| Because I feel that that answer was long enough, but I have more to add, I wish to say also: During puberty I had a lot of problems: depression, low self-esteem, difficulty with social problems, some social anxiety. When puberty ended, the fog lifted and I was granted new insight into my life, and many of the problems severely lessened to the point where they do not bother me as much now. It wasn't that the problems did not exist, it was that I needed a widefocus lens on my problems when I only had a macro lens. The ability to see more context helped me deal internally with those problems, and see that much of the stuff that I was hyper-focused on, didn't really matter in the long-run. There isn't a way to force someone to change this, and stating that those problems were not real, is of very little help to people with those problems, especially when I distinctly remember it taking most of my energy keeping them at bay. If you're lucky (and to continue the analogy), the person might have the right lens so that they can pull it closer and see a bigger picture, and slowly drag themselves out of it. But assuming that everybody is capable of that is extremely harmful, and can feed those problems. Example: Telling someone with a low valuation of themselves that they need to 'just try harder' is both callous and can feed the beast that says that "see, you can't do it because you're worthless". It is both unsympathetic to the problems that are faced, and puts you in severe danger of making the problems worse. |