ABSTRACT
Children with negative thoughts about themselves are especially upsetting to meet, not to mention that, as parents, it breaks our hearts if we hear our child say things like ‘I’m an idiot’, ‘No wonder everyone hates me, I’m horrible’, ‘I’m just a hopeless person’. Alas, we live in societies that make this all too common. The pressure to succeed with peers, to be popular, has never been greater. The means for achieving this – be it exam success, looking good, sporting prowess – so easily become vehicles for misery rather than the outlets for pleasure and satisfaction that they could be.
