Casualities #2: Friendship parabola never hits the y axis

 

I am sick of fake and platitudinal wisdom, the kinds you see on ten thousand psychology youtube videos. However, I probably just shot one of my 15- to 16-year-old girl clients a piece of it. The ex­change began with her text-message to me this morning, endorsing a video about dealing with negative feelings. Instead of texting her back directly, I wrote a comment at the video itself:

Notice that [the presenter] says ‘people avoid emotional pain’ over and over again for 16 minutes. Will her next video be in favor of deep emotional release, as in “primal scream” therapy (1970)? That would seem to be the solution to long-term emotional suppression and repression, wouldn’t it? I guarantee you she won’t go there, but will promote some variation of Cognitive Therapy (like Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy), which is where she got the term “catastrophize.” That method still has you thinking about feeling, which doesn’t do anything to dislodge deep-seated pain, which by the way is in the body – chemical, neurological, muscular. No attempt to think away pain can work. It can only temporarily numb you. And yet to dive into the fire of our earliest, most critical and life-forming pain would be catastrophic for many people, especially children and adolescents. That would rip the floor out from under them. Real therapeutic help is complex, nuanced and delicately responsive to each individual and to the moment. You will not find it in a workbook.”

She texted:

Thanks Fred. I’ve just been trying to do everything I can to try and help myself but I see ur point because nothing seems to be working.

Me:

Teenagers are slightly stuck in crappy feelings because they’re caught between parents and adulthood. That’s like sucky quicksand. Friends (the GOOD kind) are very helpful to make it through the transition years. But I think you have to mostly accentuate your positives* in a friendship, otherwise, it becomes “bad therapy.”

Client:

Like focus on the positives in my friends?

Self:

No. In YOUR life.

Here is where the likely fake wisdom entered the discussion:

You shouldn’t have to do any mental work on real friends.

They should be a source of ease and pleasure, maybe some excitement. They shouldn’t be (to use a jealous epithet uttered by minor composer John Field about the immortal Fr. Chopin, 1810 – 1849) “sickbed talents.”

Young lady:

“Yes, it should just be natural,” she said, way too agreeably.

How could I really believe that a depressed and anxious teen’s friendships should rightly be with relatively healthy peers to whom she would apply her accentuated positives? I could do it because the alternative is sick: The young person in neurotic relationships with troubled or fickle or self-mutilating or suicidal others; those who dedicate much more time to their online “friends” in other states; who never look in her direction and reach out – so she is always the one reaching. I vaguely remember my own adopted daughters’ friends. They were normal, decent kids. They played Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, the girls snuck out at midnight (which I learned years later) to hang out with their group. But there was no crime, drugs, pregnancy. Were there deep discus­sions about disorders, screwed up mothers and (adoptive) fathers? I admit that I don’t know. Was there the chronic existential questioning of the nature of friendship and the near-impossibility of finding an actual good friend? I seriously doubt it.

Precarious teens were worsened by the full year of covid shutting-in. That made them fall into themselves, depression and sometimes depersonalization, especially those with problem parents. I hope they are starting to recover now. But can’t they invoke the small gold nuggets in their souls, and drop a little of the damned self-consciousness that sabotages all relationships?

Fake wisdom is based on hope. In fact, the girls (and Borderline boys) may be so needy of love that no mere friendship can work well. They may be so self-enbubbled and void of self-esteem that they feel uncomfortable with established friends. I recently disagreed with two twenty-some­thing clients who intoned the mantra: “I shouldn’t need a relationship. I should be happy in myself.” No, I suggested. You need a partner, a bond, like a plant needs soil.

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* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCtOZF14nTc – Johnny Mercer’s “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive,” 1944.