The Adolescent Cocoon: Reflections on Boundaries & Becoming
.June 25, 2025 - My granddaughter is the apple of her father’s eye. Throughout her childhood, they were extraordinarily close—watching movies together, listening to music, going on road trips. They were inseparable. Then one day, I began receiving messages from my son, expressing the quiet heartbreak of change: his little princess didn’t want to hang out with him anymore.
He understood, of course—his mother is an adolescent psychotherapist—but that didn’t make it easier. Gradually, she spent more time online with friends, disappeared into her room for hours, and offered little more than silence on the increasingly rare road trips.
I visited during this shift. Normally, my arrival meant extra cuddles, shared stories, and long conversations in the family living room. But this time, she gave me a quick “hello” and a polite hug before retreating behind her door. Several hours later, I knocked. She let me in.
Her room was dark except for the twinkling of fairy lights. The blinds and curtains were drawn, even though it was the middle of the day. She lay curled on the bottom bunk, surrounded by pillows and stuffed animals, nestled in what resembled a cave. Her once-beloved dollhouse stood empty in the hallway. Collections of little treasures were gone. In their place were makeup and jewelry stands, and an elaborate computer setup. It was a room befitting a young woman perched on the threshold of that liminal space we call adolescence.
I sat with her briefly, asked what she was doing—“Talking to friends,” she replied. I returned to the living room, her attention already back on her screen. I felt the same ache my son had described. But all I could think was: She’s entered the cocoon.
It was such a poignant moment in time.
The Boundary That is Adolescence
In a recent conversation with a colleague and mentor, she shared something that struck me deeply: adolescence is itself a boundary. A boundary of experience, identity, and necessity. The metaphor of the cocoon fits perfectly. A cocoon is self-made. Whether spun from silk or shaped from within, it is a sacred, protective space that shelters profound transformation. So it is with adolescence.
I’m currently teaching a course on boundaries with integrity where we explore the weaving of boundaries, integrity, and identity. Diving into the complexity of setting and maintaining boundaries, we begin to understand that the process always begins within. A boundary is "that which indicates the limits of anything," according to the Oxford English Dictionary. It is a visible mark indicating a dividing line, a boundary being the limit or furthest point of extension of any one thing. Who we are, the limits of our being, how far we can extend ourselves while maintaining a sense of Self are determined by our boundaries and identity. One of the major ways we learn who we are, how to be in the world, and how we teach people to be with us is by the boundaries we set.
The adolescent as they go through their adolescence is intensely boundaried—with their time, attention, socializing, and affections. Within those boundaries, they are doing the enormous work of becoming, of dissolving what was to metabolize what will be. As they do so, blurred edges of identity begin to sharpen, come into focus. The adolescent will shapeshift for a while, becoming this person then that. They try on personas, inner parts hop in and out of the driver’s seat of the operating ego. Over time, they begin to emerge from this state transformed, tendrils of who they were in childhood threaded through their personality, proudly displaying new colors and patterns, and they are someone they were and weren’t before.
Another apt metaphor is the alchemical vessel—a crucible where seemingly chaotic, mysterious processes unfold, only to follow a deeper, hidden order. Adolescents are like alchemists of the self. They mix memory and imagination, pain and hope, solitude and yearning, until something entirely new is formed. We do not get to rush this process. We do not always understand it, and we don’t need to. But we must trust that it is essential.
Honoring the Boundary
One of the greatest disservices we can do to young people is to pathologize what may be the normal (if painful) process of becoming. Yes, there are adolescents who genuinely suffer from depression, anxiety, and other serious conditions that require diagnosis and support. But too often in my practice, I encounter teens who are simply in the deep inner work of transformation. Their suffering is twofold—the valid suffering that comes with transformation and the suffering that comes when the initial suffering is invalidated, dismissed, minimized, and/or pathologized.
They are sorting out, feeling, processing, and retreating. They are shutting down because rest is necessary. Retreat is sacred. The world is loud, demanding, and overstimulating. In that light, their obsession with phones and social media becomes understandable. In a culture that constantly demands productivity, that tells us being is never enough, perhaps the phone offers a form of sanctioned inactivity. It says: See? I’m doing something.
When I was a teenager, my new stepmother didn’t understand me—didn’t try to. She would scold me for reading in my room for hours after school, for calling my best friend the moment I got home, even though I’d just spent the day with her. I internalized a message: It’s not okay to retreat. It’s not okay just to be. The adolescent kingdom, with its closed doors and drawn blinds, was under siege. I continue to work with those manager parts and inner critics that can make it difficult to rest and retreat.
We must honor the space of the adolescent boundary. Whether or not we like it, or feel comfortable with it, adolescents lead secret lives. And they must. It is how they grow into themselves. The cocoon is not a rejection of love—it is a rite of passage.
Our role as the trusted adults, the service providers, those who care for and about the young person, is not to tear down the cocoon in fear, but to protect it. To stand outside it with love and patience. To whisper through the fabric: I see you. I’m here. I trust your becoming.
Photo: 24Novembers