I have a theory on the underlying cause to all of this shit, men, women, anyone: the cause is the person in quesiton is not doing what he or she wants to do. And why is he not doing what he wants to do? Because he was taught that other people's needs are more important than his own, which has resulted in him having low self esteem.
I think this is the root cause of a LOT of mental issues: depression, low self esteem, conflict avoiding behavior, dependant personalities, burn out, even certain autism-related issues. I’ll try to explain (and I’ll use ‘him’ as the subject to make it a little easier to read).
When you’re a child, the one and only thing you really want is approval from your parents. That’s what you live for, basically. So this means, you’ll try and display the behavior your parents want to see, the behavior your parents will reward. This is pretty much basic pedagogics.
Problems arise when your parents in one way or another are not ‘independent adults’ themselves: they depend on outside factors to be happy. This can manifest itself in a lot of ways. You can have a mom that is an ace caretaker—but she needs to help other people to feel good. She’s only focused on others. Or she can be overly protective and scared, always worried that something might happen (because she’s not relying on herself). Or your dad might be an alcoholic— he needs drinks to be happy, or forget about his problems for a bit. Or he’s just angry and controlling, because he depends too much on other people (who he thinks are idiots) and therefore never really gets what he wants.
Lots of manifestations, one cause: they depend too much on other people’s actions, opinions and approval. And this is exactly what they are projecting on their child.
The angry dad does not tolerate any other opinions than his own—he often sees them as a personal attack. The overbearing mom can’t let the kid experience life on his own, because she’s constantly worried that the kid will get hurt.
The kid, purely focused on seeing his parents happy, notices that his parents are pretty much never happy. Well, they seem the happiest when he does (and thinks the way) his dad wants, and his mom is happy when he doesn’t take any risks whatsoever.
What he wants himself is of no importance. But then he turns 21, and moves out. The echo of his parents is still strong in his mind—his dad screams “the world is like this, don’t do this or they’ll screw you over!”, while his mom mumbles “Watch out when your out at night, it’s not safe; don’t challenge your boss or coworkers, you’ll get fired”—and the 21-year old kid is paralyzed. He never learned what he wants, he doesn’t even know what he wants—he doesn’t even know he wants something. Even he did know what he wants, he never learned the tools how to achieve it. His whole life up to now was purely focused on making other people happy.
He gets anxious when there’s a conflict, because he never learned that there’s nothing wrong with conflict. He tries to make everyone around him happy—because that’s the subconscious message his parents brought him up with—but not everyone is happy. He tries to get with a girl he fancies by bending over backwards to make her happy—because that’s what he did with his parents—but girls don’t like doormats. Nobody likes doormats.
But he’s a doormat.
His wants and needs were never important. No parent ever asked him what he wanted. And now, his whole life is out of his control. He tries so hard to please, but some people are unaffected—some people even criticize him for it. So he stops wanting altogether, because it’s no use anyway. He’ll never get what he wants, not the job, not the friends, not the girl. Hello depression.
So the prevention is: teach parents they should help their kids to be their own person. Ask your kid what he thinks or wants in different situations. Do not judge the kid if he gives an answer you don’t like, but teach him the borders he needs to be able to display ‘basic accepted behaviour’ (personal hygiene, say ‘hello’ to people, watch your posture, brush your teeth, don’t poop in the streets). Help him to develop an opinion and to identify his passions.
If you’re an adult and in deep shit, the cure is: teach the person to put themselves on number one. This can be very, very hard, if a person has never focused on themselves, if they never connected with their gut feelings. It can be very hard to shut out all the judgments his parents burdened him with, to shut out what he thinks society expects him to do, but it must be done. He needs to realize that the only person he really needs to make happy is himself.
Is my theory. :P