Gordon Flett

What's going on from a person perspective? Because this person is carrying around a feeling of insignificance. To say not mattering is not enough. So that's why I came up with the idea of unbearable insignificance. Because in there would be the loneliness as well. And there's a version of loneliness called unbearable loneliness that has been studied, not as much as it should have been. There's that sense of pain, that sense of isolation, where people are feeling so badly about themselves that

He'll say, you know, if I just stopped showing up in the world anywhere, nobody would even know that I was gone. And the sad part is about this, that often this is a perception that people have that's not valid in terms of people in their lives. People don't know they're carrying around this hurt. That's why I say, you know, it's great to just check in on people. And if somebody seems to be doing better than you think they should be, because life is difficult for everybody.

Everybody has bad days and good days. Some people have a series of that. If somebody seems to be doing too well, I'd want somebody to check in on that person and say, is it the case that maybe you're just putting on the front that hides a lot of this pain? Because wrapped into this sense of unbearable insignificance and loneliness is a deep sense of shame, where people then say, well, there must be something about me. People try to make it more controllable by convincing themselves that they're defective, that they're really

not somebody that other people want to be with, and not realizing that people actually do. The example I gave of somebody who would be having this sense was back when she was still with us, Sinead O'Connor was very suicidal and the world knew about it. At the start of the anti-mattering paper from 2022, which I encourage people to find, it's open, it's available to the public, I gave the quote about her saying, I don't matter a whit to anyone.

I don't matter with to anyone. So then later on I followed up and, you know, she had a son and a daughter. The therapist would say, well, do you matter to your son? Oh, yeah, I guess I matter to my son. Do you matter to your daughter? Well, yes, of course I matter to my daughter. So this is the thing about mattering is it can be an appraisal. It becomes very absolute, but it's not grounded in the actual ways that people feel about other people. And that's why it's good for people to express themselves.

their care and appreciation of people so that they get those reminders. And some people need these reminders more than others. But, you know, I'm sitting there going, there is a reason why the suicide program is built around the you matter concept, because ultimately you need that reminder that you matter to somebody where you matter to us to help blunt that and get away, make the sense of insignificance and not mattering a little more bearable at least.

and not in such an all or none way.

I think it's because it goes right back to our early experiences where we have to back up a bit and say that mattering, one of the key elements of mattering is the feeling that you have other people's attention. And that's critical from a survival perspective early on in terms of getting the attention of one's parents or caregivers for infants to be fed and get the nurturance and the nourishing that they need. And I believe that there's a reward value that's set up for the attention and

The importance of somebody showing you that they're paying attention to you. And I think that can be very hardwired for people so that when they get older and they lose that sense, they know at some level that it's what provided them with a sense of comfort, allowed them to survive and to thrive in the early days. But now there's just this sort of feeling of, well, something is missing here. And I see this, you know, I said I have four grandchildren and

Two of them are babies that were born six weeks apart. And the oldest is now like 10 months. And I just watch how they're amazingly responsive to the attention that parents give them. But they also have ways to signal and get the attention of the parents. And when somebody says, oh, you know, people just think I need attention. Well, we do need attention to some degree. And it's just hardwired. So I look at it in terms of.

We know that we need this at some level and we also unfortunately, again here we come through social medias, we can see that there's other people who seem to have lives that are just great and they're getting the attention and the sense of mattering that other people, a lot of these of course are crafted images of lives that don't actually exist, which has been discovered in some sad situations. So we have the circumstance where people are going, well,

I don't feel it, I don't see it in my own life. When I look at these people over here, it could even be a sibling, where there's a favorite child amongst them and everybody knows it, although nobody will acknowledge it. And you can say that you're not getting the attention even within your own family. But the reason why it hurts is because people, when you go back to what mattering is, it was used as a guide for self-evaluation, reflected appraisal on the self. So ultimately you can come up with the sense that you are just not somebody that is of interest.

or worth being pursued. And I always mention in terms of past theorists that Gregory Brown, who was a student of Morris Rosenberg and his book, he talks about the abject feeling of feeling that you don't matter because it's a sense of profound social rejection. And if you're not getting a sense of mattering through your relationships or through organizations, you can feel profoundly

Rejected, and he talks about this in the concept of the work by Williams on being ostracized, where you feel that you're so far removed, and it's not just through lack of attention that people are actually keeping you at a distance. But of course, it's also the case that people who feel that way often keep themselves at a distance because they're expecting negative responses from others, when in fact they might be getting positive. I just want to underscore again, though, that

Mattering is a subjective appraisal. And to underscore that people can be so inaccurate in terms of this, one thing that we studied through our school board project was we asked the young people whether they felt they mattered and about 35% of them either said, I don't matter or I don't know if I matter. Then we asked parents, is it possible that your child feels like he, she doesn't matter? And only 8% of parents

said that they felt like it could be that their child has a sense of not mattering. So I'm saying, well, there's about one out of five kids are walking around with a feeling of, I don't matter, yet their parents think they do matter. Whenever I mention this in an audience of parents, they're horrified looks because now they're thinking, is this my kid? So what I tell them is just make it so that they know they matter. You know, whether it's small things you do or big things or just tell them.

But the best is just to show through little considerations. If somebody's been away, just say you were thinking about them, miss them. There's so many different ways of doing it. My wife, back when I started and we were a single income family, often I would find a note for a road trip that she had left when she had packed my bag, because she's way better at it than I am, or in my lunch. And I know she did this with our daughters.

Esimerkiksi kirjoittamalla jotain, koska me emme kirjoita tarinoita ihmisille enää. Ja se voi myös näyttää. Jos et ole varma, onko joku elämässäsi tuntee tärkeää, ja ajattelet, että se on, mutta et ole varma, niin näyttä ne. Ja on paljon tavoitteita, joilla voit tehdä sitä. Koska sinulla on 8 prosenttia vanhemmista, mikä mielestäni on huomattavasti vähemmän,

The underestimates of parents also applies to mental health issues in general. It's well known through multiple studies that parents underestimate the despair of kids because they're so good at hiding behind a facade or throwing themselves into things like sports or friendships, but nobody ever really taps into how they're feeling inside.

So the outside doesn't match the inside. I would just say if, and again, if the child seems too unflappable, that to me is an indication. I'm particularly concerned about the perfectionistic young people who put on the perfect front. And then we hear a sad story where somebody says, nobody knew that this was a problem. Let me know that he or she was feeling this way. But I say, you know, just find ways to engage. And the best way is to find some group things where you can just spend time together.