Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
It’s a powerful question that starts early and lasts a lifetime
A daunting question for a struggling girl
Michelle, a bright eight-year-old, was my psychotherapy patient because she was an Olympic worrier. The “what if’s” haunted her and made her tentative and sometimes paralyzed when she had to make a decision.
From the moment of birth, she was wired for anxiety. Her startle reflex kicked in at the smallest stimuli. Her parents reported that she overreacted to everything and was very hard to calm as a baby, which continued through childhood.
When she presented thorny questions to me in each session, I always tried to defuse her fears by saying casually, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” With most kids, the more they spun out the extreme possibilities, they could begin to see the flaws in their thinking and rein in their anxiety.
But not Michelle. She could run with every rock-solid, awful outcome and not budge in our exploration of the improbable nature of her beliefs. My goal with her was not to banish her anxiety, or even get her to “chill.” It was to help her balance who she already was, with who she could possibly be in the future. I wanted to help her learn courage.
