[This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look!]
Early on, as a child, a smart teen begins to hear about other places and other lives. He hears about fashion shows in Paris, New York, and Milan and, if some combination of factors make fashion important to him, then he is already pining for those experiences and those places, even though he may only be eight years old. Or if it’s music that moves her deeply, then it may be something she sees about Nashville or Austin—a reality show set in Nashville, an old episode of Austin City Limits—that gets under her skin and makes her think two things: “I must get there!” and “I am in the completely wrong place to live the life that I want to live.”
She may feel in the completely wrong place for many reasons. She may already possess a subtle understanding that patriotism is the refuge of scoundrels and feel antagonistic toward her small town’s self-congratulatory flag-waving. She may already understand about how unfairly wealth is distributed and hate her family’s status, privilege, and spending habits. She may have already stopped believing that the religious group she was born into has a monopoly of goodness or any real understanding of the universe and have come to hate the prayer meetings in her parents’ living room. By virtue of her native intelligence she is bound to see through a lot of humbug, and that will make her want to be elsewhere.
Of course, she can’t know that “elsewhere” is hardly all that her heart is telling her it’s cracked up to be. All she knows is that she is in a very wrong place, among very wrong people, encircled by oppressive beliefs and naked prejudices that don’t suit her, and maybe caught in the wrong time as well. Idealizing Paris of the 1920’s or Greenwich Village of the 1940’s, she may pine for a different epoch, one where she could write with a quill pen. This time, as well as this place, may not suit her.
However, she is where she is. Unless her life is so dark and so turbulent and unless she is so distraught or so unsafe that she runs away, taking to the dangerous life of the streets, she is functionally trapped. Her only real escape is her room. A smart teen will spend a lot of time in her room not just because it is private and cozy but because it is her sanctuary, where she can believe what she believes and be who she is.
If what I’m describing is true for her, she will feel alienated from the world in which she is forced to live. Her most pressing thought may be, “I have to get out of here” and her plans may revolve around escape. This pressing need and this sense of alienation can lead to all sorts of impulsive escapades, from pregnancies (“Motherhood will get me out of here!”) to world-crossing escapes (“I must spend the summer with my Irish cousins!”) to the ever-increasing consumption of drugs (“If my body can’t be elsewhere, my head can!”) This alienation is all-too-likely to create both angst and dramatic, life-altering consequences.
For parents
You may not recognize the extent to which your smart teen is feeling alienated; or you may recognize it but not understand it. Remember, however, that you choose your life: she didn’t choose hers. She didn’t choose to live in this small town, with its small-town prejudices, or to attend this expensive, fancy school, with its competitive, off-putting classmates. Given her druthers, she might well have chosen Paris or public school. Acknowledging her rather complete lack of decision-making power may help you better understand her feelings of alienation.
And you may be feeling the same way. You, too, may be feeling alienated. Many smart adults are. You may not be feeling very much at home in your skin, your house, or your town. If this is how you’re experiencing life, wouldn’t it be lovely to sit your teen down and share that news? Maybe by saying something like “Isn’t it weird here?”? Maybe you could laugh together or cry together. Maybe you could start reading absurdist literature together and start your own two-person discussion group. Maybe sharing would serve both of you?
We have arrived at a time in human history where every young person is exposed to a million possible worlds, many of which will not speak to her but some of which will speak to her powerfully. Naturally, she will want to be in that world, not in her everyday world. This desire alienates her from her day-to-day life and causes a pain that is hard to address. Help her by understanding that it is no criticism of you if she is dreaming about and maybe obsessing over other universes. And if it is a criticism, well, let that be her right. She is entitled to feel as if she is in the completely wrong place, as she didn’t choose this one.
For teens
You may feel that you are in the completely wrong place. And you may be. But, for now at least, you are where you are. It is in your best interests to figure out how to live exactly where you are, without creating unnecessary emotional anguish and without driving yourself to the edge of a cliff, over which are those many potentially dangerous escapades.
Let’s think about that. How can you best manage to be okay exactly where you are? What might a “plan” for that look like? This isn’t the “getting away” plan—the escape plan—but the “what’s the best way for me to cope while I’m here?” plan. There are some simple things you might try, like putting up posters of where you want to be. Let’s start there. What are some simple things that you might try to help you live well exactly where you are, trapped in a world not of your own making? Try your hand at generating that list.
[This post is excerpted from Why Smart Teens Hurt. To learn more, please take a look!]
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
