2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
The daughter again got A's and is finishing the trimester with an excellent student, and she likes it, but I don't.
She knows about it.
What do you say if I finish school with a medal? she urges.
Hope you won't finish.
What about dad? He's a medalist! Why can't I?
Most of my clients are women. With depression, panic attacks, GAD, insomnia. They all have one metaproblem - the inability to rely on themselves, to trust themselves, to feel alive and adaptive. Almost all of them also have honors.
……………..
There are girls who are born too empathic and too neurotic. They feel sorry for the flying fly and the legless doll, drag kittens from the street, ask about death early. They have too much anxiety, and the only thing that can stabilize them is calm, contented adults. When adults are unstable, the world of these girls slides into hell.
They are peacemakers, mediators, buffers. If mom is happy with A's, they will get A's.
Due to their high intelligence, sensitive babies are easy to learn and therefore not particularly interesting. Grades “excellent” are devoid of personal value for them: they did not set themselves high goals like “learn division by long” or “learn decimal fractions”, this is not their challenge. But praise for diligence is pleasant and helps to cope with internal discord with the help of mom. Is mom happy? So, you can live on.
So, step by step, the girls get hooked on external evaluations.
They would have found something of their own - something that will support, captivate and allow them to experience the taste of personal victory, but alas. After school, there is a piano on schedule, which also makes parents very happy.
Then, after more than twenty years in the psychotherapist's office, they will complain about emptiness and dumbness deep inside - I can't hear myself, I don't understand what warms me, I don't feel any interest in life.
How else, if you have lived for a quarter of a century with other people's joys?
“Dad graduated from school with a medal because he has a unique head,” I explain to Lizka. If you grasp information five times faster than the average in the hospital, then the medal will not take away your pocket. If not, don't even try. By the age of fifteen, it would be good to have your own value system, which determines where to invest in the first place, and where according to the leftover principle. I hope that soon my daughter will have more interesting plans than the top five in OBZH.
An innate sensitivity plays against. "What nonsense are you doing now?" Everything, no nonsense, instant abandonment of oneself for the sake of peace of mind in the house. Although this same nonsense could suggest the vector of development of one's own soul, and not the habits of feeling for others. Nonsense is something that, after many years, will be returned to itself as a great gift.
Just lie and dream. Dance. Fight. Trust your body. Believe in your strength.
Girls with excellent marks here pull a maximum of three.
So, in and of themselves, A's and grades are not dangerous for mental health - especially occasionally for boys. But if they become a way of communicating with the world due to the lack of other ways to declare themselves and if they go to the detriment of truly creative activities (and it is creative that helps to adapt in the world, and does not create the appearance of adaptation), then it would be good for parents to join and help your wonderful daughters save money on a psychotherapist.
What to do with girls like that?
Oh, a lot.
To teach how to regulate your emotions on your own, without the help of loved ones (for this, you also need to be able to regulate your own).
Focus not on someone else's assessment, but on your own. Did you manage or not? Was it better than yesterday? Could you achieve what you wanted?
Never be used as a home therapist, never burdened with your hopes and fears.
Add cheerful carelessness to the family lifestyle.
Make sure the child gets enough physical activity.
Do not discuss unnecessarily school performance and the quality of the lesson.
Dream together.
Reduce control.
Support any undertakings - even the most stupid ones, in your opinion. “Try” instead of “yes, but…”.
Share your experience of finding yourself.
Do not growl, like a dog from a booth, at the manifestation of disagreement.
Respect non-matching children's tastes.
Don't be intimidated by the future.
Live your life.
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