Mental Health Is Not About Feeling Good

Life-changing advice from 2023, part 3.

The advice I am sharing today comes from psychologist Lisa Damour, the author of several phenomenal books, including, most recently, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, which is one of my all-time favorite parenting books.

I’ve been a big fan of Dr. Damour’s for years and shared some of her wisdom in my own book and in a New York Times Q&A earlier this year.

I can’t honestly remember when and where I first heard this advice of hers, but she makes the point frequently, and I’m glad she does, because it is so important:

Our goal as parents should never be to prevent or quickly banish our kids’ psychological pain. Mental health is not about feeling good.

Let me unpack this idea and its implications in more detail. Because I think that many parents (myself included!) may agree with what’s above but still make day-to-day choices that subtly contradict it.

Sometimes I think that my job as a parent is to ensure my kids are happy. I believe many of us feel this way: We scramble to address our kids’ needs and wants, to make them feel better when they are upset. We often try to anticipate their needs and wants, too, curating their environments (I am often giving my kids extra blankets for their beds even though they don’t ask for them) and taking steps to make challenging experiences less challenging (like by sending a gazillion care packages to them at overnight camp).