Social Anxiety Blog

Selective Mutism is a specific form of social anxiety which can be thought of as an “addiction to the avoidance of speaking.” Children with selective mutism (SM) are not capable of “taking the initiative” in the healing process. Therefore, healing selective mutism in children depends upon parents/caregivers taking the initiative by learning “empowering” v.s. “enabling” strategies. There is no blame here. It is just the realistic solution to an often complex problem of dealing with a child who suffers from a social anxiety disorder.

Recent estimates suggest that 7 out of 1,000 children suffer from selective mutism - a higher percentage than autism. There has been a tremendous amount of attention given to developing programs for autistic children, yet there is a huge void regarding selective mutism. My theory for this is that selective mutism is a problem characterized by resistance; obviously the children don’t want help and sadly, most parents are impacted by their own anxiety and confusion, which usually results in non action or investing in therapeutic approaches that focus on the child not the parenting. Also, it’s easier to disguise an anxiety than autism; social anxiety can be masked by personality. You can’t hide autism. Well-meaning parents and professionals make a big mistake when they invest in the belief that “the child will grow out of the problem”. Another big mistake in treating children with selective mutism is the inappropriate use of medication.

I invite you to listen to interviews with families and individuals who have “healed”. It’s tragic to simply think that a child’s problem will resolve itself just with time. SM is a severe form of social phobia. It’s important to challenge the anxiety as early as possible before it works its way into the subject’s personality and creates avoidance and dependence characteristics.

Contrary to most programs that address performance anxiety I have found that teaching the patient-student to accept the flow of adrenaline rather than investing in the hope that it does not occur, or teaching techniques to actively to suppress it, is a much more productive attitude to adopt. This dynamic, which is so crucial to anxiety control, is usually not taught to participants of public speaking programs or to patients in therapy. Perhaps this is why there are so many high achieving professionals who are so angry about their therapeutic and self-help experiences.