Published Articles
By Dr. William R. Morrow

"Teens' Feelings Need Listeners"

Someone has put together a common theme in many of the school shootings of the past two years. It is that the adolescents involved had recently experienced a "failed romance, among other problems". What this means to me is that the adults, who are trying to make some sense out of these senseless acts, are not paying enough attention to the feelings of young people. I mean paying attention to the fact that they have feelings that obviously affect them in powerful ways. Whether it is the deep sense of rejection that comes from lost love or the anger and rage that rises up out of that rejection, these are being expressed in increasingly violent actions that have already gone beyond words. I mean also paying attention to providing an atmosphere of listening. If the words that would name these feelings could be spoken within the dark forest of adolescence, will there be someone who cares? Silence is not an option.

It is a sure-fire formula that if feelings do not get talked out, they soon become acted out. It is as if feelings generate a dynamic force,like a charged steam chamber that seeks an outlet. The feelings are in there. They want to get out. Either they come out in words, or they come hissing out in behavior that encrypts the feelings and makes them unrecognizable to most everyone around them. All anybody sees is troubled behavior.

First, there has to be some recognition that these creatures of hormonal storms actually have feelings. And that they experience some of the rough , more hurtful feelings in the world of young relationships, where emotional fortunes are won and lost on a regular basis. In a recent Public Agenda Poll, most adults report a pretty negative opinion of teens. Are you surprised? I figure that view must be based on what they see of behavior: "lazy, disrespectful, or spoiled". 71% of the adults who had children of their own expressed this pessimism. Why are they seeing only the surface behavior? Where is some empathy for the feelings that surely lie behind the behavior?

I implore parents and other adults to learn to read the signals. Just assume that adolescents, embarking on the journey into the adult world, are puzzled into many different feelings about relationships. It's not like adults, have made the complexities of relationships any more understandable. At least they should know that there are plenty of feelings involved. Maybe you have to be old enough to be tough, so that you let yourself actually feel the suffering of relationship hurt. By then you have been around and listened to the songmeisters who keep trying to put notions of lost love into words for us all to resonate with. But before you've sung these blue notes over a hundred times, if you're a teenager, you're going to need a little help . Step one: there are feelings that punctuate the turn of events in the most puppy of loves. Step two: These feelings have names and can be uttered without fear of self annihilation. It's a great way to let off steam. If there were just someone to listen.

________________________________________________