A long, long time ago...

A long time ago I was a teenage girl... now I just work with them.  I remember feeling at 16 that the world was frightening and overwhelming and whatever was happening in that space would last forever.  I get an overall consensus from adults, women and men alike that adolescence alone accounts for the moodiness, depression and overall general sense of gloom that exists in this population.  I disagree.  If you look at the long, hard fought history women have navigated through for freedom from a society that tells them how to look, behave, feel and exist you will see that although great strides have been made, our teenage girls are finding new and improved methods of destroying themselves.  Even with all the messages of so called "girl power" flooding our media, society and search engines, statistics show the rates of eating disorders, depression and other self-defeating behaviors are on the rise among this population.  Girls starve themselves and engage in risky sex behaviors to find some level of  acceptance. They seek relief and escape through substance use and the cutting and burning of their skin.  They are taught to compete with each other, destroying themselves and others in the process.  Its my experience through interviewing parents that most often they are unaware of these behaviors, and when they do have some level of awareness the blame is placed on adolescence, with the thought that the "phase" will pass.  It won't.  In the absence of intervention, adolescent girls who engage in self-destructive, emotion regulation behaviors grow up to be women, who with years of practice improve upon them.  The unfortunate part of this ongoing cycle is that most people don't believe it's true.  Call it denial, fear, or just a general sense of ignorance, people want to believe that these things are just par for the course in the lives of teenage girls.  I guess I want to know not just why this is a generally accepted attitude, but who made up these rules?
In the age of "The Secret" along with a multitude of other spiritual paths to getting what we want, what we deserve, why are we so willing to accept the destructive path our girls are put on almost from the day they are born?  Why are we not teaching them to be agents of change in their own lives, to support rather than compete with one another?  What would happen if we did?
The focus of this blog will concentrate mainly on supporting girls to find their truth and support others in doing so as well.  As a woman who not only works with adolescent girls, but one who struggled through those years and continues to navigate my own truth as an adult I know there has to be a better way.  We have made this a complicated issue and have taught young women to do the same-- it doesn't have to be.