Questions To Rabbi Mandel
How Can I Save My Daughter’s Self-Esteem
Question: I have a 14-year-old girl, an incredible Ba’alas Middos and Tz’nua, who accepts her handicap with Simcha. She recently entered high school, and has not made one friend yet. She has so much anxiety from it that she can’t sleep. She suffers from a disease in her legs, which requires her to wear a metal brace to hold her legs up, and makes her limp. Additionally, one arm doesn't work well at all. Out of school, she is funny and fun. But around girls, she feels ugly and shameful. She is hiding her brace, terrified that if someone finds out, she is doomed forever. Everyone will know how ugly and horrible she is, and she surely won’t have friends.
I told her that it’s the exact opposite. If she tells EVERYONE about her brace, she will become the most popular girl in the school. There’s not one reason in the whole wide-world why not. Everyone will know her as the most amazing girl who has a handicap and laughs at it. As the girl who makes funny jokes about it, who has so much Emuna and Simcha, and on top of it all, is kind, caring, and a real empathetic listener. What more can someone ask for in a friend? She does not believe me. Can you back me up, or give another opinion please?
Answer: Get this girl involved with something constructive that has nothing to do with being social. I know many people who had radical changes in their lives when they threw themselves into something, and got involved in an area where they could make a change. Let her take a break from working on getting “in” with people. Doing something changes anxiety (like doing something in art, for example) because then you aren’t worried about self-esteem, since you have something. It can be anything constructive, even if it’s not involving Zikkui HaRabbim (but that’s a plus).
In dealing with such a predicament, in Slabodka they would focus on boosting your self-esteem on how you are better than others. In Novardok they would say: “I don’t need recognition. Who cares about these things? I don’t want to be popular. I want to laugh at the world. I’m happy the way I am”. And so, in Novardok, they would do “actions” that break fear, and not to care of people.
Your daughter doesn’t want to listen when you tell her that she is truly great. So what could you do? Maybe if she hears the same thing from a few people, it can help. The Manchester Rosh Yeshiva gave an Eitza, for someone to say behind her back how great she is, making believe that she doesn’t know she is listening. Then, maybe in that way she would believe it.
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