What's going on here?
You know the line "He's not living up to his potential"? It may sound like a cliché, but with our Eli, it practically shouts at us. Eli is bright and talented any way you look at him, but he does very little, and he hardly lets anyone see what he can do. It's as if he's afraid to show his abilities and talents.
At home on Shabbos, when my husband asks him questions from the Shabbos sheet, he panics and gets all mixed up. I don't understand what's happening to him. You'd think he was in the middle of a yeshiva farher…
I'd really like to understand: how can we help him? Is there anything we can do? Or is this just his personality, and that's that, and we should leave him be?
What's going on with Eli? Why does he act this way?
"Ahuva is the perfect girl. Or at least, that's how she wants to be seen. She always looks put-together, and she won't leave the house until everything matches 100%, from her shoelaces to the pom-pom hanging off her bag. She's devoted to her studies, and she's a madricha in seminary too. Only her mother senses that something isn't right. Everything is done under pressure, with extreme, over-the-top effort. All the way to the end. And the unpleasant end comes when it all blows up: when Ahuva loses control and screams at her younger siblings, everything suddenly looks very different… Without going into too much detail, at times the pressure Ahuva lives under seems so intense that it almost resembles mental illness…"
Every healthy person has a built-in monitoring system in the brain. It's run by brain cells in the frontal lobe, "monitoring cells." Its job is to get us to check ourselves: How am I doing? Is everything okay? Am I functioning the way I should? This "monitoring system" also takes into account how the people around us react to the way we act and behave, and it's what makes us want to be "normal," like everyone else. So far, so good. Excellent, in fact.
The real trouble starts when the brain's monitoring cells go into overdrive. Now, instead of helping, the brain tears down, blocks and damages. Excessive self-criticism gives a person no rest. It makes him oversensitive and leaves him feeling he did something wrong, for no reason, sometimes to the point of obsession. In more serious cases, an obsessive system like this can leave a person emotionally fragile, and in extreme cases, it may break out as mental illness.
In other hard cases, overly self-critical people become obsessed with pleasing everyone around them, from not knowing how to say no, all the way to trampling their own needs entirely. Perfectionism about cleaning, constant anxiety over halachic details, never feeling at peace inside: these are all classic signs of a high, excessive level of self-criticism.
Children with excessive self-criticism may suffer from fierce competitiveness, often along with exhausting ego battles. Sometimes they give up in advance and run from a challenge, because they feel they won't be able to come out on top. Many of them shut down (they can't, and don't want to, share what they're going through), have outbursts, and can't handle even a drop of criticism. They can be very easily hurt, or, on the flip side, take criticism far too deeply to heart. They'll need a lot of attention, and they'll have many emotional struggles. Some will even avoid an activity altogether when they start to fear they won't do it 100% right.
Excessive self-criticism, where a person keeps putting himself under a magnifying glass to "check" whether he's "okay," can show up in different forms and at different levels.
In our generation, the problem of excessive self-criticism has grown enormously, and sadly, it touches most of us. Everyone has to be like everyone else, the "normal" kind, so that chas v'shalom no one will think there's something wrong with us, or turn up their nose at us. In a generation where outward appearance rules, we check ourselves and our children all the time: Are we and they dressed right, according to the "social code"? Do we look the way we should? Chas v'shalom, they shouldn't say we're odd…
As long as this criticism doesn't stop us from doing things, functioning well and communicating well, it's under control, and sometimes we can even find some good in it. The problem starts when the criticism blocks our view and our ability to think clearly. A boy or girl can lose their whole personality to "What do they think of me?" and "How do I look?"
When we notice a child in our home who tends toward excessive self-criticism, we have to handle him with great sensitivity and gentleness. The way we communicate with him and treat him comes first, and it's critical for him!
Avoid criticizing the child. Not only because it will hurt him badly, but because it simply won't help! He won't take the criticism the right way. He'll just get tangled up, emotionally and mentally, in what we said: Are we right or not? Is he "okay" or not? With a child like this, stay calm, and don't get pulled into a whirlwind of emotions with him. Compliment him, find his strengths and make them shine. And if you do need to correct him, say it indirectly, and gently steer him toward the right thing.
All that is the sur meira side, what to avoid. On the asei tov side, it really helps to steer a child like this toward doing, especially activities that help him let go. Working with clay and play dough can be very calming and freeing. Sports are also a great way to release pressure and tension.
How can we help Eli?
In therapy through play, we give the child a game that stirs up his self-criticism. To succeed at it, he has to push past that and calm the overactive monitoring cells. This way, the brain practices letting go and moving on, and reaches healthy emotional regulation, which in the end brings real inner calm, b'ezras Hashem.
Names and identifying details have been changed.
Sarah Shugerman · Cognitive assessment and therapy through play
