Storm & stress of adolescence

This week has been painful for me in some ways and gratifying in others. November 7th marks the date when I tried to kill myself 19 years ago; a college student in third-year graduation, life had seemed so bleak then, that death had seemed better. With time, healing, therapy and dedicating myself to purpose that includes supporting others, my own wounds have healed. Each year, I celebrate my survival; a sort of ‘live-iversary’ if you can call it that. Each year, the sadness and grief ebbs, learning and self-reflection grows as life gives me new opportunities to redefine myself, new gifts that keep multiplying hope and desire. Every year, I honour that young girl who was lost and hopeless and I honour the woman I am now who has moved past so much.

Childhood trauma

This year as I sat reflecting on the event, I thought about how any event has a temporal location but its roots often lie way back. Just like the sudden appearance of say, a mischief of rowdy destructive monkeys in a neighbourhood indicates that perhaps local forests have been cut down and the monkeys have lost their territory. What happens to young people in college or even later, especially in terms of mental health, can have roots in childhood trauma that has gone untreated and has been left to fester and compound. And this festering is not a day, a week or a month in the making, but sometimes takes years to reach a level where it can no longer be contained and breaks out as self-harm, excessive anger or behavioural issues.

Early childhood trauma and serious adolescent issues that may be related to the child or the family the child exists in; issues like abuse, bullying, death, accidents, and loss can all go on to impact young people later in life. And sometimes it’s hard to put a finger on any one single event that may cause children to collapse later. I don’t think life is ever as simple as that. Every hurt that occurs, and every healing step that takes place is hardly ever singular.

A child suffering is a symptom of the holdbacks existing in the family, school and social systems around that child. For example, it is possible that a child gets severely abused by a family member and the rest of the family doesn’t step in to protect the child or fails to notice the child’s grief and pain. That child then goes to school or visits other social circles where again his grief finds no room for expression. What eventually leads to total isolation of the child is not just the primary event, but the lack of care or attention around the child in the weeks, months, years following that event. It is that cycle of ignorance and denial that often pushes children to a place where they feel they have no voice, no safety, and no warmth.

Verbal, non-verbal cues

But the opposite of that kind of systemic pain and denial of safety is also possible in healing through the circles that exist around children; the kind of healing that helped me recover and later thrive. Say a child is hurt at home in violent ways but finds a kind teacher who notices something is off and steps in to enquire, reassure, and provide care and warmth can make all the difference to that child’s recovery and experience of the world. The same can be said of parents who pay attention to the verbal and non-verbal cues children send out when they are suffering. Hardly any child will suffer in a way that is completely undetectable. Nightmares, bed wetting, anxiety before exams, refusal to go to school or refusal to go to a certain relative or family friend, sleeplessness, and disproportionate anger can all be signs that a child is suffering in some way. There’s always some little sign that can show an adult that a child needs help.

It’s not like adults don’t care or are apathetic towards children but it can often feel like that. Last year on my ‘live-iversary’, reflecting on the many ways systems holdback care and attention when it comes to children and young people, I asked myself, ‘Was there really no one looking out for you when you experienced darkness or did you not notice that help was available?’ The truth is, there was some help available. One part of the story is that I didn’t know how to ask for help. And I didn’t even know I needed it. Raised with a strong training of ‘grin and bear it’ and ‘be strong’, I did not allow myself to be vulnerable, to even admit to myself that I was suffering. It was more important to uphold the family’s honour and status quo. The other part of the story is that there was care demonstrated but it came across in ways that seemed shaming and abrasive to me. When a few elders noticed there was something off with me, they worded it thus, ‘You have put on so much weight; You don’t look good.’ ‘Why are you missing classes? ; You used to be very regular’; ‘Why have you become so rude, why don’t you talk like before?’ Now I know that this was perhaps a twisted way of showing concern at obvious changes in me, but the way this concern reached me felt like shaming and exclusion.

The elders our children need...

There are many other pieces to my story that have no place here but to the adults reading this, I will say this — we are broken and made by multiple events, people, and memories but that doesn’t mean individuals are not powerful; in both good and bad ways. For me, there were entire circles of family, generational and social structures that withheld protection and care as I grew up for me to feel so alone in my teens that I felt I had nowhere to turn for help. And later, in my thirties, I found other families, friends, teachers, guides who stepped in to provide the nurturing and care I needed to heal. I also found my own voice that helped my family understand me better. The same may be true for your children. When we see things this way, we realise how vital each adult is in a child’s life. Vital to the way they thrive and vital also to the pain they endure. I wonder if we, as adults can begin to look at ourselves like that for children; important and irreplaceable. Not in a high and mighty ‘we know what’s the best way’ but in an ‘I am here for you no matter how you relate to me way’; as parents, teachers, neighbours, family friends, vital for our children. I wonder what that can do for them and for us, as a race.

These are the thoughts that I have held on to as my pain transformed into purpose and as I continue to shape myself into an elder I wish I had when I was an adolescent and teen.

Be careful with how you respond to changes you notice in a young child’s
appearance or behaviour. Your response can lead them to healing or can serve to alienate them further. Be mindful of the complexity of a young child’s situation (especially if you’re not family to the child) where it may not be up to them entirely to fight or struggle in healing ways. Offer what you can and do it with compassion. Be the elder you would have wanted around you when you were little and in pain.

As I celebrate and mourn my past and present, I leave you with these questions on the eve of Children’s Day — What kind of an elder do you wish to be? And what are you doing today, to become that?

Reema Ahmad is an NLP-based life coach, trauma and relationships counsellor, TEDx speaker and author of Unparenting: Sharing Awkward Truths with Curious Kids (Penguin Random House, 2022).