“Terminal Adolescence”

Among of the hallmarks of healthy adolescence are creativity, the drive to individuate, rebel against norms and find one’s path while, at the same time, heeding the powerful call to seek out one’s peeps and find places of belonging.

(There’s also the wild hormonal ride of maturing bodies, sexual awakenings, attractions – but that might have to wait for another article…)

For those on the road to becoming men, by the time they hit their early teens, they’ve already been pummeled with thousands of messages – many well-intended, some not so much – about what manhood is all about, what men are and most certainly are not, and what a man should and should not be.

Most of those messages have been handed down, unquestioned and unexamined, for generations – and while some of them are useful, most of them are like that carton of milk buried in the back of the fridge for months, bearing a “use by” date that’s long since passed.

And yet, those messages persist and continue to be handed down to this very day…

A particularly revelatory, sobering part of the men’s program I run a couple of times a year involves capturing those messages and reflecting them back to the group. While it’s a turning point moment for sure, it surely ain’t pretty…

And for many, those messages landed powerfully in their adolescent years – where they took root, were codified into law – and became unconscious, dogmatic operating principles.

What I find particularly fascinating is that, while there are a few differences, for the most part the “man box”, as Tony Porter of A Call To Men frames it, is remarkably similar across almost all the Western cultures I’ve encountered.

Male children are offered – often force-fed – a steady diet of models, rules and regulations that have them lock in a false, limiting framework of manhood that fixes in place an extraordinarily narrow band of operational “being space…”

In a nutshell – ironically apt language for this in so many ways – it goes like this: a real man must be tough, smart, (but not too smart) strong, stoic, wise, (but not too wise) self-assured, a protector, a provider, entertaining and funny, ready with answers, reliant on no one but himself, athletic, a knowledgeable sexual phenom who somehow just knows (without ever having to ask) what his partner wants or needs and, while we’re at it, anything but feminine and oh so definitely not gay…

(By the way, there’s a corresponding set of messages girls are fed that are every bit as damaging…)

As I mentioned above, most, if not all, of the messaged info gets sealed in place by the time boys are in their early to mid-teens, resulting in a large swath of the male population having cast their aspirational model of manhood in stone at a developmental stage when the prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain that recognizes and processes the relationship between actions and consequences, is still a good decade away from being fully formed.

I don’t know about you, but the thought of my 15 year-old self charting the course of my manly existence is (even with a healthy dose of fantasy, mostly of the sexual variety) just plain ugly.

And yet, all one has to do is look around with a reasonably open eye to easily spot vivid examples of damaging adolescent behaviors of men in relationships, in business, in leadership positions, in politics, in the clergy…

And because of the prevalence of all that distorted messaging, the culture can’t help but support the less than savory behaviors and models it’s spawned.

An example: a quick look at the portrayal of male characters in popular media reveals that two faces are heavily favored – the hapless, helpless idiot or the outsized, self-reliant hero. (In most of these stories, more mature men do occasionally show up, typically in lesser supporting roles because, let’s face it, healthy, mature men – healthy, mature anybody, for that matter – just don’t make for much dramatic tension…)

One more piece of the puzzle: Healthy, creative adolescent energy is a wonderful thing to have. It’s the stuff of innovative ideas, imaginings, endless possibility and idealism. (Think Greta Thunberg or the Parkland kids in their full, on-purpose forms.) When that powerful energy is harnessed, people wake up, movements coalesce and change happens…

So what’s to be done?

The challenge, on both a cultural and individual level, is recognizing when we’ve reached for the inner adolescent – abdicating our self-leadership and/or leadership in general – forcing that developmentally younger, less resourceful aspect of self into the driver’s seat, into positions of responsibility no adolescent (remember the prefrontal cortex is still off-line) could ever be prepared for…

Most of us can, at the very least, work to become aware that we’ve been triggered in a way that knocks us off balance…

In those moments – when we reach for the adolescent out of habit and they leap quickly into action – the discipline is to slow down, take a breath or two, step back and assess the situation…

Focus on observable facts rather than interpretations and assumptions – and let the inner adolescent know you won’t be shoving them behind the wheel, and they can step aside and let you, the adult, handle things.

It sounds simpler and easier than it is, by the way. Like any other practice it’ll take time, focus and attention…

But I promise it’s worth the effort, not only because you’ll avert possible disasters, (given the chance, my own inner adolescent would likely have blown up more things, including close relationships, than I can count!) but because the practice also opens doors to harnessing those healthy, creative adolescent qualities we all need and stand to benefit from.

You’re up to the task…

Let me know what happens.