Whether it be Covid, world events, my age, or something else, my what-was-before will never-be-after. Specifically I am thinking about the destruction of confidence in the predictability of tomorrow for Gen Z.
Many things were lost in the pandemic even as new destabilizing things came into being. An economy that has reshaped jobs and job openings, military strife, local social upheavals and general political contentions, housing shortages, remote communications of all kinds – these things and more have fractured communities and continuity. There go social services (the social safety net was recently described on NPR as Women) and here comes A I. For what should we prepare, especially if we don’t have a track record we hope to keep?
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In my practice I am working a lot with sub-clinical depression in many younger patients. Rather than having lost, they have yet to acquire long-term perspectives on who they can be, which are a bedrock of identity consolidation. “Trauma” is an over-used term. Nonetheless, I meet many young people grappling with a trauma of confusion and emptiness.
Gen Z in particular, but also Gen X and even some millennials, who worked hard and got good educations, are beyond disillusion. I teach in a doctoral program and students every day question why they are doing this while piling up debt. They see doors closing on many anticipated careers. Was all their preparatory effort for naught?
Parents too, who struggled to make these good educations possible, are conflicted about what to expect now compared to what they expected when they set out to provide a path to a comfortable and fulfilling future for their children. My children are of an earlier generation, yet even their horizons have been foreshortened. Possibly the youngest among Gen Z is new enough not to be looking backwards, and thus is insulated from the shock of dislocation and the vision of an uncertain future.
The tools of therapy can help when external conditions generate internal shame. Reduction of self-blame for insecurity and fears of being disappointing and disappointed is some comfort. Injuries to self-esteem and relational complications also can be ameliorated in the treatment room. My empathy with the distress, and recognition of the whole person, as well as disentangling past from present and thereby to future, can, I hope and intend, avert full blown depression.
Nonetheless anxiety is still anxiety, and young people have a lot to be anxious about.I am not suggesting we throw up our hands and close our offices (those of us who still have offices vs. Zoom). Therapy only at a distance is part of the social depletion in my opinion. I do suggest we acknowledge as experienced therapists that due to years spent in education, training, and practice, we are part of the “before” generations and have our own work to do to grasp what young people are facing.
My hope is to be gladly surprised by what comes to be that never was before which young people may create. I am not giving up on the mission to promote healing of past and present damage, and engender confidence about resolving future obstacles, which should lead to a good life.