I have a side hobby of making up new “mental health” diagnoses that I think should exist, but don’t yet.
Yes, it’s partly for my own entertainment. But it’s also a way of acknowledging phenomena that are clearly unhealthy and largely unaddressed.
Introducing: Grade Dysphoria (GD)
Grade Dysphoria is the condition by which certain students (and often their parents) become so obsessed with academic performance that anything less than perfection generates almost life-or-death anxiety.
Not just about college admissions.
About their entire future!
The condition crosses into how I define being neurotic: an irrational, extremely disproportionate, unhealthy reaction to a stimulus that is otherwise relatively low risk or benign.
How common is Grade Dysphoria?
I would bet everyone reading this knows a student (or parent!) who suffers from it. You may even have it living in your own home.
How Do You Diagnose Grade Dysphoria?
There are two categories:
Category 1: The student gets anything less than an A and completely melts down, often with anxiety and even panic attacks. This includes getting a single homework score that makes it at most modestly harder for them to keep their overall A.
The student gets anything less than an A and completely melts down, often with anxiety and even panic attacks. This includes getting a single homework score that makes it at most modestly harder for them to keep their overall A.
In their mind, that grade will destroy their GPA, ruin their college prospects, eliminate opportunities, and permanently damage their future.
Category 2: The students receive an A but not an A+ : e.g. A 95 instead of a 100.
The GPA may be unaffected, yet they become dramatically disappointed.
For them, so much of their self-worth and how they feel “good about themselves” has become tied to their grades that anything short of perfection devastates their sense of self.
The external reaction often looks the same.
The internal causes can be very different.
What is behind this?
For one thing, something I call: Pervasive Scarcity Mentality (or PSM!)
There is a growing belief trending amongst modern youth that we are all fighting over highly limited resources and opportunities, and that financial success and personal life prosperity are only going to go to the top 10, 5 or even 1% of many categories – grades, income, physical looks, social status, etc.
They fear that if they are not in or at the top, their life is destined to be lived in working class poverty, social limitation and general unhappiness.
For them the future is not an exciting Adventure to be lived (as it was for me at their age), rather one filled with fear that any deviation from near perfection could mean a life of mediocrity and misery.
This is insane.
It contributes heavily to Grade Dysphoria.
Fact: Slightly more than one-third of adults in the United States have a four-year college degree.
That means roughly 65% of Americans do not.
That comes as a shock to people who grow up in communities and social circles as I did, where a bachelor’s degree isn’t viewed as an accomplishment: It’s viewed as the baseline!
For many teens steeped in Pervasive Scarcity Mentality, getting into college is not enough. It also has to be a top most competitive elite college, or again, they fear a life of mediocrity and misery.
To these people: Every grade becomes a referendum on their entire life.
Talk about an overly dramatic response to risk!
It’s irrational.
And it sucks joy out of life.
And it is 100% fundamentally not true, factually incorrect (which I will address in a future email).
The Other GD:
I find people who are in the second category of Grade Dysphoria just as concerning. Here’s why:
The root of insecurity is found in a simple question:
“*How confident am I that I will be okay no matter what happens, I will be okay?”
The root of what we call “self-esteem” – our sense of self worth and value – is found in something similar:
“How much can I just feel good about myself and my life from inside myself, versus how much do I need to have positive things keep happening, giving me constant external validation so I can then feel positive about myself and my life?”
The more confident a person is that no matter what happens, they will be okay, the more secure they are… and vice versa.
The more a person can generate joy, positivity and self-worth from inside themselves, the more joy and positivity they will have no matter what challenges they face.
When a student depends on getting perfect grades to feel good about themselves, they give power away – they become externally dependent… they become more insecure and have lower self-esteem (because they know it can fade instantly with a poor test result).
To live life in a way that a 97 instead of a 100 can stir up that much self-negativity and anxiety is absurd.
Yet many students live exactly this way.
For most students who suffer from Grade Dysphoria, the teen years become a cycle of stress, competition, and never feeling truly secure.
Sleep issues, intense mood swings, disordered eating (typically not eating), obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and medication dependence are becoming far too common among these adolescents.
I hear about it from parents and clients all too frequently.
The tragic part is that even when presented with all the research showing that long-term career and financial success, personal happiness, and satisfaction have next to nothing or absolutely nothing, to do with if or where you went to college, many people will still respond:
*”Yes, I agree… but just to be safe…!”*
Just to be safe, they’ll keep worrying, stressing, losing sleep.
Just to “be safe”: keep living as though one disappointing grade is the end of hope.
When did we stop being “THE human race” and become immersed in “A human race where only the top 1% will “win” and thrive”?
This survival-based mindset has become so deeply embedded in our culture that for too many students, joy becomes scarce while anxiety becomes abundant.
It’s twisted.
And it’s exhausting.
The resolution to this is complex and will be addressed in a future email.
And GD seems to affect far more girls than it does boys… more on that coming soon too.
Until then,
Jeff
