We survived finals, happy holidays ahead

We made it through finals week with Amy. She’s doing so well now. She had a minor meltdown one evening when she couldn’t find something she needed for a class but otherwise it went well. She’s feeling confident about her exams.

It wasn’t always this way. When she was depressed, she felt so much more pressure to excel and subsequently burned out. In depression, anything less than a perfect score was a failure to her. I always thought that depression is a spiral, continuing to circle around the same thoughts but with each revolution you fall deeper. During finals week, Amy’s thought process was like this:
1. “I’m such a loser, I’ll never do well” to
2. “Other people can do well, so how do they do it?” to
3. “They study, I’ll work really hard and study.” to
4. “But since I’m such a loser, studying won’t work.” to
5. “But I never do well, I’m such a loser”

Has anyone else seen this type of pattern in their teen?

Anyway, Happy Holidays everyone!

Tags: depression, holidays

This entry was posted on December 19, 2009 at December 19, 2009 and is filed under parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.