Perspective is Everything: Seeing Teenagers

A change of worldview can change the world viewed. ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce

We do not see this world how it is. We see it how we are. ~ Anaïs Nin

We tend to project our fears, beliefs, traits, assumptions, and ideals onto teenagers, perhaps because this time of life holds so much intensity for those of us who have come out the other side. While it’s understandable, we do teenagers a disservice at the least when we stereotype them or project onto them what is not theirs. At worst, we will regularly invalidate them. Learning to see them as clearly as possible is essential for our relationships with teens. 

Perspective is everything

The narrower the perspective the more suffering, for us and for those we are in relationship with. To frame this from an Internal Family Systems (IFS) approach, the more protector parts we have in the driver’s seat of our psychic bus (the operating ego), the more difficult it is to access Self energy. When we access Self energy, our perspective widens and deepens. Other possibilities can be considered. Nuances and facets that weren’t visible before become apparent. Perspective shifts.

And perspective is everything. 

Here’s an example.

Thirteen-year-old Jordie has begun to spend most of his time in his room, headphones on, and scrolling on his phone. He reluctantly joins the family for meals, doesn’t engage in the conversation, and quickly retreats back to his room. His parents are understandably worried. Because Jordie’s father Carson, a recovering alcoholic, suffered terrible depressive episodes during his adolescence, was suicidal, and was hospitalized at one time, he is terrified for Jordie, sure that Jordie is heading into the same downward spiral.

Carson’s parts are now actively engaged in the relationship with Jordie. These parts might include any combination of the following; 

• the part that carries pain from Carson’s adolescence that led to suicidality;

• a part that fears Jordie will attempt suicide;

• the savior/rescuer part that is determined to make Jordie happy;

• an angry, judgemental part that Jordie can’t get his act together and pull his head out of his ass;

• an addiction part that wants to numb the pain; 

• a thinking/organizing part that gets right to work with lists of solutions, activities, and strategies for Jordie;

• the critic that says, “I’m a terrible parent and I’ve failed my child”;

• a part that holds the belief that all teenagers are depressed and suicidal;

• and the list may go on. 

Carson, through his activated parts, sees Jordie as a depressed and suicidal teenager. He hears the news about the number of young people who are suffering from depression and anxiety and is sure that Jordie is one of the statistics. Jordie may or may not be depressed and suicidal. But Carson cannot see Jordie with clarity because he views Jordie through the lenses of his activated parts. There is no curiosity about what might be happening for Jordie, apart from Carson’s experiences, so Jordie continues to be alone in his struggles.

Here’s another example closer to home.

Growing up as the oldest child in a family that had suffered grief and loss, I was a parentified child. I was responsible, didn’t drink, try any illegal substances, break the rules, or push the edges. The one time I skipped class in high school I went to the library! I didn’t do a lot of adolescing during my teen years, skipping over much of it right into adulthood. 

When my sons entered their adolescent years, my hyper-responsible protector parts knew that my kids were also going to be “good kids.” They weren’t going to engage in delinquent behaviors like all the other teenagers, because in our family, “we knew better and did better. Those kinds of things don’t happen in our family.” I had no other perspective and didn’t think I needed one. From this one perspective, my sons were extensions of myself, of my own adolescence, my own story. Nowhere in my mind were the vital questions, “What are their unique and individual experiences of being teenagers in their world? Who are these young people that I think I know so well?”

I raised my sons with assumptions, preconceived ideas about who and what they were, preconceived ideas about who and what teenagers, in general, were, unspoken and unquestioned expectations, rules that they never knew about nor agreed to. From the limited perspectives of my protector parts, only “delinquent teenagers” acted like teenagers. Non-delinquent teenagers acted like I did in adolescence—a parentified child. This lack of perspective left my kids without the scaffolding they needed to navigate scary situations. 

The clearer the perspective the better the relationship

How we see and describe teenagers determines how we relate to them. Our unhealed and unaddressed traumas we experienced in our adolescence; what we see and hear in the media, popular culture, and on social media; our fears, beliefs, ignorance, misapprehensions, and unquestioned assumptions about adolescence—will all come to bear on how we perceive teenagers. This then dominoes into how we interact with them in classrooms, school hallways, therapy sessions, homes, grocery stores, and coffee shops. 

Disrespectful. Lazy. Irresponsible. Apathetic. Out of touch with reality. Depressed. Unaware and clueless. At risk and in danger. And the list goes on. Even the recent news about the global state of youth mental health, while important to know and address, holds a certain alarmist perspective of adolescents. Whether we denigrate or idealize them, we misapprehend who they are, what they’re capable of, and what’s possible.

Our responsibility

Our responsibility is to do the work of learning what activates our fears and wounds, so we can be with teenagers with clarity and integrity. When we’re triggered by adolescent behaviors, the impulse is to focus on our kids. Paradoxically, however, we are much more effective if we first turn the focus inward and address what’s needed there.

With this you-turn, as it’s called in Internal Family Systems, we then access what Gabor Maté calls the compassion of possibility. From a clearer and more expansive perspective, we have the courage to welcome enormous possibilities for our kids. “Possibility is connected to many of humanity’s greatest gifts,” writes Maté, “wonder, awe, mystery, and imagination—the qualities that allow us to remain connected to that which we can’t necessarily prove. It’s up to us to nurture this connection, because the day-to-day world will not always provide us with reassuring evidence.” Dan Siegel talks about good mental health as the ability to move from the infinite plain of possibility to the plateau of probability to the peak of actuality and then back to the plain of infinite possibilities. Perspective. It’s everything. 

Richard Frankel writes about the teleological nature of adolescence—an intended but unknown aim or goal for behaviors and experiences. Frankel maintains, and I agree, that new and necessary facets of a person begin to unfold and break through during the transformative years of adolescence. He says, “This is teleologically significant. Imagine if we considered the most difficult aspects of adolescent development in the context of an imminent source of energy and future way of being that is trying to manifest itself in the adolescent personality.” In other words, some of the most prominent and challenging qualities of adolescence have future meaning and significance. If we only have the eyes to see. 

Our responsibility is to situate ourselves on the plain of possibility with the compassion of possibility and hold space for this journey of becoming in which our young people are engaged. 

Photo by: alexanderuhrin