Hidden Harm. "Good Behaviour" - Or Is it....?

A child who never breaks the rules can look like a parenting success story. But what if that calm, compliant, high-achieving “good behavior” is actually a shield against anxiety, fear, and the feeling that something might go wrong at any moment? We dig into the uncomfortable idea that distress doesn’t always show up as acting out. Sometimes it shows up as control, rigidity, and a kid who seems fine because they’ve learned to hold everything together.

We walk through what a psychological defense mechanism really means and why it’s often automatic rather than deliberate. Using real clinical examples, we explore how obsessive order on the outside can compensate for inner chaos, and how a child’s careful self-management can slide into perfectionism, anxiety, and emotional disconnection. We also unpack Donald Winnicott’s concepts of the false self and true self, and why a highly “adapted” child may be performing safety rather than expressing who they are.

We end with practical ways parents, caregivers, and educators can respond without panic or blame: staying curious, making room for mess and mistakes, and helping a child learn that uncertainty is survivable. If you’re raising a high-functioning child who never seems to rest, or you recognize yourself in that story, this conversation offers language, perspective, and a gentler way forward. Subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Transcript

Welcome And Core Question

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Inside the Consulting Room. This series is concerned with Hidden Hall. And in this next episode, I want to look at an area of what I've already been describing, which has to do with the how we define behavior. And specifically to look at what we might regard as good behaviour. So this episode is about when good behaviour is a defense. Good behavior in children is something we value, we encourage it, we reinforce it, and we take comfort in it because it means we must be doing okay. Because a child who behaves well feels like a child who is doing okay. Therefore, as parents, we must be doing something right. So imagine that the child is someone who follows rules, they manage themselves and they do what is expected. And as adults we feel reassured. But sometimes good behavior is not what it seems. Sometimes it is not simply a sign of development. And because children communicate in many different ways, sometimes through words, sometimes through behavior, but sometimes through what they don't show. And we're often taught to look for difficulty and disruption in the form of acting out or challenging or some emotional expression. But psychologically, we have to widen that lens. Because behavior doesn't only express distress through excess, it can also express distress through control. And this is where we begin to think about the behavior not just as an action but as a defense. Now, the word defense primarily has to do with protection. And a defense is something we use to protect ourselves from something that feels too much. Now, this is not a conscious action. This is an automatic reaction that has been learned. And there are many different types of defenses. So, as I said, this isn't something children choose consciously. It's not deliberate, it's an internal process that helps the child to manage feelings that would otherwise overwhelm them. And those feelings can be fear, anxiety, uncertainty, and distress. And when those feelings can't be easily expressed and processed, then they they have to be managed in another way. And for some children, that way is through control. I'm reminded of somebody I worked with many years ago who would rise, she would wake up early in the morning about four o'clock, and she had a routine where she was compulsively cleaning. And she had set up this routine for herself, which began very early in the morning. And when I say compulsive cleaning, this was somebody who used to clean skirting boards with a toothbrush and a whole host of other really excessive cleaning behaviors. She came to me because clearly this was obsessional compulsive disorder. But it also served as a defense, because from her perspective, everything else in her life internally was dirty and uncleanable. And offsetting that perception and the feelings that that generated meant that she had to take control of her external environment. And whilst I suspect her house was absolutely meticulous and pristine, it was actually organized as a defense against internal disorganization. So defenses help manage emotional expression, regulating responses and containing impulses, and avoiding anything that might feel unpredictable. Externally, this might look like strength, but internally it's very different. Because what we're seeing is not simply self-regulation, it is self-protection. The child is not only asking what is expected of me, but what must I do to prevent something from going wrong? This is really reminds me of a number of cases where with children who are exemplary in their behavior, but then develop some kind of ritual or some kind of amplified behavior which doesn't quite sit right. My question is always what is this child defending themselves against? Because we're not seeing the real self. What we're seeing is something called the false self. And over time, this kind of organization can become really fixed. The child begins to present a version of themselves that fits, but it's a version that is acceptable, predictable, and safe, and gradually it becomes more dominant. But in psychological terms, we think about this as the development and the use of the false self. Now, the notion of false and true self was created by Donald Winnicott, and to some extent, every one of us has a degree of false self, and the false self adapts to environments and it behaves in a way that is congruent and consistent with the environment that we're in. And from the point of view of social interaction, such things aren't wrong. But the true self is very different. The true self doesn't really have rules and it doesn't really want to conform all that much. And the true self is something which is real and it is not wrong. But if that true self doesn't find expression, then the person is becomes reliant upon the false self. But the false self denies the true self. Something inevitably will go wrong as a consequence because the true self ultimately cannot be denied without there being some kind of additional problematic expression. So a self that's been shaped to meet the environment rather than to express the child's internal experience is really what we're talking about. And alongside this, the child's more spontaneous, emotional, and uncertain self can begin to recede. The cost of this isn't always immediately visible because the child continues to function, they continue to behave well, they continue to meet expectations. But internally something important is being lost, the capacity to express difficulty, the ability to tolerate imperfection, and the opportunity to experience themselves fully. And over time this can lead to anxiety, emotional disconnection, and a sense of pressure to maintain control. And sometimes that can move into perfectionism. I've already mentioned OCD, and there are a whole host of other defenses which can develop to the level of disorder because the person is driven towards always having a way of offsetting the anxiety and the fearfulness that lies beneath. So it stops being a flexible defense and it becomes a lifestyle. And this isn't to say that good behavior is a problem, whatever we regard as good behavior, because children need structure, guidance, and they have to learn how to function in the world. But when this behavior becomes too consistent, too controlled, too inflexible, we need to be curious, not critical, and certainly not alarmed, but curious. So what helps is creating a space for the child to be less organized. Moments where they don't have to get it right or be composed or meet expectations perfectly. I see this a lot, and particularly this time of year, with GCSEs and A-levels and the children who are overtly driven towards perfection and what it costs them in that process. And essentially what they're doing is they're they're protecting themselves against the anxiety of failure and where they where they imagine that will take them. And this is painful to see because such children don't rest. Such children immersed in an experience which feels perilous. And even when they get their results, which are almost always wonderful, it's it's not it's not enough. One girl said to me recently, I can't see the point because next I've got A levels and I'll have to do the same thing again, and then I'll have university and I'll have to do the same again. And this was a girl who r had was so tied to perfectionism that she could not imagine herself surviving without it. And a difficult case, but I'm pleased to say that we started to see a shift in in the behavior, and that what that looked like was her contemplating letting go of some of the pressure and doing some other spontaneous things, and it's traveling in the right direction, but my goodness, it's been a hard slog to get to that point, and what we're trying to do is help help the person to be to not always have to get it right and be composed and meet that that they don't have to meet expectations perfectly. So when uncertainty is allowed, where imperfection is safe because nothing bad happens, we might start to see a change. We might say, I wonder if things even feel hard, even or ever feel hard, even when you're managing so well. Because you don't always have to hold everything together. It's okay if things don't feel okay. If something goes wrong, it's okay. We can we can put it right. Because the child needs something which is which is not about guide guidance, but more about space and a more relaxed way of viewing and experiencing what's happening. Learning, it's okay, you can get it wrong. Nothing bad will happen. And ultimately, this enables children to allow themselves to experience things that perhaps they avoid because they fear they can't do them perfectly, or become so driven that it costs them. Finally, good behavior, and I really don't like that term, can look like strength. But sometimes it's something much more fragile than that. It's a way of holding things in place and a way of keeping something from falling apart. And when we begin to recognize this, we shift our attention from what the child is doing to what the child may be holding, and in that shift we begin to see something different, not just approval for doing well, but understanding what it takes to hold it all together. I think another question we have to ask is how much of us as parents has this child internalized? Parents will very often say to me, we don't put them under any pressure. And I believe them. However, there are times when the family context is one where there is pressure. It may not be spoken, but it will be demonstrated, and the child's experience and interpretation of that may cause them to, using the famous uncommon sense, take a position, which means they can't be seen to fail. This is costly, and sometimes with the best intentions in the world, parents don't see that cost because what they see is a high functioning, well performing child. But it's again, it's what you can't see, and just because you can't see doesn't mean it's not there. Thank you for listening, and I'll be back with the next episode shortly.