If you haven’t read my last post, this post will be a lot more powerful if you do the exercise in that post first.
The value I chose when I first did this exercise was: justice. I first recall standing for this value in grade 8 or 9 when when peers would tease, torment, exclude, harass, or bully others, and it infuriated me. It also showed up when teachers, parents, and other adults would ignore, not consider, and dismiss us teenagers like we were inhuman and worthless simply for being teenagers (not surprising this is where I ended up doing my research).
Doing the above exercise with clients and groups, the vast majority of values show up for people somewhere during adolescence: dignity, respect, kindness, generosity, creativity, resilience, courage, integrity, etcetera.
Which stands in direct contrast to the stereotypes of adolescents described in my research and in the literature: resistant, challenging, manipulative, risk-takers, egocentric, lazy, aloof, self-centered, troubled, stressed, confused, undeveloped, limited, restricted, annoying, hard, melting down, not listening, hard to teach, difficult, careless, moody, sensitive, attention seeking, weak, insufficient, young, incapable, bratty, challenging, selfish, impulsive, defensive, narcissistic, lacking empathy, not engaged, not listening, shut down, self-absorbed, and disobeying.
How is it that our most important values show up at a time when the Western world views us almost exclusively negatively? These stereotypes are problematic, harmful, and need to be undone in order to reduce the storm and stress and turbulence that occurs during adolescence.
Ideas on how to reduce storm and stress and the turbulence that occurs in Western adolescence will follow.
