The Adolescent and the Cocoon: An Analogy for All of Us
Jan 24, 2023- I continue to argue and proclaim that there is a vital reason (for our species and the planet) for the stage of life we call “adolescence.” It’s inconceivable that we would go directly from childhood to adulthood. Why does the caterpillar not overnight become the butterfly? Something essential happens during the transformative process of adolescence and the Lepidoptera during its pupal or chrysalis stage in the cocoon. Here are some initial musings and sweeping generalizations as I entertain some possible answers. Your thoughts, rebuttals, and corrections to the generalizations are welcome. I’m doing a bit of a meander here as I work through these reflections.
I began to ponder these ideas after hearing Dan Siegel speak on his new book IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging. Dr. Siegel explained his concept of the individual self as an ‘intraconnected’ self, that is self-informed by, and contributing to, the interweaving of the larger, external world. I then reflected on my recent musings about the adolescent mental health/identity/soul crises we are faced with, especially within the context of our modern Western/Global Northern cultures—cultures that are so profoundly, courageously, and at the same time, destructively individualistic. However, we must also acknowledge the profound courage and destructive side of collectivist cultures as well. Individualistic cultures are in service to the personal at the expense of connectedness and community. And collectivist cultures may expect individuals to sacrifice their own journeys to become the essence of who they are for the sake of the greater good. I have felt the heat as I hear clients grappling with these issues.
Maybe one of the evolutionary, archetypal purposes of adolescence is to develop, celebrate, and integrate the need for both an individual journey of becoming and the vital necessity of building community for the sake of the greater good. Especially now in this epoch of the Anthropocene. What if adolescence as a developmental stage shows us how to situate our humanity in both the personal and the communal rather than either/or?
Maybe this is a stretch, but let’s entertain these ideas for a moment. The Lepidoptera must go inside and undergo a Dionysian dissolution into something that is unrecognizable as either caterpillar or butterfly or moth. One of the recurrent questions I hear from parents is, “Who is this stranger inhabiting my child’s body?” Sometimes the change seems to happen overnight. This being we call ‘human’ also undergoes a Dionysian dissolution, becoming something almost unrecognizable to those who know and love them. The adolescent is neither child nor adult, and they are fiercely determined to be their own person while also working harder than they probably ever have to find their place in the world, to find where they belong.
My very wise friend and marketing/tech fairy pointed out that the adolescent’s community—which includes teachers, employers, mentors, parents, grandparents, neighbors, anybody who interacts with, is affected by, and informs the life of that young person—is very much like the cocoon itself—the cocoon or pupa—that amazing structure that the creature creates from silk or its own exoskeleton to wrap around itself, hunker down, transform, and become.
If we are part of this cocoon-spinning, here are some things to consider:
How well do we prepare our children to build this cocoon?
Do our children have the resources and support they need to form their cocoon?
How secure and yet also, how responsive are the protection and scaffolding we provide?
Are we attuned enough to know when the transformation is nearing its natural outcome and the adolescent is just a few steps away from adulthood?
Do we know how to support them appropriately and wisely as they take those last steps?
How is the child’s world involved in these processes? How does the external world inform, impact, and influence the adolescing of our young people?
From this perspective, where the external, objective world-at-large and the internal, subjective world-at-large meet is where adolescence happens. And let’s also include nature, plants, and animals and weather, city streets, forest paths, and the places that hold all of us in this community. It is at here at the conjunction between community and individual, world and self, internal and external, where the person in the throes of becoming, figures out who and how and where they are going to be, who is there for them and who is not.
You have most likely heard some version of a story where someone raising butterflies pulls back the layers of the cocoon to assist the butterfly in its emergence in their eagerness to help the butterfly break free. Alas, too much too soon, and the butterfly’s wings are crippled. Equally damaging is when the pupa stays in the cocoon too long, the walls that once held it securely then become a prison and a death sentence. It is such a delicate balanced process for the creature to become an adult.
Humans, fortunately, can stay in a cocoon for a long time until we are ready. We can, in spite of trauma, in spite of being pushed into the world too soon or unprepared, of not having the safe cocoon within which to transform and become—in spite of all of this, we can (and I would propose that we must) continue that work. Many of us are still in the midst of our adolescing. And that’s wonderful! It continues to be a fine and delicate balance of emergence.
As adolescent service providers, as parents and family members of adolescents, as community members holding the space for our children to grow up, we have this powerful opportunity to learn from teenagers about this emergent point in our history that there is an intraconnected web between the individual and the collective. We have the opportunity to learn from the adolescent standing before us about our own continued journey from adolescence to adulthood, from cocoon to flight, how to be intraconnected.
Photo by rabbitti