Parental Pressure

Once a parent came to me with a concern that his son may be in depression and needed my urgent help. I took the session with the son and was extremely surprised to hear his side of the story.

His name is Mohit and (name changed for confidentiality) was 32 years old when I took his session. He is an engineer but he didn’t want to work as an engineer because his parents had forced him into Engineering. He had also completed his MBA, again due to family pressure.

To give a small background about his family, his father is a businessman and his mother is a successful Event Manager. His elder brother is working is an MNC. They have the expectation that their son should either become a businessman or an engineer. Nothing in between.

Coming back to Mohit, He hates Engineering and doesn’t really want to become an entrepreneur. Mohit loves Literature and wants to pursue writing as a career. He wants gain more knowledge about literature and story telling and aims to become a screenwriter but he is unable to tell this to his parents. Every time he has tried talking about this to his parents, they have shamed him and ridiculed him. Hence, he keeps mum and is sitting at home doing nothing. On further probing, I got to know that Mohit doesn’t feel depressed rather he feels helpless as he is unable to follow his dreams.

Based on my discussion with Mohit in first half session, I spoke with his parents in the second half of the session. His parents were anxious and were constantly telling me that their son is having depressing due to failed career and that he has no future. On further probing, I realised that it is their understanding that if a person isn’t a businessman or an Engineer or a doctor, his life is worthless and since Mohit isn’t any of these, he has failed in his life and depression is the only next step. So, they wanted me to help Mohit come out of their imaginary depression (as Mohit clearly wasn’t depressed) by motivating him to either start a business or find a job in Engineering sector. Basically, they wanted me to become their puppet to further manipulate their son.

Now, my question here is, ‘Who is depressed and failed? Mohit or his Parents?

I have witnessed many such cases wherein Parents become extremely controlling towards their child and completely disregard their child’s emotional needs and disempower them. All they for care is societal acceptance, validation and status. They can put their child’s happiness on stake just to match up with the society or their social status. In Psychology we term such parents as Narcissist Parents.

As parents one needs to understand that you don’t own the child, you just nurture the child. As a responsible parent, one must understand the child’s interest, personality, passion, hobbies and respect their individuality. Just because you are a doctor, doesn’t mean your child too will want to become a doctor. Parents need to understand this and respect it. Every profession is respectable, it is our own short mindedness that discriminates between them.

Coming back to Mohit’s case, I took few more sessions with Mohit’s parents (without Mohit) and helped them understand their mistake as a parent and then I helped Mohit with courses related to Scriptwriting and other skills he needs to develop.

Today, he is pursuing Post Graduate Diploma in Script Writing from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's Film, TV and Animation Studies, Ant Academy and is leading a happy and content life.