My therapy practice has experienced a flood a new adults (18 to 28 years old) recently. That wouldn’t be so dramatic by itself, but the challenges they are bringing to the therapy sessions are remarkably the same! The situations usually sound something like this:
I’m a failure. I can’t seem to get a grip on what I want to do with my life. I’m a disappointment to my parents. Everyone else has started their life and I’m still stuck in school. I will never find anyone to marry me. Things haven’t turned out the way I thought they would. (remember, they are not out of their 20’s yet!) I’m not happy.
Through our discussions, several themes evolved.
The first theme had to do with comparisons. One young woman, age 22, who is finishing her 5th year at the university in order to graduate said, “All my friends are finished with school”. When I asked her to name them, only 2 of her 5 closest friends had actually finished theirs degree. One had dropped out, and 2 weren’t as close to graduating as she was. She had chosen to focus on the 2 of her friends who had graduated to compare herself to rather than taking a broader look at the people who hadn’t. A young man, a little older than this 18-28 group was looking at the financial success of others his age and lamenting his lack of achievement. What he forgot to look at was the difference in the long-term potential his degree and talents could achieve compared to the level of income his comparison group had without that same potential.
I will often cite a cancer study with regard to comparisons. Briefly, the study of women in chemotherapy treatment were asked to rate their sense of hopelessness during their treatment. The women who compared their own situation to women who were doing better than them physically, rated their hopelessness as very significant. The women who compared their own situation to others who were doing more poorly than they were physically, rated their level of hopelessness as not significant. The results suggest that eventhough the women making the comparison were all equal in their progress, it just depended on who their compared themselves to as to what their emotional outcome would be. This makes the argument to pick someone who is not as well off as you to make your comparison to. If you choose someone better off than you, emotionally, you will feel defeated in some significant way. This is a great coping skill.
The second theme that seems to be appearing is the notion of pleasing other people and their needs for you. I’m all for being a pleasing person….but first you have to take care of your own wants and needs. Then you can consider if someone else’s wants are something you want to attend to. You have choices to comply or not; but first, you must know your own wants, needs, values, life view, belief system, etc. So how do you figure that out?
One of the many ways: I ask people to look at the “shoulds” in their life. If they can change the “should” to a “want”, then it is their option to go for it! I will talk more about this next.
The other big theme that’s surfacing is the new adult can’t seem to BE an adult! The parents of the new adults have forgotten that they need to back off on the parenting role. Oh, they could be an adviser if the new adult asks for advice, but they need to wait for the invitation. Bite your tongue if you are a parent of a new adult. I can show you the marks in my tongue where I’ve bitten mine! I will say, “I have a thought about…. Would you like to hear it?” If they say ‘yes’ I tell. If not, I hold it. By asking permission, you are respecting their right to choose to have your wisdom or not. A key word is ‘respecting’. I respect my sons. I trust that they will make the best choices for themselves. Even if their choices don’t work out the way they had planned, it is not a mistake…it is only an opportunity to learn. What a gift! So, parents and new adults listen up! Stop ’shoulding’ on yourself and your adult offspring. No more, “Well, I think you should…….” These new adults need time and space to figure out who they are and what they want in their lives. They do not need to “live their life by committee”. Each person is a unique individual and has the capacity to grow into independent, self-sufficient, successful adults if the parents would just step out of their way and cheer them on! And new adults… confidence comes one step at a time; with one lesson at a time. Have some patience.
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