Here in the states, the social norm of taking personal responsibility for all our misfortune and lack of career opportunities allows our industrialists to take credit for propelling themselves to greatness (even when their inherited wealth did the heavy lifting).

So yeah, a latchkey kid childhood (in which I was home alone, because all the adults in my house had to work) figures largely into my lifelong major depression. I suspect our intergenerational mental health epidemic here in the states is informed not only by intergenerational dysfunction (each generation taking the abuse of the previous and then abusing the next) but also by the isolation created by nuclear families without strong communities.

Then there’s the matter that we humans tend to blame ourselves for trauma, as seen by studies of mothers who endured a miscarriage, and the disproportionate tendency to blame themselves for circumstances that could not have been affected by behavior (diet, attitude, whatever). Also people who survive the recently deceased often will look to themselves to see how circumstances of the death might have been changed.

You can unlock your potential. It’s not easy but it is doable