out of all the aspects of millennial-bashing, i think the one that most confuses me is the “millennials all got trophies as a kid, so now they’re all self-centered narcissists” theory
like— kids are pretty smart, y’all. they can see that every kid on the team gets a trophy and is told they did a good job; they can also see that not every kid on the team deserves a trophy, and not everyone did do a good job
the logical conclusion to draw from this is not “i’m great and i deserve praise”— it’s “no matter how mediocre i am, people will still praise me to make me feel better, so i can’t trust any compliments or accolades i receive”
this is not a recipe for overconfidence and narcissism. it is a recipe for constant self-guessing, low self-esteem, and a distrust of one’s own abilities and skills.
where did this whole “ugh millennials think their so-so work is super great” thing even come from it is a goddamn mystery
what fucking kills me is, yeah, maybe we got the trophies, but who gave them out
this is not a recipe for overconfidence and narcissism. it is a recipe for constant self-guessing, low self-esteem, and a distrust of one’s own abilities and skills.
Which is pretty much what mental health practitioners observe happening.
It’s also what I observed happening as a singing teacher: the older kids literally would not believe a positive word I said until I had proved I would tell them they screwed up/had done badly/etc. I did so in as useful a way as possible (“So this passage. We really need to work on this passage. A lot. This passage is not good yet.”), but with almost every adolescent I taught I had to prove I would give them straight-up criticism before they would parse my praise as anything other than meaningless “the grownups always do this” noise.
This is literally a huge chunk of what is wrong with me. By the time I reached high school, I assumed all praise was fake–made up to spare my feeling. Even today, I struggle with accepting compliments or feeling proud of my work.
You know what else a population treated like this learns?
That their skills, accomplishments, and personal value as unique individuals are such mortal threats to their peers’ sanity that they must hide and devalue them or else everyone around them will be TRAUMATIZED FOR LIFE. That success must constantly be overshadowed by hypervigilent guilt over who might see it achieved by someone other than them and wither because of it. That the reason “everyone wins” is because losing is death and success is murder. That their work must be devalued in service to an all-devouring imperative to protect others from the toxic experience of envying it.
That achievement automatically means cruelly taking something away from someone else instead of creating something beautiful that those around you can ENJOY.
That if you accepted or desired approval, you were thoughtless. That if you took pride in anything, you were a snake. That if you asked for your value to be recognized, you obviously didn’t care about those around you. That adding value to any situation you were in was only acceptable with written permission, which you had to carefully assert that you hadn’t asked for in any way, or else you ran the risk of battering the self-esteem of people who were just waiting for the chance to cry foul and batter you back.
That success is a zero-sum game.
NOPE.
(Among other things, this shows up in the tendency of creatives to devalue their work even if it’s really good, repeating stridently that they’re not making anything that can actually be called good lest someone respond with the dreaded “how are you so good, I quit.” Please, everyone, stop both of those things. Just really please stop.)
Oh, fucking god, this.
Leading to the lovely correspondence, if something goes wrong, of:
– I am the worst
– It’s my own fault if I’d worked harder it would have worked perfectly
– It’s my own fault for wanting to achieve something and put myself above others
– The fact that I am sad about not achieving something means I am a selfish egotist and a horrible person
– BUT I SHOULD HAVE TRIED HARDER AND ACHIEVEDAdding to this the fact that the job market is universally SHIT right now means that there are so fucking many people in my generation who believe that we’re just worthless. I’m 27 and have only just found my first like “grown up” job, and when you have this mindset and are getting rejection after rejection while your parents/older people are just like IT WAS SO EASY WHEN I WAS YOUNG YOU ARE NOT TRYING, or simply not understanding that you’re trying your best and shit still isn’t coming your way, it is very very easy to hate yourself.
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