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The Quarter-Life Crisis
He is 24, sitting in my office in flip flops, and questioning why his parents dropped him off at my office. I am lighting a candle and cracking a window, questioning when he showered last.
I am keeping no statistics, but the traffic in my office tells me there is an emerging trend. It looks something like this: Individuals who have graduated high school and maybe even college, are not terribly interested in a career, are not shy about living with or being financially dependent upon mom and dad, and are generally not getting married anytime soon. And the male cohort anyway, has inconsistent hygiene.
They have been coined the twenty something’s, the failures to launch, and those suffering from a “quarter life crisis”. Of those currently in their 20’s, 40% will move back home with their parents, they will have an average of 7 jobs, and two-thirds will live with a romantic partner but not marry them. We currently have no statistical data on male hygiene at this age; but trust me, it’s not pretty.
Theories abound regarding what might be going on with this age group. It could be helpful for us to look at the age group who usually gets the negative attention, that being our dear adolescents. The term “adolescent” is thought to have first been written about by G. Stanley Hall in his publication titled “Adolescence” in 1904. What is interesting about the emergence of this developmental period we call adolescence is how it came to be.
In the years leading up to the turn of the 20th century there was a strong movement towards changing child labor. Many states began enacting child labor laws and by 1904 the National Child Labor Committee was formed to abolish child labor altogether. Those of you following along at home will note this was also the year Hall published “Adolescence”. This and other social changes at the time deterred children from working or marrying as young as they previously had. The result was a group of people roughly 13-18 who we can imagine, sat around all day playing Xbox and not doing anything around the house. What will we call them? Adolescents!
I can’t help but wonder if we are on the verge of another socially influenced developmental redefinition. Our young people have been told college is the path to success, and for many at the expense of any appreciable work experience. Earning a living through your career has been replaced by finding yourself and being happy through your career. Many have became accustomed to cashing student loan checks or other financial support that mysteriously shares the same return address as mom and dad. Marriage is no longer a popular social activity in your 20’s, and when you finally emerge ready to do something with your life…
Welcome to the current economy and job market. Oh well, hit the snooze button for another decade!
I don’t want to simply suggest that our 20 something’s are just entitled and lazy, or that some of the evolving social changes might not be for the best. Clearly neuroscience has more to say about why some adolescents are failing to launch. We also can’t dismiss the changing social norms that tell us marriage, family, and a career are best left to your 30’s. What I am suggesting is that there are a handful of social and economic factors that have pushed back the age when life demands you become a responsible adult, and maybe even redefined what it means to be a responsible adult. It used to be somewhere around 13, but we pushed that back and called the time period “adolescence”. Now we seem to have pushed the age somewhere closer to 30.
Left in the wake of this change are the parents who thought raising a child was a 20 year commitment. We all are finding ourselves rethinking what are appropriate expectations for this age group. At the very least I am campaigning for a strong movement towards daily bathing. Finding a girlfriend, job, or self-actualization are all far more difficult when you smell like an actual teenager, not just pretending to be one.
Matthew Brink- Foundations Family Counseling
Top Ten Male Myths
A young man with whom I am acquainted is having a coming of age ceremony this fall. As part of the ceremony his family is asking men in his life to submit counsel, advice, or thoughts for him on his big day. I am sending a top ten list:
Top Ten Myths about being a Man.
10. Men don’t pay attention to their appearance. Most men do, they just don’t admit it.
9. Men sometimes turn off their minds and stop thinking. We sometimes stop listening. We sometimes stop talking. But our minds keep ticking away like everyone else’s.
8. Men don’t have an opinion unless it’s about sports or beer. Don’t be Homer Simpson. Have an opinion, take a stand.
7. Men don’t like to shop. Not true, men just shop differently. Men shop like a sniper, women shop like a hand grenade.
6. Men don’t go to the doctor. Only the men who die much earlier than women fall for this one.
5. Men don’t need friends. We need them, we just aren’t always good at asking for them.
4. Men don’t get scared. Yep, we do. Deal with it.
3. Men don’t cook. Food is the true language of love and friendship. Learn to cook, you’ll never regret it.
2. Men think about sex every 7 seconds. This would make things like talking, driving, and actually finding a partner difficult.
1. Men don’t cry. Healthy men do, and more than you might think. Cry when you feel like crying. It’s good for you and the people around you.
Matthew Brink- Foundations Family Counseling
When safety gets in the way
Several years ago I had the opportunity to speak as a guest lecturer at a local graduate school. The topic was how change happens in therapy and over the course of the discussion I asked the students what they thought were the necessary building blocks for therapeutic change. A woman sitting in front quickly replied that, surely safety must be one of the essentials.
In therapist circles, within which I tend to find myself, I often hear people comment on whether or not a client felt safe and how that contributed to their experience. This idea that psychotherapy need be safe is commonly thrown around and goes widely unchallenged. And so I seized the opportunity, in front of a classroom full of therapists-to-be.
“No, safety is not essential; in fact, this idea of safety often gets in the way of therapeutic change.”
There were looks of surprise and challenges from the students. Many instantly and almost viscerally disagreed with me, not due to any strong intellectual argument but more from an emotional reaction. What kind of psychologist thinks that clients shouldn’t be safe?!
As is often true for us human beings it is helpful to step back and take a look at our language, the words we use, and the emotional charge they hold for us. Safety is a great word to start with. When we use the word safety we are pulling from a reservoir of stored emotional experiences revolving around domestic violence, suicide, child abuse, and trauma. If this is what we are talking about then I concede. Yes, safety is important.
While this is the emotional place we reference when we raise the flag of safety, I dare say it is not the literal experience we are commenting on when we talk about safety being necessary for change. I will assume that none of my immediate colleagues are physically or verbally abusing the people they work with. This type of behavior tends to create short careers for us. If this is true, then on at least a very simplistic level let us all agree that psychotherapy does not present any true safety concerns. Once we have crossed the perils of physical safety we are left standing at the precipice I found myself in front of the graduate classroom: emotional safety.
I think this is most often the concept therapists are trying to describe when they say a client must feel safe in order to experience change. So we must continue this semantic autopsy further: Is there something dangerous or unsafe in being emotionally vulnerable? Difficult, frightening, scary, and sometimes unsupported and unrequited I have all experienced. But unsafe? I’m still not there.
My contention in that classroom was this: When we use the word safety we are really talking about comfort. To say “I didn’t feel emotionally comfortable” is more honest than “I didn’t feel safe.” The issue of safety carries more weight and is harder to dispute than our comfort level. Much in the way, “I don’t feel good” is far more effective than,“I don’t feel like going to school today.”
All of this discussion of safety is just verbal gymnastics except when we start to apply it to what matters, people trying to make real change in their lives. We as therapists are charged with the honor of walking alongside people as they wrestle with some of the darkest, challenging, and more difficult times in their lives. My experience, both as a real live human being and as a psychologist, tells me that we adults don’t really want to change personally. More often we want everyone around us to change. We want our situation to change. We want our experiences to change. We will even go to fairly elaborate and sophisticated measures to create scenarios where we personally don’t need to change, in fact sometimes work ourselves into corners where we can’t change. In the end we settle into patterns, and even when they aren’t taking us where we want them to go- we’d rather wait on the world to change.
So I arrive at my conclusion that was left with the classroom that morning. In the discussion of change in therapy, safety is the trump card people play when they don’t want to go somewhere that feels uncomfortable. We therapists sometimes do our clients a disservice by letting them avoid the very places we know they need to go. If emotional safety, err, comfort was a good directional beacon I suspect there would be far less need for therapists. We would find peace, health, and fulfillment all on our own.
But we don’t. We don’t because what feels safe and comfortable is sometimes exactly what hinders change. So let us put down the golden shield of safety and get down to what really puts us in a place to change: Taking a risk and doing what might feel scary.
Matthew Brink- Foundations Family Counseling
Marijuana Part 2
Parenting through and around the issue of marijuana use is tricky. It’s tricky for the political and social reasons discussed previously. It’s tricky because you may have partaken in the very same behaviors you are now trying to dissuade your own child from engaging in. Or maybe it’s even trickier if you never smoked at all. While this is a discussion that may go well beyond the scope of a blog post, here are a couple thoughts to get you parents moving in the right direction.
Your teenager is going to smoke marijuana.
Well, maybe not. But if they don’t smoke it they will surely be around it, offered it, and have to refuse it many times. In fact, if your teenager doesn’t smoke marijuana they will likely be in the minority.
That’s right. The most reasonable statistics we have suggest that about 50% of teenagers will have at least tried marijuana by the time they graduate high school. So as a parent you need be more equipped than simply hoping your child isn’t interested.
Part of that equipping is being able to parent through marijuana use, not just around it. That is to say you may find the day that your teenager is smoking marijuana. How you handle this will impact your relationship with them and their likelihood of exploring into further drug use.
When parenting through tough issues like marijuana use it is important to have a solid value system from which you are parenting that includes open discussion, firm boundaries, hope, and a commitment to listening to your teenager. A teenager’s most common complaint is that adults don’t listen and they aren’t being heard. A parent’s rebuttal is “I listened to you- and the answer is still no”.
While that statement may be a fact, sometimes it is helpful to separate the points into two discussions. One discussion being you just listening. Really listening. Sympathizing with them, asking questions, and trying to know them better. On another occasion try having the “My answer is still no” discussion.
Keep in mind your own emotion, fear, and worry for your child are just below the surface and risk sabotaging any semblance of a real give and take conversation.. Fight the urge to focus the discussion on marijuana and instead talk about quality of friendships, character and integrity, how your teenager defines their own identity, and how proud you are of them. A teenager who feels a loving emotional connection with a parent is less likely to take extreme risks and is more likely to talk to you about it when they do. And don’t forget that the “love” in a loving relationship comes from saying no and setting boundaries.
In summary and for those still asking "but what do I do?!"
1. Listen
2. Don’t freak out
3. Set boundaries
Matthew Brink- Foundations Family Counseling
What to do about Marijuana?
What to do about Marijuana?
June 3, 2010
The factors that complicate parenting a teenager generally remain the same, but when it comes to the discussion of drugs and alcohol the playing field for parents seems to be changing. For the first time since the Marijuana Taxation Act of 1937, the State and federal governments are reconsidering the prohibition and criminalization of Marijuana use. While there are many points of discussion surrounding the legal, political, social, and ethical elements of this movement in legislation, the focus of this post is on the impact the changing culture of marijuana use is having on adolescents and the parents who are trying raise them. We’ll visit this in a three part post: The change culture, the impact on adolescents, and the impact on parents.
Part 1: The Changing Culture of Marijuana
It seems that the times they are changing. With increasing pressure on the federal government, state and local communities are taking a stand in the voting booths and pushing towards less and less regulation and criminalization of Marijuana use. If ever there was a grass-roots movement, this is it. The hippie children of the 60’s and 70’s are now parents and grandparents. For some they left their marijuana use in the past; but like bell-bottoms and lava lamps, others still have a closet cache full of- well, bell bottoms of course. Regardless of a parent’s current, past, or lack of use, guiding a teenager through the gauntlet of drug use is getting more difficult.
When preparing to guide your children through the maze of drugs and alcohol it is important to recognize the changing culture around Marijuana use. The days of “reefer madness” are gone. It is no longer an underground or illicit drug that the “bad” kids are trying. Our politicians and community leaders are now talking about and in some cases endorsing it. Legitimate businesses are advertising it, and it is no longer only the troubled teens that are using it. Does this suggest a parent should change their opinion on their child’s use? No. It does however mean you need to recalibrate your parenting approach. The federal campaigns of “Just Say No” and “DARE” have lost their relevance when it comes to Marijuana use. (and never worked to begin with, but that’s another soap box.) Marijuana use is no longer simply about peer pressure, it’s now also about political and social pressure.
We’ll begin to address parenting issues in a later post, but for now suffice to say schools, parents, and counselors must begin to develop a more sophisticated approach to guiding children and teenagers through the issue of Marijuana. Big money and big efforts are pouring into creating the message that Marijuana use is better than harmless. While that debate is left to be had, our young people are living the evidence that will feed that debate in the end.
Matthew Brink- Foundations Family Counseling
The Game of Death
The Game of Death May 10, 2010
In the early 1960s psychologist Stanley Milgram and a team of researchers from Yale University left a firm mark on the field of psychology. In an infamous series of studies they challenged the character of humans and raised many questions about how research can be conducted on human subjects. If you aren't familiar with Milgram's work it is worth reading up on. In short, he had research subjects apply electric shock to an individual on the other side of a glass window. Participants were asked to steadily increase the amount of shock while Milgram measured just how far people would turn up the juice. He found that over 60% of people could be convinced to use the highest setting- killing or incapacitating the subject.
Of course no real humans were harmed in the making of this research project. It did however take 50 years for enough people to forget about Milgram's project in order to replicate the study again. French documentary film maker Christophe Nick aired his latest film in March on French television titled Game of Death. Nick created a version of Milgram's study couched under the guise of a reality TV game show. Under cajoling from the game show host and the chanting of a staged studio audience game show contestants eliminated each other with near lethal doses of electric shock. Again, no French humans harmed this time around either, however over 80% of Nick's contestants administered the alleged full electric shock. Only 16 of the 80 recruited participants refused to play the game.
When asked about the power of TV Nick told the daily Le Parisien "I asked myself, Is (TV) so strong that it can turn us into potential torturers?" The answer would seem yes, although clearly there are many more questions left unanswered. What does seem obvious is that the power of community and a group of people is strong. Social psychology has long shown that our behavior is largely mediated by who is paying attention. If people are watching we will take heroic action to stop a rape or mugging, but we also might shock someone to death. We have come together to aid countries and people in times of need, but have also attacked and decimated others based on their skin color or religion. When at our best we seem able to credit our ability to collectively interact in coexistence, but perhaps this is also true when we are at our worst. If this is true then maybe Milgram's research is really about which side of the glass you are sitting on and tells us more about power and privilege than it does anything new about human character or behavior. What's to be learned from the Game of Death? Reality TV sucks.
Matthew Brink- Foundations Family Counseling
Are Teens Getting Worse?
Are Teenagers Getting Worse? April 26, 2010
It seems we are often hearing of more and more problems related to teenagers. Whether it be related to obesity, drugs and alcohol, bullying, the internet, sexuality, violence, or mental health, there are daily warnings regarding new things to be worried about. Amongst all the alarm the question must be asked, are teenagers getting worse?
To offer some contextual clarity it is worth recalling back to ancient times when even Plato described the younger generation as lazy and disrespectful. Sound familiar? I have to smile sometimes when a parent complains about the music, clothing, or general culture of "kids these days". This critical eye has long been cast on teenagers and while times have changed, it seems some things remain the same. Hindsight will always tell us times were tougher and we were better.
While patience and our own memory of what it was like to be a teenager goes a long way, it doesn't completely answer the question. Researchers have weighed in on the subject, but with mixed results. Some suggest there are higher percentages of young people with emotional problems, although this largely depends on how you define emotional problems. Others suggest the internet and video games have made the latest generation more difficult to teach and the current classroom obsolete. Still more researchers have suggested that teenagers over the last 30 years have remained largely the same. In the end there are lots of opinions but no conclusions that suggest teenagers are failing as a social cohort and our future is in jeopardy.
What does seem clear is that teenagers from this generation and those past tend to react in fairly similar and predictable ways. They want to rebel, not necessarily for the cause but for the experience. They will protest. If given no war or political cause for which to fight, they will just as soon protest what is on the table for dinner. They want to be unique, special, and different- just like everyone else. They want to be treated like adults, but only when they feel like being one.
Are teenagers getting worse? The world around them is changing faster than any previous generation and most days I think they are handling it pretty well. I would suggest that teenagers are predictably difficult. With patience, a better memory of our own adolescent years, and tolerance for the process they must go through, we will better be able to support the teenagers in our lives and perhaps keep a tighter hold on our own sanity. Don't forget Plato's observation, if your teenager is lazy and disrespectful then you're doing something right. They're supposed to be that way.
Matthew Brink- Foundations Family Counseling
