‘Charlie Browns’ need new outlook

How many of us feel like poor old Charlie Brown, the comic strip character who always seems to come up on the short end of the stick in life?

In the mental health profession, many patents come to us with the belief that they are not worthwhile and can’t be successful. This belief has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and these patients have failed much of the time.

They admit that those around them see them as feeling sorry for themselves, whiny and pessimistic. They also admit they are not pleasant to be around. Their negative attitude about themselves causes them to envy others and to resent or even intensely dislike people they perceive as being successful. They frequently are isolated as far as friends go.

As children and adolescents, they gravitated toward others who were having problems. Their friends were people who made less-than-satisfactory adjustments in school and at home. Their group tended to adopt value systems that were frequently anti-social or unhealthy.

Since I have found this problem to be far too common in both children and adults, I would like to emphasize to parents that the best help for this difficulty is to provide a positive, caring and loving environment in childhood. This allows a healthy self-concept to develop, and Charlie Brown never becomes a reality.

I also have found that many parents have difficulty understanding the need for healthy communication patterns between parent and child at an early age. They seem to think it can be delayed, and that they will begin to work on listening to their children and trying to understand their needs when their children are older.

They fail to understand that communication with the child is not simply verbal. A healthy self-concept stems from a variety of interactions between parent and child. Perhaps the parents are so wrapped up in their own lives that they leave this development process to schools, churches or relatives.

What can be done if a child misses this vitally important healthy communication pattern in childhood and goes into adulthood with a poor self-concept and the Charlie Brown syndrome?

• First, identify the problem and admit the reason for failure or perceived failure stems from faulty perception, illogical and irrational thinking.

• Charlie Browns must admit that labeling of events as doomed to failure is the primary cause of lack of success.

• Charlie Browns must relabel their perceptions and look at alternate explanations. This is difficult for them.

• Charlie Browns often are depressed and have difficulty developing the motivation to make changes in their lives. Outside professional help often is necessary to achieve these goals.

Many of us have bad days or encounter a series of events that causes us to believe our luck is running out. But if we look for the blue in the sky instead of the gray and emphasize the positive, we often can change negative patterns.

Sometimes we may have to go to sleep and simply write off a bad day by promising ourselves we will wake up to a fresh start tomorrow. This is not an oversimplification of the problem. For some people, it is a lifelong pattern that only professional counseling can help. But it can help others who only occasionally feel like Charlie Brown.

Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D. Copyright 1987