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It can be deeply frustrating to watch someone you care for be self-destructive, whether it’s some major mistake or just spinning their wheels and failing to launch. For one kid on Reddit, his older brother is the latter type of person. He has no ambition and no real interest in trying. It made his younger brother resort to a fairly drastic way of trying to motivate him.

While taking advice from a younger sibling is challenging enough, this teen’s tough-love approach seemed to lean more towards bullying than genuine care. True care is founded in love and support, not name-calling and insults.

A teen called his older brother a ‘loser’ to try to motivate him to change his life.

The young brothers, ages 19 and 21, live together, and it doesn’t seem to be going well. In his Reddit postthe younger wrote of being at his wits’ end with his older brother’s laziness and seemingly lacking interest in much of anything in life.

He seems to have a bit of a lazy streak, never doing his homework or being active. “He doesn’t seem to have goals… and spends most of his day sitting in the same spot playing eFootball while watching YouTube.” Recently, he reached his limit and blew up at him in an attempt to motivate him.

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The teen thought shaming him would ‘snap him out of it,’ but it just hurt his feelings.

To be honest, it sounds like his brother may be depressed. He noted that in addition to his lethargy, he’s also underweight, suggesting there’s a bigger problem at play. He’s also basically failing the driving lessons they’re taking together, and this is what finally precipitated the blow-up.

After a “particularly frustrating” day at driving lesson, the teen, “told him he’s a loser and that he has nothing going for him. I said it bluntly, hoping it would be a wake-up call and motivate him to at least work on something — anything.”

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It, of course, had the opposite effect. His brother was hurt and furious and ranted about the fight to their mom, who then got angry at the teen for being “mean and unhelpful.”

“Now I’m wondering if I was too harsh,” he said. “I honestly thought a dose of reality might help him snap out of it, but maybe it was the wrong approach.”

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Many psychologists and other experts say shame is almost always a terrible motivator.

Shame is occasionally an effective and necessary motivator — in cases of holding the powerful to account, for instance. Shame also washes in when we realize we’ve genuinely hurt someone and can motivate us to change our ways and make amends. Therapists say shame, in moderationcan be useful in this sense.

But there’s a vast difference between being shamed for wrongdoing, and shamed for who you are or the way you’re struggling. This situation is the latter, and it can be incredibly toxic and even dangerous. Therapists and other experts call this a negative motivator, and they tend to push people to negative actions, whether toward themselves or others.

Shaming his brother isn’t going to make him “not be a loser.” It’s more likely to make him retreat inward even further, or at least retreat from his brother. And if he is in fact struggling with his mental health, mocking him as a “loser” could have downright dangerous impacts.

What this teen did to his brother was cruel and humiliating, and it’s not exactly surprising that it didn’t work. As one Redditor bluntly put it, “you’re a real loser and should at least TRY to work on your empathy. How’d that feel? Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

His frustrations may be valid, and his motivations may even be pure. But that doesn’t erase the impact. Being humiliated just makes most of us want to hide behind our “eFootball and YouTube,” not do better. Because if you kick a person when they’re down, why should they believe you’ll ever be satisfied with anything they do?

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John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.