Mother Teresa said, “In the West there is loneliness, which I call the leprosy of the West. In many ways it is worse than our poor in Calcutta.”
In my experience, loneliness is best predictor of relapse. If a young woman finishes treatment successfully but returns home to no friends, even if her parents are “there” for her consistently, she will relapse within a very short amount of time. Teens need a support system outside of their immediate families.
Think about it: if someone loves you and wants to be around you, and they are not required or expected to do so, doesn’t that make you feel good? Parents and siblings are supposed to love us. But friends are not. Once we experience love and validation from others outside of our immediate families, something within us changes. We begin to believe that we DO have value and that the nice things our parents have been telling us about ourselves could possibly be true.
Mother Teresa went on to say, “There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience this in our lives – the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family.”
Residential treatment centers have fallen short. We have not incorporated teens’ friends into treatment and transition as well as we should. Well before they transition – even from as early on as admission – we need to provide teens with ways of connecting with good friends. We can provide them with easy ways of keeping in touch with the friends they make in treatment through creative use of social media, such as Facebook and Ning, cell phones and instant messaging. We can help them determine more effectively – on their own – which friends at home are supportive and helpful. And then we should get them to connect with those friends in creative, non-electronic ways.
One young woman went home during treatment and invited her friends to a “non-alcoholic party”. She was nervous that they would think it was dumb. She was even more nervous that no one would show up, because she planned it for a Friday night – a night when “everybody goes out to party”. Well, she had a great turnout and she led them in a game of “supermarket relay”. She formed teams of two, each team filled a cart in the supermarket with goods, they all switched carts, and the first team to put the goods back on the shelves in the correct places won. Her friends had a blast and many commented that they didn’t know they “could have fun without getting drunk”.
Many teens think that being “clean” means being lonely. This young woman returned to finish treatment with a new confidence that she could be successful without having to be lonely.
I overheard someone telling one of our students that she loved her. 40 of us were packed into a room at a transition ceremony. We had formed a big circle, standing up, and the graduating student was going from person to person, hugging each one goodbye. As the student approached my right, she hugged my friend (staff) and my friend said, “I love you.” The student, crying, said, “I love you too.” Their hug lasted about 10 seconds. Was this appropriate? What would I say when it was my turn to say goodbye? After all, I was a 30-plus-year-old man and she was a 16-year-old young woman.
Why does the word “love” carry such a taboo in treatment? Do we really think that we can wall-off our hearts to those we serve? Do we really think that we can remain unaffected by their journeys, their stories?
As a relationship progresses, I believe it’s important to define what is happening. It’s especially important because many young women in treatment have had inappropriate, unhealthy relationships and they become confused about what they are feeling. Particularly as a male therapist, I have to be constantly aware that the intensity of the emotions shared during healing process can be confusing to young women. So I am constantly defining what I mean and why I choose to use the words I do.
For example, if I tell a client, “I care about you very much,” I will immediately clarify that statement. ”You realize that this is not a sexual kind of caring,” I’ll say. ”The feelings I’m expressing are like those I might feel for my own daughter.” Usually, the girl will become uncomfortable: ”I know it’s not sexual! Why do you even have to say that?!”
I’ll press forward. ”You’ve certainly noticed where my eyes look.” ”Yes,” she’ll usually say . “Your eyes never leave my face.”
“Why is that?” I’ll ask. And we’ll talk about how my feelings toward her are fatherly, as if she were a daughter. We’ll define the differences between platonic love and amorous love. We’ll dissect the friendship that is developing.
I tell her that I am okay with the conversation being uncomfortable as long as we can take use that moment to be clear with each other about what kind of relationship is developing between us. I submit that this is good therapy.
One student I worked with years ago had had a boyfriend ten years older than I. It was difficult for her to reconcile her growing feelings of love for me with what she’d experienced with her perpetrator boyfriend. As we grew closer, it was vital that I teach her the differences between what she’d felt for him and what she was beginning to feel towards me.
At times the conversations were painfully direct. ”I am not aroused by you,” I recall saying when she provocatively suggested that there might be more to her feelings than would be appropriate. Whenever I noticed confusion in her eyes during a group where a male staff member might have expressed compassion for her situation, we would take a moment to define what was going on for her and for him.
Years after treatment she came to an alumni reunion. We had a few quiet moments to catch up on her life and she said, “You’re about the only man I trust.” I was taken off-guard by that statement. She explained that she’d caught her father looking at pornography, that she’d been “used” in every intimate relationship she’d had since treatment, and that she just couldn’t look at men without feeling sexually unsafe. ”But not you,” she said. I attribute that to the hours and hours we spent working at understanding the difference between appropriate and inappropriate love.
All of this and more flashed through my mind as I stood in that circle during that transition ceremony and anticipated how I would say goodbye to one of my favorite students. It only took a few seconds for her to hug the person at my right and then be standing directly in front of me, but I relived every moment we’d shared during treatment. I felt my heart swell in my chest. I felt my eyes sting. This was a student who would have been dead, had she not received care. I thought back to the day she had arrived. Images of her – angry, bitter, depressed – flashed in my mind: her dark clothing, her darker countenance; her fear of connecting, her fear of others never wanting to connect to her.
I thought of the arguments we’d had, the times she’d screamed at me until she was hoarse. I thought of the quiet moments when she’d trusted me enough to tell me something she’d never told anyone before.
The feelings within me burned stronger as I reminisced about the magical moment when something had seemed to “click” for her. I remembered her change of heart. I recalled the light that shone in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before, but which her mother said had been there up until only a few years ago. Her face and demeanor had relaxed and she had become gentler with others – and with herself.
And so, as she stepped in front of me and reached up to hug my neck, without shame or pretense I wrapped my arms around her back and pulled her tight to my shoulder and said, “I love you.” There was nothing sexual about me using that word, and she knew it. ”I love you too,” she said. There was no confusion in my mind about what she meant. For five seconds we enjoyed the connection of that hug. We felt the bond of friendship forged in the heat generated by months and months of intensive psychological and emotional healing.
Then she pulled away and moved on to the person at my left. I’m pretty sure I overheard them use the word “love” as well, but I can’t be sure. I was distracted with trying not to cry.
Illustration by Aidan Jones
I get asked a lot how to know if you can trust someone, especially boys. Here’s a little formula I came up with a few years ago. Let me know your thoughts on it.
T = bottom line, you need TIME with a person before you can trust him. I’m fairly confident it takes longer than 3 months to know if you can really trust a guy with your deepest emotions and thoughts.
R = RESPECT is paramount. If he’s not respectful to you, to the waitress at your favorite restaurant, and to his mother, then you have a problem.
U = UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. He needs to accept you as you are. If he’s telling you to “lose some weight” or he makes you feel stupid, you are heading for a train wreck relationship.
S = you need to feel SAFETY with him, both emotional and physical. If he pushes your physical boundaries – in any way – get rid of him immediately. If he is overly sarcastic, rude, or argumentative with you, then he’s not emotionally safe, either, and doesn’t deserve your time and attention.
T = this one may be obvious, but you’d be surprised how many girls let it slide: TRUTH. He must be truthful at all times. If you catch him in a lie, no matter how small, he’s done! There is no excuse for lying to a friend.
So, bottom line, if you’ve spent time with him, he is respectful of you, he is unconditionally loving towards you, you feel safe with him, and he tells the truth, then your decision to risk trusting him is more likely to be a good decision.
Is this foolproof? No. But a majority of the time you will make a good decision.
