, usually drip feeding something about anxiety or mental health. Please don’t see this as me making light of mental health issues (sufferer here myself), but it doesn’t change the fact only you can make changes to your life.

Also many posts citing ‘lack of support’ - this one inspired by the chocolate button debacle! - a mum feeding her 3 month old chocolate buttons just didn’t have the ‘support’ or ‘education’ to make healthy choices apparently. Never mind the healthy start vouchers for fruit and veg, maternity grant, free weaning courses at children’s centres, all the help available online... it’s all the state’s fault. I feel ‘lack of support’ will be cited until the government send someone to prepare all her meals and police her shopping trolley.

I feel in being too sympathetic, it is just providing excuses for people not to take responsibility for their own choices. Or am I wrong??

Yeah, I would agree. I mean overdiagnosis of anxiety and other mental health issues not good if it it causes heavy dependency on tranquilizers etc but there is more emphasis on self Help for mild anxiety and also therapy for moderate and severe kinds. I can't see how those things are harmful.

People are complicated. There have been a number of areas, suicide being one, where it was assumed that being more open and talking about it more would be helpful. Increase awareness, reduce stigma, let people talk about their anxieties and feelings before they were extreme.

Or similarly with self-esteem, there was an assumption that a lot of language directed toward improving it would help some and not harm those who didn't need it.

But what they found was that people's responses were much more complicated than that. A lot of talk about self esteem seemed to actually damage it in kids. Talking about suicide could increase incidents, which was very disturbing. With some issues like eating disorders, or self harm, talking about it with teens can actually increase it.

Most kids and teens have a lot of strong feelings but that's pretty normal. They also don't have the experience to compare their feelings with. If they are getting the message that feeling anxious, or sad, or uncomfortable, is something they need to deal with medically, they will believe it and they will not necessarily be able to judge what is normal teen (or just human) emotional difficulty and what isn't.

And when we can find an easy, socially acceptable excuse to get out of something we don't want to do, most of us will take it, and even believe it ourselves. It's only by having the experience of working through these feelings and coming out the other side that you gain the perspective to see them for what they are.

It can be a cruel thing to do to someone, to let them go on feeling so stressed out about something like that, not aware that by just doing it, it will get easier next time and so much stress will be relieved. And yet I see them doing that every day for kids at school. By the time they are adults it's become a well-established habit and they don't even realise it.

I agree and often express this on MN and am accused of being harsh/unsupportive when in fact I'm giving them (what I believe) is a dose of perspective/reality. But most people don't want to take responsibility for the mess up that is their lives

I agree with much what you have said on this thread NiceGerbil.

And re the second WW mental health / resilience thing, we are seeing some of the knock-on effects of people who didn’t have healthy ways to deal with the trauma today - young people where that trauma has been passed down generations. I have seen it in my family where alcoholism was a coping mechanism for experiences during the war, which passed on MH problems to some of the next generation and then the next. Is that a lack of resilience? I think that’s the wrong question personally but I know it’s the buzz phrase on MN at the moment.

What I do see on this topic on MN is a lot of “I know my opinion is unpopular/seen as harsh/controversial” etc but honestly, it’s completely mainstream.

I do think that going on about stuff and constant reiteration - including in school- that the world is a terrible place- is not helpful.

I have tried in my past seeing a therapist about my childhood. It was shit, for me personally.

When stuff happens the assumption that people will need support kind of imposes the idea that they should be fucked up about it.

I'm thinking big disaster type stuff.

Most people just get on with it, kids especially.

Are you joking?

Contraception
Babies
Single parents
You think men take more responsibility than women?
Ok.

Clearly some people want this to be an age thing, some people want this to be a man/woman thing. We all have our biases and think we see clearly what’s going on

In answer to the OP, obviously personal responsibility still exists. There have always been people who take personal responsibility, people who don’t where there should, and people going on about how no one takes personal responsibility any more

So women have a victim complex and don't take any responsibility?

Thank you for being honest about your feelings

'In the UK:

There are around 1.8 million single parents – they make up nearly a quarter of families with dependent children (i)
Less than one per cent of single parents are teenagers (ii)
Around 90 per cent of single parents are women'

Gingerbread.

@DemolitionBarbie

So when problems like obesity occur, it's because people have en masse become lazy and feckless, with no structural root cause like supermarkets deliberately getting people to overbuy unhealthy food?

Kids these days are born into a caged existence, supervised massively more than previous generations, way more exam pressure, student debt, impossibility of finding a steady job and affordable home let alone anything like a balanced family life. No wonder they're dependent. We made them that way because it suited us.

No people have always been lazy and feckless its just in the past if they didn't work they didn't eat

So what I have learnt.

Children need to be exposed to adversity to learn resilience.
But not the wrong sort of adversity. Those people seem resilient but are fragile and could break at any moment.
People who fat are ??? rubbish
Women have a victim complex and men are way more responsible

There was some stuff about mental health as well. I think it was again about victim/ weakness.

Also most people in society feel this way about.. people who are resilient for the wrong reasons, women, and fat people.

I think that covers it?

Everyone views the world differently and holds a different opinion or view. Mayb u need to look deeper. Everyones life is different!

Your picture of white women and girls as being privileged.

Remember Rotherham? And all the other areas where girls, majority white, were sexually exploited and seen as 'child prostitutes' and not helped?

You see incredibly brave women like Sammy Woodhouse as...

Playing the victim card?
Taking advantage of men?
White privilege?

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/16/abuse-survivor-calls-uk-children-born-rape-victim-status-rotherham

I think she is an incredibly brave woman. A resilient woman. An inspirational woman.

That's my view and I'm sticking to it.

I'm not sure this is a new thing, although perhaps it's got worse. I don't live in the UK any longer, but I grew up there in the 80s/90s and remember feeling miserable because a lot of well-meaning adults, particularly around schools, said I should.

Also I'm resilient enough now, but I remember what I was like 25 years ago and wince. I just had some growing up to do, just like all younger people.

That's a pretty big assumption.

Interesting. Dismissive.

Don't like that. Discard.

The prevalence of CSA is high. Also DV.

Also the idea that girls who were groomed years ago couldn't possibly be on mumsnet... ??? Why not?

When dd was in year 6 the two lovely female teachers who were best friends were absolutely obsessed with “mental health”.

The children had to sit in circles and tell the class their problems and issues. Group hugs etc. I helped on a trip and one of teachers told me that essentially every single child had a mental health issues of some sort. I was horrified tbh. I know they meant well but couldn’t help feeling the pendulum had swung way too far away from the “get on with it” attitude I grew up with.

Dd would come home baffled as she had to rack her brain for what her “issues” were. She made something up (that she was too tall) so something she had been perfectly fine with had become her “issue”. Honestly I despaired.

Ok some weird bees in bonnets coming out on this thread, but I suppose that’s par for the course

Are white middle class graduates never victims of sexual violence or CSA? Perhaps that’s for another thread