Children, Anxiety, and The Monkey Mind

In my former work as a teacher, and in my current work as a therapist, I've noticed a growing trend toward children with paralyzing anxiety. These children are incredibly concerned with "getting it right": saying the right thing, dressing the correct way, getting the right kinds of recognition (e.g. grades, etc.). I have some theories about the dominant culture influencing this need for correctness (standardized testing comes to mind), but I've also been wondering about the more subtle ways we adults feed this anxiety for rightness.

I posted earlier about the "monkey mind": that part of your brain when let loose can be limitlessly creative and non-judgmental--a mind freed of its "editor". I'm seeing children as young as 7 or 8 completely cut off from their "monkey mind". They cannot access their ability to create or make-believe because their anxiety over rightness has closed the door to their monkey mind. When taken to the extreme end, these children are cut off from the lifeblood of resiliency: hope. It makes sense. Hope asks us to imagine a different future, one that does not exist in our present. When social anxiety teaches us that imagination and creativity are bad, those "monkey mind" muscles atrophy. Eventually, we forget how to use them at all.

I'm wondering how we as adults model to children both our creative "monkey" sides and our analytical "editors". How do we show both are of value? What are the subtle (and not so subtle) ways we demonstrate that one is preferable over the other? How can we stop ourselves from denigrating our "monkeys" and cultivate a more active "monkey" practice? What in our culture discourages our "monkeys"? And what feeds our "editors"? If our "monkeys" and our "editors" were brought into balance, what would that look like? How would others (children, included) perceive us? How would we know our "monkey" and "editor" muscles were exercised equally?

Keeping the Anti-Anxiety Beat

I know I've written about taking breaks from anxiety before, but an encounter with the really great folks over at Seattle Drum School in Georgetown got me thinking about the buffering effects of music on anxiety's chatter. When the mind is engaged in counting out triplets with one hand and sixteenth notes in the other, there's not much mental room left for anxiety. (Okay, so I'm not a drummer--except for in my dreams--but at least that's how it seemed to me back when I played Chopin on the piano. Or maybe I just have less "mental room" than others!) It seems to me that when the mind and body are fully engaged with each other (as in drumming or playing an instrument), there's little opportunity left for anxiety's influence to insinuate itself. And while anxiety and "perfectionism" cures remain elusive, taking much-needed breaks from their chatter is a life-preserving practice.

When Perfectionism Conspires With Anxiety

I was just thinking back to the night when I was about eight months pregnant and reading "Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn" by Penny Simkin and Ann Keppler. I came across the section on risk factors for post-partum mood disorders. They listed perfectionism as one of the factors that seems to contribute to ppmds. This memory got me thinking about mood problems in general--and anxiety, specifically--and how perfectionism conspires with anxiety to make one feel less than fine.

Perfectionism can be a terrific motivator. But it can also sabotage. What happens when "perfectionism's expectations" go unfulfilled? Can perfectionism ever be truly satisfied? If you knew perfectionism were satisfied, how would you know? If perfectionism went unsatisfied what would it do?

My guess is that when perfectionism goes unsatisfied (say, because a baby is demanding more from a parent than s/he feels able to give), anxiety finds fresh fuel. Thoughts of "I'm not good enough/I can't fix it/It's hopeless" creep in.

Unfortunately, our culture does little to quash perfectionism's claims. Every time I hear the Oprah slogan "Your best life now", I want to scream. What if one's "best life now" means rocking a crying baby to sleep at 3:00 a.m., or waiting for a new driver's license at the DMV, or just having a rather ho-hum day. Is this my best life now? Is there something else I could be doing to have a better life now? Is everyone else around me having their best lives now, while mine is deferred by doing laundry and sorting through junk mail? On the surface, this desire to live one's best life seems a fine goal, but further mining reveals some very dry kindling for perfectionism's--and thus anxiety's--fire.

I'm working on a new slogan for Oprah. "A great life some of the time, and a pretty okay life the rest of the time" isn't quite as catchy as hers. But it might just help keep anxiety and perfectionism quiet for a while. And maybe that truly is our best life now.