Social phobia is a disorder in which a child is so sensitive to the slightest change in his emotional state that he overly perceives and feels his awkwardness and embarrassment in situations where he needs to be around people or have contact with them. In this regard, he develops an intense irrational fear of any socially significant situations - he is afraid of public criticism, condemnation, and even simply the attention of others. And he is always worried about saying or doing something that might embarrass him in front of the people around him.
Social phobia (social phobia, social anxiety disorder) is often confused with timidity and shyness, but it is a more serious problem and requires a very sensitive and subtle approach.
Social phobia can manifest itself in two main forms. It can be aimed at actions associated with social contact, while the child is afraid to perform even the simplest situational tasks, such as, for example, being in a store and having difficulty choosing a product, publicly asking the seller for help. Social phobia can also be directed toward actions related to interpersonal influence, with the child avoiding social events or being afraid to go to school so as not to be visible and attract attention.
Factors causing social phobia in children
Social phobia can be caused by both external and internal factors. Here are some of the causes of social anxiety disorder in young children:
- Heredity. Yes, this disorder can be hereditary. If your child has an immediate blood relative who suffers from social anxiety disorder, there is a chance that it will be genetically passed on to your baby.
- Parental behavior. Believe it or not, you, the parents, are also one of the factors causing this disorder. Overly critical attitudes or overprotective parenting may contribute to the development of social phobia in your child.
- Low self-esteem. Children with low self-esteem tend to focus on negative aspects of their personality, making them more susceptible to this disorder.
- Negative experience. If your child has experienced any kind of psychological trauma, such as the death of a loved one or being ridiculed in front of the whole class, such incidents may lead to social anxiety disorder.
Symptoms of social phobia in children
Social anxiety disorder in children is not easy to detect because it can easily be mistaken for shyness, shyness or timidity. However, there are some obvious symptoms that help determine whether a child is suffering from social anxiety disorder or not.
- Just before going to a social event or school, your little one always feels unwell, such as stomach pain, excessive sweating, or shortness of breath.
- While present at public events, the child remains withdrawn, trying to become as if invisible, so that no one would notice him or talk to him.
- Reluctance to make friends or play with children your own age.
- If ordinary tasks such as reading aloud in class, talking to adults, or speaking in front of an audience cause extreme psychological stress in a child, he or she may be suffering from social anxiety disorder.
Treatment and help
Social phobia that lasts for a long time leads to depression. In children, the disorder can be treated with medications and non-drug treatments. The earlier a child is diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, the easier it is to treat. Below are some treatments that can help you cope with social anxiety.
- Breath. Teaching your child the art of calm breathing, which he should practice when anxiety strikes, will undoubtedly help him remain calm. If this method is practiced regularly, it can work wonders.
- Medicines. There are antidepressants that are designed to treat social phobia. But they should only be used as prescribed by a doctor.
- Cognitive behavioral therapy. This is an effective and reliable method of psychotherapy, especially in the treatment of social phobia, which is designed to develop the child’s skills in overcoming crises and behavior in difficult circumstances, so that if feelings of anxiety and fear arise, he can change his way of thinking and cope with social anxiety disorder.
However, as we all know well, prevention is better than cure. Therefore, parents should make every effort to create a balanced and healthy environment for the child at home, which will help to easily detect changes in his behavior and nip the problem in the bud.
Suppressive overprotection is considered the most unfavorable type of family education. Mainly, it is manifested by the strongest control on the part of the child’s parents. The main character in this life situation is considered to be the “schizophrenogenic mother”.
There are quotation marks here for a reason. “Schizophrenogenic mother” is a term that defines the type of mother who is dominant and uninterested in the needs of others (Psychological Encyclopedia). That is, she is a completely healthy woman with no pathology.
This type of mother is characterized by strong anxiety and authority. She constantly monitors the child's actions. He considers it his task to describe his every step (in severe cases - until his retirement) and vigilantly monitors the precise execution of the written plan.
The ambivalence of such mothers also puts children in a difficult situation, from which a double bind arises. In this situation, the child does not understand at all what his mother wants. She can tell him: “Go for a walk,” but at the same time all her movements, facial expressions, that is, non-verbal manifestations, will shout: “Stay here, don’t go anywhere!” And children, as a rule, are very sensitive to such moments.
A “schizophrenogenic mother” does not know how to show love, maternal care and affection. She is not interested in the affairs and problems of her child. Her whole life is focused only on demanding constant obedience from him, fulfilling the routine she has already drawn up. For example, a child comes home from school. She will not ask how he is doing, how he played with friends today (or whether he has any friends at all), what he liked to study. She is only interested in numbers: what grades she received.
With such upbringing, the child grows up to be emotionally cold, unable to show his feelings to people, a person who does not feel social norms, the rules of society; all his actions are passive - he waits for orders; he lacks any desires or interests. He does not understand the real world around him, and the world does not understand and does not accept him, considering him an eccentric “not of this world.”
No wonder Ernst Kretschmer, a psychologist, called children prone to the schizoid type “the dream and joy of mothers.” They will never dare to disobey, express their disagreement, or have their own way.
At the same time, the child’s inner life will be bright, seething, and imaginative. There he will be a real hero for himself, making his own decisions, dreaming, insatiable in activity. But all this will be hidden behind a stone wall, which will react negatively to the slightest intrusion into the “closed territory”.
This is a classic example of how pathological personality development occurs due to improper upbringing. It is as a result of this that a schizoid (“schiza” - “splitting”) type of character accentuation is formed, which can develop into a pathology of varying degrees of severity.
The personal characteristics of parents have a significant impact on the nature of their relationship with the child. A striking example confirming this position is the concept of a schizophrenogenic mother (Fromm-Reichmann, 1948). A schizophrenogenic mother is an oppressive, domineering woman who emotionally rejects her child and at the same time causes him severe anxiety, interferes with the normal development of her child due to a strong need to control other people's lives. She strives to be impeccable in her actions and demands the same from others. Therefore, the father passively isolates himself from the family and allows his wife to surround the child with comprehensive care. As a result, the child gives in and abandons the outside world for the sake of security, which is promised by the omnipotent, adversarial mother, hiding her own hatred and resentment for the demonstrated care (B. Suran, J. Rizzo, 1979).
Years later, the famous psychodynamic clinician Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1948) expanded on Freud's idea that cold or over-nurturing parents could set in motion the schizophrenic process. She described mothers of people with schizophrenia as cold, dominant and uninterested in the child's needs. According to Fromm-Reichman, these mothers talk about their self-sacrifice, but in reality they use their children to satisfy their own needs. By simultaneously practicing overprotection and rejecting the child, they disorient him and thereby prepare the ground for schizophrenic functioning. The researcher called them schizophrenogenic (schizophrenia-causing) mothers.
The schizophrenogenic mother is presumed to be a cold, dominant and indifferent type of behavior. Previously, it was believed that such a mother could provoke the development of schizophrenia in her child.
A child who fails to successfully pass the paranoid-schizoid stage enters the latent phase of schizophrenia development. At this stage, he does not give his parents any reason to worry and looks like all normal children, and often even seems more normal than them (a more comfortable child seems more normal to his mother - just as we call an obedient dog smart, and vice versa). Such a child develops quickly, begins to speak early, is easily weaned and gets used to new food, quickly learns the rules of hygiene, rarely cries - in a word, does not cause any concern to the mother. This means that the child is afraid to express his own desires and insist on their fulfillment; he exists to fulfill his mother's wishes. The situation is truly dire; but the schizophrenogenic mother perceives her as beautiful, and her frightened child, who does not dare to be himself, as ideal. The demands of a schizophrenogenic mother and her expectations form the child’s initial “false self” system. Negative expectations will consequently create a “disgusting child”; but, as a rule, schizoid children are very “correct”, obedient, honest - i.e. very convenient for parents and educators. They grow into adults who are just as comfortable for everyone - with a complex system of “false self” that meets the expectations of many people whom the schizoid considers dangerous to himself. But at some point, the balance between the powers of the “true” and “false” self is disrupted - the “false self” becomes more and more autonomous and controls an increasing number of aspects of the schizoid’s existence. The “true self” catastrophically loses its sense of both the reality of the world and its own reality. The use of extreme methods to restore a sense of one’s own reality (eccentricity) characterizes the phase of abnormal behavior.
An unhappy child, no matter how hard he wants, is unable to meet his parents’ expectations. There is no way out of this situation; any movement is impossible, just as the continuation of life itself is impossible. And schizophrenia, according to Lang, is “a special strategy invented by a person in order to live in an unlivable situation.”
Schizophrenogenic mother - excessive possessive love, excessive interference in the child’s relationships with other children. Or coldness, alienation, sadistic tendencies...
if a person does not live up to his own expectations, a split in his own self occurs.
"rejecting mother", "overprotective" and schizophrenogenic mothers are real mothers, so called by psychiatrists and analysts for their pathogenic influence on their offspring (see OVER- and SCHIZOPHRENOGENIC).
The question arises: what causes schizophrenia? Why do some people develop little or no recognition of signals indicating levels of communication? Bateson discovered the reasons for this in the childhood of a schizophrenic, in his family environment. As shown by a detailed study of “schizogenic” families, with detailed filming, a child in such a family is in special conditions, and the key position in the development of the disease is most often occupied by his mother. What happens in this case does not fit well with the usual idea of maternal love. In such families, the mother "drives" the child into schizophrenia using a precisely described mechanism that Bateson called the "double bind."
First of all, we must give up the illusion that all mothers love their children. In our country, where abandoned children, rejected by their mothers, have become a social problem, one could talk about a special pathology associated with a social catastrophe. But much earlier, in the conditions of a “prosperous” bourgeois society, psychologists noticed that a significant proportion of mothers actually stop loving their children at the age of 5-6 years. Erich Fromm describes in his book “The Art of Loving” the hysterical behavior of such mothers, who express hatred of their children in violent scenes, and advises believing these feelings. The explanation, according to Konrad Lorenz, is that the maternal instinct common to all primates fades away when children reach a specified age. But raising a child takes three times longer for humans because brain development is much more complex; this phenomenon - the so-called neoteny - led to the emergence of another, purely human instinct of maternal love, operating throughout life. The mechanism of this relatively young secondary instinct, as is always the case in evolution, is less reliable than the action of ancient instincts, and “switching on” it after “switching off” the primary instinct often does not work. In such cases, mothers really do not love their children, although for social reasons they are forced to pretend that they do not have a feeling. Of course, these unfortunate women do not understand the subconscious processes in question, but attempts to deceive the subconscious do not lead to good. Another reason that hinders the development of maternal love is dislike for her husband, conscious or not, which is often transferred to the child.
A mother who does not love her child, but is forced to imitate an absent feeling, is a much more common phenomenon than is commonly thought. She cannot bear to be close to the child, but tries to maintain the connection required by decency with him. A child in need of maternal love instinctively reaches out to his mother, encouraged by her verbal appeal. But with physical closeness, such a mother begins to operate a mechanism of repulsion, which cannot manifest itself in a direct and unambiguous form and is masked in some indirect way: the mother finds fault with the child for any random reason and pushes him away, expressing this on a more abstract level than the primary one. level of "motherly love". The child has some kind of shortcoming, he always turns out to be guilty of something; For example, his love for his mother is declared insincere because he did not do this or that. Thus, the child perceives opposing messages expressing attraction and repulsion, and usually at different logical levels: attraction is expressed in a simpler and more direct form, and repulsion is expressed in a more complex, disguised form, through non-verbal communication or reasoning that questions his love for his mother.
The stereotype of connection between mother and child that develops in this way continues when the child goes to school. The mother’s suggestions in such cases also have a double character: at a lower level, the mother inspires him that he should not fight with Petya, Vasya, etc., and at a higher, more abstract level - that he should “defend his dignity,” don’t let yourself be offended,” etc. Of course, in all cases the child turns out to be guilty, since he does not fulfill either the first, direct suggestion, or the second, indirect one. This conflict between two levels of communication, in which the child is “always at fault,” is called the double bind. The double bind mechanism thus discovered is not at all limited to the relationship between mother and child, but represents a very common pathology of human communication.
Bateson illustrates this relationship with clinical examples. Here is one of them (G. Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Ballantine Books, N.Y., 1972).
"A young man, just emerging from an acute attack of schizophrenia, is visited in hospital by his mother. Overjoyed at her, he impulsively puts his arm around her shoulders, to which she responds with stunned expression. He withdraws his hand and she asks, 'Don't you love me anymore?' “He blushes, and she says: “Darling, you shouldn’t be so embarrassed and ashamed of how you feel.” The patient was barely able to stay with her for a few minutes. Immediately after she left, he attacked the assistant and had to be tied up.
Of course, this could have been avoided if the young man had been able to say: “Mom, I saw that it was unpleasant for you when I hugged you, that it was difficult for you to accept my feeling.” But a schizophrenic patient does not have this opportunity. His deep dependence and his experience do not allow him to comment on his mother's behavior, but she comments on his behavior and forces him to accept the entire sequence of actions. In this case, the patient experiences the following difficulties:
(1) The reaction of the mother, who does not accept her son’s feelings, is skillfully covered up by condemning his gesture of confusion, and the patient, having accepted this condemnation, thereby denies his perception of what happened.
(2) Saying "Don't you love me anymore?" in this context apparently means:
(a) “I must be loved.”
(b) “You must love me, otherwise you are a bad son and are guilty of me.”
(c) “You loved me before, but now you don’t,” and thereby the attention shifts from the expression of his feelings to his inability to feel. She has reason for this, since he also hated her, and he accordingly responds to this with a feeling of guilt, to which she reacts by attacking.
(d) “What you just expressed was not love.”
A hopeless dilemma arises: “If I want to maintain my connection with my mother, I must not show her that I love her, but if I do not show that I love her, I will lose her.”
Such a conflict does not always lead to catastrophic consequences. A child’s healthy reaction to the mother’s unconscious hypocrisy is resistance: sensing contradictions between the mother’s demands, the child begins to “comment on” them, proving the mother’s injustice and that she is right. But if the mother reacts with a sharp ban on commenting on her behavior (for example, threatening to leave the child, go crazy or die, etc.) and thereby does not allow him to resist, then the child’s ability to distinguish signals indicating the nature of communication is suppressed, which constitutes the beginning of schizophrenia. Sometimes the intervention of the father can help, but in “schizogenic” families the father is weak and helpless.
If a child has the opportunity to resist the contradictory demands of the mother, this, of course, disturbs the peace of the family, but such a child has a chance to grow up healthy: he will learn to recognize the signals that determine the logical levels of messages. In a more abstract demand, he recognizes the negation of a more concrete one, is indignant and does not always obey, but does not at all confuse the two sides of the “bundle”.
Things will turn out differently if the child cannot resist. The child learns not to distinguish between logical types of messages, thereby taking the first step towards schizophrenia. He now responds to his mother’s claims with sincere misunderstanding, so that he is considered “abnormal.” And then this same pattern of relationships is transferred to other people; but this does not mean at all that such a child will certainly become mentally ill. He goes to school, spends time outside the family, and may gradually learn to recognize “context switching signals” if his relationship with his “schizogenic” mother was not too intense. Maybe he won't do it as well as others; He probably won't develop much of a sense of humor and won't laugh as contagiously as his friends.
The specificity of a schizophrenogenic mother lies in the malignant form of her inability to be a mother. These pseudo-mothers gain complete power over the small child, who is dependent on their help. A more favorable form of a schizophrenogenic mother (Pankow, 1968) is the so-called. children of mothers expecting their own children to have him; treated them like their mothers.
The mother inducing a psychosomatic disorder reacts libidinously only to the defects and illnesses of her child, in contrast to the mother inducing perversion, in whom all actions relating to the healthy body of the child are libidinally loaded, for example. the ceremony of washing, dressing, manipulating the male or female genitalia of a child. Both mothers ignore the growing identity of the child's self. The latter is treated as a thing, a libidinally occupied object, and not a full-fledged developing personality.
Mothers give us life - but sometimes it happens that they can seriously ruin this life: with numerous strict demands, instructions, constant condemnation and simply tyranny towards grown-up children.
What to do if it is not possible to live separately from your tyrant mother?
In such a situation, of course, you will not be envied. The fact is that you don’t need to put up with a “domestic tyrant” and make friends (even if we are talking about your own mother) - because such “peace” and “friendship” only mean the oppression of your personality, your adult “I”. All that remains is confrontation and “armed neutrality.”
The psychologist's advice is that if your mother is a tyrant, then your task is to demonstrate to her your maturity and ability to exist autonomously (albeit under one roof, if it is not possible otherwise).
How? Start doing it your way. In everything - from choosing a haircut to choosing where to study, work, which guy to date, etc. If your mother is against it, calmly say that her opinion on this issue is not as important to you as your own. To arguments like “Yes, I wish you well!..” answer, “Thank you, mom, but still, I’m an adult and I will do what I like best and seems necessary.”
Manipulations from the category “I’m everything to you, but what are you allowing yourself to do?!” - ignore! Yes, you allow yourself to live your own life. This is fine!
What advice does a psychologist have about a tyrant mother - how to behave if they yell at you, make offensive accusations, or insult you? The correct solution is not discussion and excuses, but ignoring, possibly complete silence, and, if possible, physically avoiding such meaningless conflicts. The fact is that parental tyranny is unconstructive - you must understand that you cannot argue with your mother even with the most logical and balanced arguments. To stay on your own, you just need to stop the quarrel, and that’s it.
Moreover, no matter how irrational it may sound, a “domestic tyrant” is usually one who feeds on your energy, which you give away when you make excuses, indulge, try to conform, suffer from a life of severe subordination... The phenomenon of energy vampirism has both esoteric explanations ( you may not believe in them if you are a materialist), and psychological - authoritarian people feel good when they constantly observe their “slaves” next to them. This gives them a sense of self-worth.
Therefore, sometimes you can “switch” the tyrant to someone else. For example, if you find your mom a new job, preferably one that involves communicating with people, you may soon notice that she doesn’t pay as much attention to you as before.
Social phobia literally translates as fear of society. About 40% of cases of social phobia begin before the age of ten, and 95% begin before the age of twenty. The first manifestations of social phobia are especially difficult for schoolchildren, because school is the first real encounter with the model of a “society of strangers”, not every child can adapt to the requirements of which. Naturally, he will have much more difficulties in the learning process than an ordinary student. Approximately 40% of children suffering from social phobia refuse to attend school at all due to the feeling of anxiety that arises in them. A survey of children who refuse to attend school showed that at least 30% of them suffer from social phobia. Need I say how the consequences of this then affect the adult life of such a child if he never masters the mechanisms of social interactions?
Children suffering from social phobia experience fear and anxiety in situations that psychologists call socially significant. These can be moments when you have to communicate with strangers, talk with teachers, answer in class, do something in the presence of others (or under supervision); become the butt of jokes; eat with strangers, etc.
Social phobia is often accompanied by palpitations, trembling, sweating, muscle tension, a feeling of “sucking” in the pit of the stomach, dry mouth, feeling hot or cold, and headaches in those suffering from social phobia. In critical situations, children suffering from social phobia often blush and suffer from unexpected digestive disorders, for example, sudden abdominal pain or the so-called “bear sickness”.
Where does it begin?
If we evaluate the problem from the perspective of psychoanalysis, it can be argued that it is the first days and months of a child’s life that can become critical and, under unfavorable circumstances, create the basis for future social phobia. In the process of conducting psychotherapy with such patients, we are repeatedly convinced of the lack of sufficient warmth and care around them when they were babies. It has been proven that a child does not just need a mother as some kind of warm living hot water bottle, giving him milk and changing diapers. At first, his mother represents the whole world for him.
One of the classics of modern psychoanalysis, the British Donald Woods Winnicott, wrote that a mother who takes a child in her arms must actively communicate with him, speaking in a gentle voice and stroking him, even if she is very tired. And - be sure to smile, because the baby also smiles at the same time, and such a unique exchange of emotions is as necessary for the child as milk. It is thanks to this seemingly simple set of sensations that the child learns that the world he has come to accepts and welcomes him.
If the baby does not receive all this, he begins to show restlessness, anxiety, he literally becomes worse physically, and the world around him seems threatening and hostile. It can be assumed that the core of future social phobia is concentrated here. The problem is aggravated if the child is sent to a nursery or kindergarten early, or the mother entrusts the care of him to someone else, even a close person. A baby cannot avoid stress. This terrible moment of the first separation from his mother is accompanied by the first real fear of society, which at any moment could take her away from him forever.
Patience and time
If you suspect manifestations of social phobia in your child, pay close attention to this. Social phobia can precede many different psychopathological conditions. We doctors are accustomed to calling them “comorbid,” which in Latin means “associated with the disease.” Researchers from the World Psychiatric Association found that social phobia is the primary pathology in 70.9% of people with comorbid depression, in 76.7% of people with comorbid drug addiction and in 85% of people with comorbid alcoholism. These figures are another argument in favor of the need for the earliest possible identification and treatment of social phobia. It has also been noted that there is a close connection between social phobia and the subsequent development of metabolic disorders, such as obesity.
If a child refuses to go to school and is reluctant to communicate with peers, you should not resort to threats or admonitions like: “Pull yourself together, you’re already big.” Consult a psychologist or psychotherapist with your son or daughter. Perhaps we are talking not just about natural timidity or character traits, but about a problem that, if not noticed in time, will create a lot of problems for your child in the future.
Treatment may take a long time - about six months. The insidiousness of social phobia lies in the fact that not a single treatment method, no matter how wonderful it is, has any effect. Tormenting fears, and this is now considered proven, can be more or less successfully countered only by complex treatment, including the use of psychotropic drugs, psychotherapy and psychological training.
Modern medications used in the treatment of social phobia do not form dependence, and after its cessation they do not cause the so-called “withdrawal symptom”, in which the drug should be returned again and again, often with an increase in dose.
Parents will have to be patient and learn to cooperate with doctors and psychologists, but, you see, this is the case when the end justifies the means.
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