The Three Big Hugs Marijuana, Alcohol and Digital Devices: What is a Parent to Do?
Intuitively, we know that we are supposed to have feelings and emotions. Emotions help to keep us out of danger by bringing us to caution. Emotions range from pleasure, to grief and feelings of despair. Without them we are ill-equipped to interpret our world. What if our emotions are too much to bear and our brains need to help us escape our susceptibility to being wounded? Woundedness can be generated by perceived or real events. The result is a chemistry of alarm made up of cortisol and adrenaline. Marijuana, alcohol and digital devices provide relief and give a sense of safety. They make people feel better temporarily but don’t address the underlying source of what it is that is causing the need to use.
For adolescents, the drive to escape the overwhelming sensation of alarm goes very deep. School work, existential questions about life and the future, relationship difficulties and wondering whether one matters or belongs somewhere in the universe often lead to feelings of depression and/or anxiety. Marijuana, alcohol, and digital devices numb out these worries in the psyche and soothe the resulting alarm but they never help the user to mature and to adapt to the complexities of life.
In other words, substance use makes one feel better without really changing anything and without really meeting the underlying need; temporarily soothing wounds instead of nurturing maturation and this keeps our adolescents stuck in their development.
It is time to help our kids cope with their emotional lives. Emotions are meaningful and are an essential part of who we are. Instead of escaping the experience of feeling lost; things not going the way they were planned; situations that are anxiety-provoking, and questions that cannot be answered, sitting with or staying with uncomfortable feelings until futility sinks in will ultimately fuel maturation.
Dr. Gordon Neufeld reminds us that facing futility is reached when there is nothing left to do but cry. Tears are the gateway to brain development. Generated by facing emotional pain, tears kick-start the process of maturation and deliver the adolescent to the destination where resilience emerges and the brain is no longer driven to escape through substance use. The adolescent realizes that s/he can survive adversity and the unpredictable nuances of living.
In some situations, psychotherapy can help uncover the void or the unbearable experience from which the adolescent Is running. Too often, the void is discovered to be lack of parental involvement or rejection from a sibling or a friend. Now is the time for parents to be fully present. Our youth need us more than ever in helping to adapt both to face-to-face connection, and what comes with the digital world of blind connection.
Marijuana, alcohol and the use of digital devices provide relief but impede maturation. When making choices from a driven state of alarm, there is no freedom to grow and the adolescent is left in a place of developmental stuckness or stagnation. Substances form blind attachments to harmful ways of being. Parents can step into their rightful position so that their adolescent becomes dependent on them to guide their way out of stuckness and into a resilient and successful life.
Copyright, October 16, 2014 by Susan Dafoe-Abbey BIS, MED, RMFT. Permission to use this material, either in English or French or in translation, for educational purposes is hereby granted. susan@dafoe-abbey.com www.dafoe-abbey.com 519 829 2232
