Breaking Through Stuckness with a Shock // Experiential Education #5

A lightning flash of inspiration struck when I was faced with my adolescent student's toxic internal critic. The electric energy came to me unexpectedly with no explanation, and what it compelled me to do I was just as shocked by as my student.

(By de:Benutzer:Olaf1541 - german wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0)

I was teaching him (let's call him Sip, for Stuck-In-Pattern) how to make chicken tacos. I had given him some chicken to cut up, and he was struggling to use the scissors. I was prepping other veggies alongside him, chatting and planning out loud with him the stages of making our meal together. After a few minutes of cutting, Sip started to break down. "I can't cut the chicken. I can't do it! I can't do anything! I can't cut chicken!" And again, now on the verge of tears, "I CAN'T DO ANYTHING!"

He stomped off from the table and threw himself on the couch, whimpering and feeling sorry for himself. Honestly, I almost burst out laughing in the face of how absurd this little tantrum was. Not helpful. Have to remember he's not fully aware of his body, he's probably hungry, and he's most definitely triggered.

Sip has a learning profile professional educators refer to as "twice exceptional," meaning that he is exceptionally gifted in some ways, and exceptionally challenged in others. He knows how gifted he is, so it's really hard for him when he can't do something as simple as cutting chicken. Worse, because his areas of struggle often line up with the requirements of schooling, and his gifts are of the kind that are not rewarded in schooling, he has an extensive backlog of trauma from his early school teachers shaming him for learning differences.

As ridiculous - and ridiculously untrue - Sip's outburst of "I can't do it! I can't do anything!" is, it is a stress response to his trauma being reactivated by this seemingly innocuous situation. His own sense of inadequacy at being able to cut chicken is building anxiety, and he's being flooded with feelings he doesn't know what to do with. By finding an excuse for a tantrum, however paltry, he is creating a situation in which his desperate emotional fragility must be cared for, manufacturing a crisis to distracting himself - and me - from his own sense of incompetence, and the shame that comes with it.

I had been seeing this inner voice, which feeds on his sense of being a failure, tell him variations of "you can't do it, you can't do anything, you don't deserve to be loved," for months. When this message came up for him, I would calmly listen, give space and let him cool down, try to gently bring him back to his comfort zone and some emotional stability. Then, I'd try to talk through things with him, help him understand his feelings, understand what was coming up, and create a strategy for the future.

So far, none of these conventional supportive strategies had seemed to shift this stuck pattern. Maybe they were the wrong tact for this unconventional, independent and lonely adolescent. At worst, I worried, I could be enabling his avoidant behavior, letting myself be pulled into his comfortable shock-and-recovery rut.

He's running away from his fear of failure and the risk of shame that might come with it, and he's doing so in a way that reinforces his own sense of impotence, giving that inner critic another example of incompetence to judge and add to the tally, fueling a self-defeating fire that drains him and those around him.

Sip sees himself as an outcast, a "bad kid." Different, on the fringe, one of the downtrodden. It's obvious from his choice of media culture, his mostly expletive choice of language, and his rebellious mischief-making activities that attack phony boring adult world nonsense with all the rage of a seething lonely tweenager.

I was at my own breaking point, having witnessed this self-destructive, downright annoying pattern far too many times. It needed to stop. Besides, I was hungry too, and those chicken tacos weren't going to cook themselves.

I went right up to Sip, still sprawled melodramatically on the couch, and looked him dead in the eye. "Seems like you have a really tough inner critic," I said.

"Yeah," he trembled.

"Well, when you hear that inner critic, you know what you can do?"

"What?"

Now I knew I had his full attention.

Still locked in eye contact, making sure that he would fully feel my words, imbuing them with a forceful, self-righteous and self-defining anger that he could identify with I nearly yelled, "YOU TELL THAT INNER CRITIC TO SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
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Whaaaaattt??!?
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Sip was shocked speechless. He's never heard me swear. Or get really, truly pissed off, for that matter.

I let my words linger, pausing for effect and giving them a chance to seep into his frazzled consciousness.

"That's right," I say. "You heard me. When you hear that inner critic telling you you can't do shit, I WANT YOU TO TELL THAT INNER CRITIC TO SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

(By de:Benutzer:Olaf1541 - german wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

He still didn't know how to respond, so I went back to making our chicken tacos like nothing had happened. Wordlessly, Sip got up and rejoined me at the kitchen table to prep food and talk sauces and toppings. I still had no idea if what I had done would work, and I was having a hard time keeping a straight face thinking of how silly this whole thing was.

While he continues to be easily frustrated when he can't do something he thinks should be easy for him, I haven't seen Sip's inner critic shut him down to the point of "I can't do anything!" since that afternoon. What I have seen is a lot more willingness in trying to get past his temporary discomforts and keep going with skills that don't come easily to him. For that I am a proud, grateful little ball of lightning.

To follow the chain lightning, check out my blog for more stories from my role as an educator and a lifelong learner, like Letting People Make their Own Mistakes and Supporting Them Afterwards or How I landed on Trash Island