How to Celebrate, Nurture, and Ground the Idealistic Adolescent
Sep 27, 2023- One of my best and most favorite parts of myself is the one that still holds all the idealism that came along when I was a teenager in the early 70’s. This part of me believes that the world is worth saving, that people are worth all the blood, sweat, and tears, and that there is a definitive way forward to an equitable and sustainable world. And I’m happy to keep subscribing to that belief, even though it is born of innocence and naiveté
However, this Idealistic Adolescent part in me also has had negative impact on me and sometimes those around me. Not coming to grips with reality can make all kinds of things go sideways, including a terrible loss of hope when the ideals I work so hard to achieve don’t manifest. Because not all hopes and dreams are going to come true no matter how hard we work for them. Because maturity requires us to come to compassionate terms with our personal limitations. Because life just doesn’t work that way. Because we live in a world where there is inequity, oppression, disenfranchisement, and social injustice. Because many privileges are denied to too many.
I remember a conversation I had as a young parent with my son when he was about 15 years old. He was so sure he knew everything there was to know. He was filled with aspirations, dreams, plans, and goals. Most of them, I knew, were never going to happen. At least not without an enormous amount of luck, commitment, and money. I was also aware that the world just doesn’t work the way he assumed it was going to work for him. Knowing what I know now about validation and teenagers, I see that I went about that conversation all wrong. He didn’t need to hear from me all of the barriers, all of the things that needed to line up for his dreams to come true, that he really didn’t know everything, he just thought he did—like most of us. He needed something else.
Celebrating and Grounding
As an adolescent therapist, I hear the Idealistic Adolescent parts of my teen clients all the time. These parts of my clients show up with either grandiose ideas about themselves that give them hope and initiative, or they show up alongside frustrated and disillusioned parts when the world doesn’t live up to the standards of their idealism. It is in times like these that they can fall hard into some really dark places:
Their parents are no longer on pedestals but are fallible human beings.
Their friends betray them, are disloyal, or ghost them.
They fail a test in spite of studying.
They plan for a great event, that it’s going to be perfect, and then it’s not perfect.
The work is to both celebrate and ground the Idealistic Adolescent parts. It is my opinion that we should not try to get these inner parts to “get real” and stop idealizing. We need these parts for the rest of our lives, these parts of ourselves that aren’t cynical, aren’t undone by hopelessness, but continue to hold on to enormous possibilities.
What my son needed to hear that day was my excitement for his visionary goals, for his ability to imagine a bold future for himself, my compassion for this part of him that was coming alive in his teen years, this part that could, with encouragement and validation, carry him through the inevitable hard times ahead. What he needed to hear at the same time were the words that would ground him in the coming years. He needed to know that no matter what great things he did or didn’t do that I was always going to be there for him, always be proud of him, that he mattered. No matter what—success or failure. He needed both wings and roots, to be cliché about it.
Archetype of the Fool
The archetype for this Idealistic Adolescent part is the Fool. We know the Fool from tarot, the court jester, the naive bumbling youngest son in fairy tales, Shakespeare’s Wise Fools Bottom and Dogberry, and, in the world of the sacred and religious, the holy Fool. The Fool in the tarot decks often portrays a youth with a small traveling bundle on their back, a small dog at their feet, a smile on their face with their head held high not looking where they are going, and blithely stepping out into the world, which is often illustrated as a precipice—one foot on the ground and one foot ready to step out and off. The Fool is number 0 in the tarot deck, the beginning of the soul’s journey. An important process of the archetypal nature of Adolescence is that we must step off the precipice of the world we know to become intimately familiar with failure, disappointment, and perseverance while at the same time holding on to the Fool’s visionary nature. This is one of the ways that wisdom is gained.
Confession!
True confession here. Do you remember the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes? Where if you bought a subscription to one of their magazines, Ed McMahon would show up at your door with an oversized million-dollar check? One year, in my mid-twenties, my Idealistic Adolescent part knew I was going to win. So I spent several hundred dollars we could ill afford to subscribe to a dozen magazines. Alas, Ed McMahon never showed up at my front door.
It’s a bit of a standing joke now, but I have a deep fondness for that part of me, for her innocence, her belief that the world is inherently good, that there’s always another chance for wishes to come true if only she tries hard enough, Fool that she is. The secret is to have a relationship with her so she’s not the one making the decisions, though she often has a seat at the inner table—when I sit with clients; when I envision the impact of the work of The Shiftless Wanderer on the world and for teenagers in particular; when I work to make repairs in my relationships; when I feel the overwhelming fear that comes with the hard realities of a world on the edge of, or in the midst of, climate disaster. I turn to the Idealistic Adolescent with her Fool’s wisdom and am grateful for her.
Image by: Alex