Protecting ourselves, and young people from the layered impact of bad news, difficulty, and uncertainty…
Maybe it’s just me – but life feels like even more of an uphill struggle right now. Perhaps it’s the dark nights and the poor weather as we tilt towards winter. Perhaps it’s the sense that the only high spots of the news are adverts selling us stuff we neither need nor afford…
Peace feels precious, fragile, and elusive. In terms of the climate, it’s either too hot, too cold, or too stormy. Progress feels far away politically or economically.
Obama once said that political parties campaign in poetry, but govern in prose…I’m not sure whether there was much poetry and the prosaic outcomes of decisive electoral results are proving short on clarity, let alone efficacy.
Most things -life in general- seem to be bearing increasingly heavy costs – whether that’s financial or metaphorical. The social contracts of equity, adequacy of service, good intentions hang in tatters with the exposure of corporate, institutional, church, and government scandals that take generations to acknowledge, let alone provide restitution.
There’s the doom of impending escalation of wars on the international stage, and technological progress, like the dawning AI revolution, seems to usher in human redundancy and increasingly devastating criminality through cloning.
For young people, there is a vivid sense of outrage. For instance Trump’s victory for some – especially young women – can be seen to exemplify a ‘broligarchy’ running wild – and the potential for further marginalisation of women. The rise of far right and populist voices drowning out the lessons from history.
Equally the claims of the climate emergency being deemed unaffordable run concurrent to natural disasters on newsfeeds of floods and fires costing lives and livelihoods.
The outrage morphs to helplessness when the projections of student debt, suppressed social mobility, endless reliance on the bank of Mum and Dad (should that even be an option) beckon.
Where do we find the poetry in the future? When the type of prose that seems most likely is at best an apocalyptic, or dystopian narrative?
During COVID – it felt like we rallied in apparent unity against a common threat. We stepped up to the crisis – and it was hard…but in relative terms it did not feel as relentlessly hopeless as being in limbo about an unpredictable political direction in the US, and falling almost instantly out of love with the promise of change in the UK.
As parents, as teachers, how then do we look on life, and model ways of being in the face of adversity for younger generations? Especially when the fullest weight of that adversity will be felt in their futures?
This isn’t only a question of living in anxious times, and living with legitimate anxieties, it’s a question of spirit and an important need for balance.
I remember studying child development as part of my MA in psychoanalytic studies – and in particular the notion of ‘failure to thrive’ – a condition where a child’s growth and development slows or stops. It may be organic – due to illness. Or inorganic, with no medical cause and may be to do with environmental causes – especially with the nurture and connection with caregivers. Of course, failing to thrive and the stopping of growth and the onset of stuckness can strike at any time through life. For instance in the hopelessness of grieving for a spouse, there is an excess mortality rate of between 30% and 90% in the first year after bereavement. It’s called the ‘widowhood effect’ and otherwise known as dying of a broken heart.
Losses of all kinds – the loss of a job, the disappointment of an opportunity, or the thwarting of a hope for justice – can exert a heavy cost. Adverse events – even those experienced vicariously – can trigger an attack on the sense of self and set off a more global sense of wariness, uncertainty, a lack of faith in the future, or other people.
You don’t need to tune into the news – because you’ll find enough snippets of cynicism and warning on your feeds to fuel your negativity bias and turbo charge it with your confirmation bias if you let it. A sense of collapse, is a nervous system response to a sense of overwhelm, overwhelming threat, that is common to all mammals. And we’re not exempt from that – so notice when you feel like withdrawing, retreating, and going inward, wanting to flop and feeling generally inert…We can often misinterpret these postures of defeat as laziness in teens…it’s always good to check yourself, and check your reading of what you’re seeing before going off on one with someone who has checked out…
It’s easy to see how pessimism can become pervasive, personal, and feel permanent- the components of learned helplessness – as Seligman wrote in his development of key concepts within what we now call positive psychology, the science of thriving. You can read more in his foundational book ‘Authentic Happiness’.
Optimism – having reserves of hope, and a sense that there will be learning, there will be growth in the future, is a valuable asset that is part of the protective armour of resilience. According to Professor Martin Seligman’s book Learned Optimism,[1] it is something that we can cultivate – and forms the opposite of learned helplessness – which is one signature part of the depressive condition.
Optimism is good – it helps us weather adversity better. But healthy optimism is not fake or unrealistic. Whilst I would in no way want to compare a prevailing sense of malaise and uncertainty today, with the onset of the second world war, there is profoundly grim saying by Thomas Ricks, former editor of Foreign Policy, that crystallises the dangers of an excess of optimism, that in the 1930s, the pessimists went to New York, and the optimists went to Auschwitz.
Victor Frankl, holocaust survivor, psychologist, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning developed the concept of ‘Tragic optimism’ as being a more protective path. ‘There were those who were able to search for (even if they did not find) meaning in life – and remain hopeful’. ‘Saying yes to life in spite of everything’. Man’s search for Meaning is a book I re-read regularly, as one of the most powerful discussions of what it is to be human, even in the face of overwhelming inhumanity.[1]
Frankl noticed that it was those who cared for and comforted others – even to the detriment of their own material survival – eg by sharing their meagre supplies of bread – who survived the longest. His story is of survival and humanity – of being able to transcend suffering and choose to us the irrefutable power alone have have to create a gap between a stimulus (eg oppression, catastrophe, injustice) and our response – that there is always the scope to choose humanity. Even when everything has been taken from us- and that this was one of the lessons he bore witness to from the horrors of Auschwitz.
The Stockdale Paradox is named after Admiral Jim Stockdale – a prisoner of War in Vietnam and was popularised in Jim Collins’ book ‘Good to Great’. Stockdale attributed his survival to his mindset: ‘You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end -which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your reality, whatever they might be’. Those who tended to survive the horrors of imprisonment and systematic starvation were not those who had a relentless faith in the coming rescue over their years of imprisonment.
Showing up – bringing realism and hope into balance
So how can we show up in the lives of young people in a way that will help them shore up the reserves they need to look to their futures with both realism about the world they and we are in, and a sense of meaning and even hope?
- Value their awareness, interest, and engagement with the world at large. Listen to their concerns. Let them speak to them and explore them with you. Bear witness to their observations, their reality. Acknowledge their feelings as being valid and understandable. Let them know and feel that they are not alone.
- Take their concerns seriously. Regulate your own response so that you can hold the space for them to say the things that are on their minds… Watch your ‘whoosh’…as Terry Real puts it in his wonderful book ‘Fierce Intimacy’. This is a really rapid, bottom-up sensation in response to an emotional trigger – like for instance a young person’s extremes of emotion, or exaggerated in a typically passionate polarised response that is a signature adolescent trait…We are present to their dysregulation and notice a big reaction in us that takes us to ‘Fight, flight or fix’. In this instance, a fight reaction might look like us arguing against their interpretation – which may catastrophise and demonise. We may be in flight from their intensity and tell them not to use that tone / language. Or we may go into ‘fix’ and try some way of ‘making’ them feel better. ‘There, there, let’s go to Nando’s…’
- Acknowledge the truth behind their concerns and modify or come alongside them to interrogate what they’re saying, thinking, learning, believing. In dialogue pick up on their key points through active listening and ask questions to help them pass their ideas through the filters of whether they are ‘true, kind, helpful’. By all means engage with their world views authenticity – where you have true empathy and compassion for their views and the impact their take on things is having. Remember your role and function as parent, or teacher with a professional brief to care and promote growth…Be careful not to co-catastrophise and ‘join with’ the thinking or feeling, even amplifying it or layering in your own dysregulation. If it feels like they are receptive to playing with perspectives on the topic at hand, you could ask them to think about how an optimist might look at it and explore different points of view…What’s the best thing that could happen, what’s the worst thing…
- Identify the values at stake and their sense of purpose. What’s at stake, and what’s the impact of it for them. Help them clarify the core of the issues as they see them, so that they are able to voice their concerns clearly and appropriately. Go beyond that and help them identify what these values and their sense of the impact of what they are experiencing mean in terms of who they are and what they stand for. Look to bring some active, constructive praise in acknowledgment. For instance reflecting on how they are showing their character strengths – which might be their zest for life, their energy. Their sense of beauty or justice, their love of learning.
- Look together at what is within their and your locus of control, and what is outside of it. Where they might use their voice, and how to get more traction. You might talk about the part they can play as a good citizen, and how they might be able to join with appropriate others to participate in civil discourse and democratic dialogue. Action binds anxiety – where might they be able to take action effectively and safely. How might they be able to get support.
- Look at helping them feel resourced in their understanding, in their sense of connection, and in the way in which they can develop a sense of capability or agency. Where can they find out more, more accurately, from responsible sources? Where might be the organisations that align well with their sense of purpose?
- Help them link the strengths and traits they are showing in their response to adversity or injustice to the sort of choices they will be able to make now and in the future – in the academic or career paths they might take, in the way they use the social powers they have. For instance as a consumer. Help them find narratives that will stoke this sense of empowerment and the ability, for instance, for small individual and large collective action to gain traction. Like, for instance, the boycotting of South African food produce in the 1980s. Signpost them to find out about role models, stories of leadership, resilience.
- Develop that sense of compassionate connection and humanity. Who else do they talk to about this? Who else can they talk to about this – peers as well as older generations. Are there grandparents, family friends who might have a take on this? Open up their frame of reference so that they don’t stay inward with their thinking and feeling. Help them widen their sources so that the algorithms don’t rabbit hole them. This is especially important for young people with a Neurodivergent diagnosis. Are there events they can attend, and be supported attending. Always remember that a lonely, disconnected person is ripe for grooming toward extremism. Check in with how the conversation is landing with them…are there any shifts in their thinking or feeling?
- Having supported them in tending to their feeling state, and helping them find points of greater resource and range in their emotions, help them with their cognitive agility around the topic also. This may be working on how they are framing their beliefs and experiences. So they are able to name, observe and be less hijacked or overwhelmed by the intensity of their feelings, but also able to create meanings that are less funnelled around disaster, overwhelm, or helplessness. This is not to ‘silverline’ what’s happening in the world – or ‘gaslight’ them – which is what any self-respecting Tiktok informed teen will be more than ready to accuse us of! It’s about being able to write their story with balance and the scope for growth. For example, ‘Boomers stole our futures and failed our planet’ – or other persecutory, divisive (intergenerational) narratives of individual success being stymied, to thinking about the need to create a new more interdependent, interconnected vision…
- Always remember the power of reconnecting with other parts of life that bring joy. Whilst recognising that we can all get stuck in an internal counsel of despair, we can also bring a valid rallying cry to remember the other things of life – that may be good, kind, lovely. And to also think on these things…The brain becomes very good at patterns. It is a bit lazy and inaccurate in that regard – as it is always seeking to conserve energy in the system of us as an organism. So when we are thirsty, and drink a glass of cold water, we instantly feel better. Even though if you stop and think about it for a second, there’s no way the water has made its way thought our system to rehydrate us on a functional or cellular level! No – our mind receives the sensory trigger for refreshment and leaps to the conclusion. It is also true that when we are low, down, stuck in negativity, our brain can really marinade in that if we let it. And it means our brain is primed for negativity, hence a readiness to catastrophise and double down on anxious hyperactivity or overwhelmed, depressive helplessness. So also working out what we can do to lift ourselves out of the rut is also a way of giving ourselves a holiday from a mindset that can become pervasive. That may be doing something that puts us in flow…Very many people who are working with family illness, for instance, take up running as a form of respite. Bringing someone back to vitality, energy, hope, can also be made more possible with a joke, a reminder to seek out something that will lift the mood and the spirits – books, films, music, art, events, specific friends in your / their ‘star chamber’…
I hope this gives you some food for thought in how to resource yourself, and resource other people – especially the young people in our lives – when we move into and through dark times. Whether that’s dark times ‘out there’ on a macro-level – in society, in politics…or on a micro-level in our inner lives.
I know that as the clocks go forward in the UK and we step out of British Summer Time, I personally feel the lure of my darker side. And more so as we age. It’s a reminder that that side of us is always there. It’s certainly there in adolescence, and it can have numerous benefits as well as risks.
I’ve lost count of how many harrowing self-portraits I have seen in GCSE and A Level art work, and can count on my fingers and toes, how many show untarnished, unblemished joy or even contentment. And over my decades of working in schools I have collated thousands of images of artwork by young people.
If there’s one thing I have got better at holding on to – which is the wisdom of later years, a good bit of hard work on myself, coaching training, therapy…it’s the power of being able to lean on others and to have more faith in that.
Whether it’s talking to my husband about business or money aspects…a massive vulnerability trigger for me…the horror, the horror! Or unloading my gripes onto my dear friends – and joking about our (mainly my) abandonment complexes…Yup, I’m still mourning the retirement of my amazing therapist!
So when we’re privileged enough to hold some space for the young people in our lives to be down, and feel down about life and it’s challenges…let’s make sure they get the message that they will be rewarded by connection. That there is hope in togetherness. For humanity really does create terrible messes as well as bring ingenious and inspiring fixes…together we do indeed uplift each other and that is how we learn and grow.
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Linked articles by me:
Wider reading and other sources:
https://time.com/6265173/men-dying-after-spouse-dies /
Seligman, M. E. P. (2006). Learned optimism: How to change your mind and your life. Vintage.
Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978; Seligman & Garber, 1980; Maier & Seligman, 2016
https://positivepsychology.com/learned-optimism
Viktor Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mans-Search-Meaning-classic-Holocaust/dp/1844132390
[1] Viktor Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mans-Search-Meaning-classic-Holocaust/dp/1844132390
[1] Seligman, M. E. P. (2006). Learned optimism: How to change your mind and your life. Vintage.
