“Let us understand that the prevention of mental illness begins in the crib, in how we hold and attend to our children.” Gabor Maté MD
In my previous column I touched upon the all-too-common person who is what I call krimm – twisted. These are men and women from all walks of life and socio-economic levels who are very difficult to live or work with. They can be obsessively critical and pejorative of everyone but themselves. (In Yiddish, there is a saying that nails it: “No one sees his or her own hunchback.” Those unfortunate enough to be connected to them on more than a casual level likely suffer lives of extreme stress, frustration and misery.
Other krimme people are totally self-absorbed – putting their wants before the needs of their dependent children, spouse, co-workers, friends or community. Some are unethical, believing the rules don’t apply to them, and don’t care who they hurt financially or emotionally. Some are super-controlling and smothering; others are hyper-detached and oblivious.
I concluded my article by offering my personal opinion, not a professional one by any means, but one solely based on my observations over the decades and my own disheartening experiences with these types of people – individuals whose dysfunctional, disordered personalities are the result of warped, damaged egos that cause them to be raging, abusive tyrants or timid, vulnerable victims.
Often they survive by distorting reality in a desperate need to protect their hypersensitive egos from any hint that they are krim. They are never the “bad guys”; everyone else is at fault or in the wrong. On the flip side, some believe they deserve to be mistreated, that they deserve their pain and torment.
How do they get this way? What causes them to develop what is arguably a form of mental illness? According to Dr. Gabor Mate, a Hungarian-born Canadian doctor and author who wrote about the recent suicide of comedian and actor Robin Williams, “Nobody is born doomed to depression and nobody is born with low self-esteem… He (Williams) found his father ‘frightening’ and, like many children who feel intimidated at home, he was bullied in school. He was emotionally alone. His comic skills first had the function of gaining some closeness with his mother.”
He also wrote, “Let us understand that the prevention of mental illness begins in the crib, in how we hold and attend to our children.”
I am not a psychiatrist and am offering my own simplistic, non-clinical view as to why I agree with Dr. Mate’s statement.
Parents are supposed to love, nurture and support their children and address all of their physical and emotional needs. When parents fail to do so, the message the child absorbs and internalizes is, “There must be something horribly wrong and disgusting with me if my own mother/father can’t love me.”
A child sees his or her parents as god-like. These “giants” know how to obtain food; how to get to places; how to light a dark room. So if these all-knowing entities act as if you have no value or if they regularly tell you that you are worthless, you believe it.
Letting an infant cry non-stop without comforting him subtly implies “You are not important. You don’t matter.” A child who is told that she is stupid will eventually see that as the truth. Since Mommy knows everything she must be right and Daddy’s silence means he agrees.
Neglect, indifference or criticism can break a person’s neshama. A child can develop rage, loathing and resentment for being made to feel inadequate and unlovable, causing him or her to grow up to be controlling and a bully – desperately trying to feel better about him or herself by denigrating and minimizing someone weaker.