How many times in grade school did you hear a teacher, administrator or whoever say something along the lines of "a good attitude is the key to success," or "not with that attitude?" or some variation. It occurs to me that your attitude is a symptom, a derivative feature, of your inner existence, like a fever and cough is a symptom of a cold. Whether you have a serious issue in your life, from home problems to depression, anxiety, etc., or not, you're attitude is your own personality filtered through that lived experience or hardship, a change in attitude is a symptom of that stress. It would be like a cancer patient asking if the doctor thinks they'll live and hearing "not with a white blood cell count like that!"
This is just a stray train of thought, what do you guys think?
I saw “attitude” and “grade school” and it just reminded me of being AFAB and getting scolded for having “an attitude” or “being sassy” in elementary school whenever I expressed discontent or disagreed with an adult
or for just having "resting bitch face"
and as someone with autism, there were far too many times when my naturally blunted affect was taken by some authority figure as a "bad attitude", even while being perfectly cooperative