Judgment, Inhibition and the Emerging Self

In 1994 Steve Jobs was interviewed on PBS for its One Last Thing documentary.  Speaking about insights which resulted in his life's work, he said:

"When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.

That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is - everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you.  And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use."

These are profound words, and not just for building things.  They describe key aspects for identity development and processes which limit it.  In my work and personal life I am too often struck by how much judgment we humans seem to deliver...to ourselves, to others, to ideas, to thought, to dreams.  I and those with whom I work encounter it daily, and many times a day.  In my middle age I have come to ignore most of it, but this defense was hard won and took too long for me to develop.

So I work to help mostly younger adults to spot judgment which inhibits the genuine trajectory of the self.  There is no growth without risk-taking, without "bashing into the walls" on occasion.  We must all learn to manage unnecessary and harmful inhibition in order to become who we have always been.

There is of course a place in life for social feedback, for learning from others what we are and are not doing well or effectively.  But we ought to critically examine all feedback and determine for ourselves what is "true" and healthy for us and the world around us.  This takes time and practice, and the earlier one starts the better.  It is not easy figuring out where the world's great institutions of family, ethics or faith, school and government have gone astray.  Certainly each has something to offer, to help us reduce chaos and create meaning.  Institutions are made of people so there will not be perfection in these pursuits.  It is up to us to sort that out.

Sooner or later, everything which comes to us in life will be categorized as "belonging to me" or "not belonging to me".  We simply cannot accept all reflections of us as though we are carrying a mirror around with us at all times.  Attempting this will overwhelm the self and lead to poor mental health outcomes.  We have to be able to turn the mirror around and perceive that judgment is often more about the other or a system which is in need of our gifts and talents.  We don't always have to "live inside the world", but we do have the responsibility of changing that world for ourselves, and possibly for others, if we are to be authentic selves.

The Failure and Growth Cycle

Some view western culture, and American culture in particular, as a society which places a premium on the success and advancement of the individual.  Critics of this view argue that this premium diminishes some individuals and groups, but others say this does not necessarily have to occur; that one can promote the interests of the individual and society at the same time.  See the works of Ruth Benedict and John Kenneth Galbraith for references on that subject.  In my experience it takes an educated and enlightened individual to pursue "success" and also orient that success to higher purposes, such as benefiting larger and larger circles of human beings.

Enter typical college students and their families.  As noted elsewhere in my blog they tend to arrive being very focused on pragmatic issues such as living arrangements and choice of major.  There is a tremendous amount of energy focused on moving the late adolescent and young adult along a continuum of advancement, however that may be conceived in family ethics and values.  Getting good grades, joining the "right" organizations, and networking for future employment are, in the minds of those involved, locked in rather tightly.  Variance from this template is often frowned upon, if not met with punitive consequences.

But college life is a crucible for the formation of both individuality and responsibility or conscience.  Mistakes and failures are inevitable, and the stuff which catalyzes the higher calling of the young adult.  In his book, How Children Succeed, Paul Tough theorizes that non-cognitive skills such as persistence, resilience and fortitude are actually the bases of future success, though it is cognitive skills that often get the attention.  In this view mistakes and failures are desirable, the launching pad for growth.  In short, one gets intimately acquainted with one's self, with both talents and foibles, through a cycle of failure and growth.

Such is the process of learning who we are, what we can do, and the limitations presented by our perceptions and biases.  The process of "advancement" is much more earthy and sobering than western mythologies would have us believe.  It is very much two steps forward, one backward, a thousand blind alleys to ten workable paths.  And this is to be embraced, not belittled.  Great achievers like Newton, Edison, Einstein, and Carver all said so.

Families can be wonderful allies in the young adult's search for self by understanding this cycle, by welcoming it, and by patiently waiting for their children to learn life's lessons.  Students will succeed in their journey to self-hood by minimizing anxieties about social perfection, or, better yet, rooting them out altogether.  It takes courage to advance.  Fear won't get us there.

Ethics and Meaning in College Life

Recently USA Today College ran a nice little piece concerning ethics in college.  The author, Miriam Schulman, assistant director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, posed five simple questions for students to consider:

1. What is college worth to me?
2. How can I live with someone I don’t like?
3. How far will I go to be accepted?
4. Should I tell on someone who is doing something I think is wrong?
5. Is casual sex going to be part of my life?

Wonderful questions.  College life offers so many rich academic and personal experiences.  So many, in fact, that it is very easy to lose sight of fundamental questions which we all must face in our lives: Why am I here, and what am I going to do with my life?  From where I sit, working closely with students, a great many issues and problems could be averted, and a great many lives enhanced, through an active search for answers to these questions.  I believe Socrates said so way back in the misty past.

Students and their families are today focused on the practicalities of college life.  They rightfully ponder over where their students will live, what they will study, how will they spend their time, how will they make friends, and of course how they are going to pay for it all.  These are questions that do in fact need responses.  But the inquiry should not stop there, and all too often it does.  Without the bigger responses to bigger questions, students often live incongruently to their genuine identities and values.  They associate with people they don't truly respect.  They engage in activities which are meaningless or even harmful to them, which may result in a resume' packed with awesomeness but reveals experiences with little or poor quality.  A competent employer will see this instantly.

Spend time, ideally well before college starts, mulling over the big questions.  Set a target, well ahead in time and space, about where you would like to land and explore your existence.  One doesn't travel to another part of the world without having some sense of how one will live after arrival.  Why in the world would we cheat our future selves by not doing the same thing before our college and career journey begins?

College is a Trip

"We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us." -Proust

College is way cool, no doubt about it.  There are intellectual explorations and pursuits, exposures to a wide variety of people and cultures, sporting events, rich theatre and music opportunities, tons of ways to meet, socialize and party with folks from all over the world, and on and on.  The college years are a great time to learn and otherwise benefit from these experiences, and many students take full advantage of the possibilities.

At the same time, however, many students seriously underestimate the stresses and strains that result from this time in their lives.  During college there are incredible demands placed upon a student’s intellect, physical well-being, social skills, spiritual or philosophical orientation, and sense of personal responsibility.  This is true whether that student is from Manhattan or Opp, Alabama.  Every student I have ever known (including yours truly!) has had to endure an adjustment period during the crucial first semesters of college, and often during the subsequent years as well.  Some have roommate problems.  Some party way too much.  Some are overwhelmed by their new-found autonomy or freedoms.  Some struggle with isolation.  Some have to manage the negative behaviors of others.  While many students negotiate through these stresses productively, albeit fitfully, others experience meltdowns of one kind or another, and truly have trouble functioning well as a student.  Grades may suffer.  Conflicts with friends or family may emerge.  Depression or anxiety may root and take up residence in the psyche.  Though students may not realize it, college is a microcosm of the world at large, but compressed in both space and time.  What happens here can establish precedents for the future.  College is a trip, indeed.  It is a funky but delightful journey during which learning can occur in every dimension imaginable.

Some students arrive on campus with plenty of tools in their survival kit.  Caring parents.  Good health.  Sufficient funding.  Supportive friends.  Others seem to have been given tools of little value, sort of like a duffle bag with a pearl necklace, a chocolate cake, and a catcher’s mitt, and all for an excursion into the Amazon!  A few unfortunate students appear to have no tools at all.  Just as I have never yet met a student who didn’t have to adjust, so I have also not met a student who could not overcome such limitations.  I have known courageous, admirable students who were nearly homeless, or who were afflicted with a nasty medical or mental condition, or who were abandoned or abused, but succeeded nonetheless.  My hat’s off to these folks; they had more than their fair share of troubles but in the end weren’t defeated.

So college is a trip, and there are some tricks students need to know about in order to reach their destinations with sanity intact.

1.    Prepare for the adjustment.  Think ahead about what you will need, then find out where you can get it.  Manhattanites will need variety.  Oppians will need familiarity.  If you didn’t have to study in high school, well, get ready to.  If your parents did everything for you, learn how to do it yourself.  And so on.

2.    Quickly figure out the nature and source of your stress.  Are you strung out because you’re not sleeping?  Because your roommate is messy?  Because you can’t concentrate?  Because you’ve never been good at math?  Stress has origins.  Find out how it started.

3.    Get the support you need.  Every problem, and I mean every problem, has a solution.  Granted, some solutions are difficult.  But don’t freak out!  Instead, calm down, define the problem, and then learn what person or resource or service you need.  Need tutoring?  Chances are your school has it.  Need time management skills?  There is someone who can help.  Need to choose a major?  It's covered.  Need someone to talk to?  Counselors are here for ya.  Just take a look at the web or campus directories.  I’m always a little amazed at how many students don’t look for or don’t know what resources await them, or worse, choose not to use them.

4.    Don’t wait!  Do the first three steps early.  Don’t wait until your homesickness turns into depression, your public speaking anxiety becomes panic attacks, or your stress leads to insomnia or substance abuse.  If you get what you need early, chances are good it won’t take long to overcome the problem.  If you wait, it can take much, much longer.  Don’t believe the lie that it isn’t “normal” to have problems.  I have yet to meet anyone who didn’t have a few.

To take the college journey well, students need to periodically examine their survival kits.  Make sure the needed tools are in there.  If unsure, ask someone who’s been around.  Wisdom and a good deal of fun are there for the taking, if students care enough to equip themselves for the ride.

A View Inside the Minds of College Students

Several years ago, a colleague provided a series of web postings written by college students.  The posts, if my memory is correct, were gathered in random fashion from a variety of public internet sources.  My memory definitely has failed in one important respect; I can't recall who provided these or exactly when I received them.  I apologize for that.


These snippets are simply too good, however, to not record them in some way.  They provide a glimpse, unsettling at times, into the minds of students.  The comments provide us with a sense of what their worlds are really like and therefore some guidance on how we, all of us, might assist them with their needs.  Spelling and grammatical errors are preserved as these too are a window into the state of the authors.  Here we go...


Female
I've dropped a lot of courses. I've also failed a lot of courses. I don't know my material. I feel like I haven't learned anything. I'm not competent. I've ruined my life. I don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe I will work in fast food for the rest of my life.
I feel like such a loser. I skip final exams. I waste thousands of dollars.
I'm not smart enough. I'm not hard working enough.
I have no future. I can't do anything. I may as well be dead. I'm useless.
My parents should kick me out and leave me homeless. I don't deserve all that they've given me.
I wish I could start over, from the very beginning. I've messed up big time. I've ruined my grades.
I'm getting old. I'm going nowhere. I don't want to face life, it's too scary.
I'll never graduate. Even if I graduate, I'll do nothing with my degree.
I should just die or something. :-(

Male
So, I failed my midterm. I huge 45%. The frustrating thing is I know what I'm doing. It's not like I just didn't study, or not go to class, I did all of that. My prof was even like "What happened?" I didn't do so well on my last quiz, and I'm pretty sure I didn't do well on the one we just had. For awhile now I've been feeling like school is impossible for me. Now, it feels like it is. I don't want to keep going, but I'm afraid of dropping out. I don't konw what to do...


Female
A couple students including me talked our professior into extending our test date! Heehee! Good for me! I need an extra week!


Female
i go to university and this is my last semester of classes, or at least, that's the plan, before i do my internship and then one math class in the spring. howveer, my past practice of doing the bare minimum of what's required of me as a student (even less than the bare minimum when it comes to studying for test or reading), has been doing me wrong this semester especially. i have met a guy who has been screwing with my emotions, whether on purpose or not, it doesn't matter i guess. but i am soooo scared that i won't pass some of these classes and then i'll have to stay another semester, here in this wretched town. but i have no energy again. it's like i wish i could be one of those students who can not study and get all a's, but i am not. but although i know my end goal, getting my degree, which as it turns out, again has to be put off till the end of next fall, for other reasons, i cannot seem to focus on that enough to complete my studying, or at least to put more effort into it. i have no job, so it's not time restraints. i don't have a car, so it does take convincing to get myself to walk to campus, if i need to, and i have been skipping more...and i don't know...does anyone here ever just feel like quitting school, just lie around and do nothing? but then again, that's exacly what i do anyways. i guess i am just here to conplain and ask if anyone else feels like they just do the minimum required of them as students.


Male
I'm done! My brain is full. It's really sad because the my presentation is less than 2 minutes. What do you do when you just can't stuff anymore in???


Female
I love school!  All the people, the energy, learning, the professors, and everything except the very few parking spaces. LOL I have my first exam in a week, gotta study this weekend. :-)


Female
I'm sooooooooooooooo nervous! My classes start tomorrow. What if I'm not good enough? What if I fail? What if....? (this coming with someone who has never gotten lower than an A-) uggh. I hate this feeling.


Male
Classes started up again yesterday. I only have the one class on campus, the other is online. The one class on campus is taught by the same lecturer as the summer math class I just finished. She said we could call her late last week for our grades. She told me I could come by her office and see my final exam, and get my grade.
I haven't done either of those things.
Today I finally emailed her, asking for my grade. She just emailed me back, but I'm too afraid to open it. I know it's going to be awfully close, and I can't stand to see it.
I know, and my T tells me that it's going to be OK to get a B. She says she thinks it would be very good for me to get a B.
I'm too afraid to open the damned email.
I guess it's better than finding out in person, and crying in front of her.


Male
I woke up yesterday with sore throat, nausea, aches, etc. Still feel yucky.
And I sat down in front of an exam that did not look at all familiar. Not much that looked like anything I had ever seen before. I get depressed when I'm sick anyway, but that just made it that much worse.
I'm pretty sure I won't have an A on the exam. I am currently hoping only that I did well enough to allow me to get an A in the class. I think I can miss 65 or so points, out of 200.
Of course, when I got home again, I could think of how to work out one of the problems. I did get the right answer to that problem, but I had no idea how to set up the equation. {sigh}
I really don't want this to be the time that I find out what happens if I don't get an A. I don't know that I can handle that right now.
Maybe school is too stressful for me.


Female
I was just diagnosed bipolar ultradian rapid cycling 6 weeks ago, with social phobia 1 week ago, and while I'm getting treatment, none of it is really working yet!! My psychiatrist is confident I'll be ready to go back to school in 5 weeks but I'm soooo scared!! It's like, I don't know if I can handle being in school but if I don't go what do I do? Be a college dropout? Ugh.


As you can see, most of the posts reveal a sense of being overwhelmed by academic demands, some to the point of hopelessness.  Another, perhaps more troubling, theme is that few of them wrote about seeking or asking for help.  For this and many other reasons college mental health services are an absolute necessity for students.  Ideally, these services will be well-resourced and thoroughly and repeatedly advertised across campus, in a variety of media.  Students tend to dismiss information when they perceive they will not need it, then suffer from a lack of information when troubles visit them.  Institutional support of the mission of college mental health is a vital ingredient to student success, as we see so clearly in the messages provided above.

The Gift of Crisis

As I have mentioned in a previous post, the college years can be a volatile time for students.  Late adolescents and young adults are caught in between two worlds - that of their youth, their homes and families, and that of their future, their developing selves and careers.  This time is marked by both great excitement and great anxiety, which is a recipe for emotional turmoil and crisis.  The excitement derives from a sense of increased freedom of choice and independence, as well as the invigorating challenges and risks this brings.  To students, the world can seem like a grand buffet and they are made dizzy with all the delicious offerings.  They set about sampling the world to see what it is like, what appeals to them, what fits them and what doesn't.  This sampling often frightens others, notably parents, but it needn't.  Most students figure out on their own what works well and what does not, because the world will let them know.  If one gorges on the buffet pain will be felt.

But there is also anxiety.  Increased freedom is often noticed by the student very early on, and there is much joy and revelry attending this realization.  Soon thereafter, and sometimes very soon, a sense of responsibility emerges which can be quite shocking and as heavy as a coat of lead.  It becomes clearer, because life itself will reveal it, that students ultimately cannot avoid being responsible for themselves, for their identities and choices, for the well-being of their friends and communities.  For some this journey is slow and painstaking; for others it is as quick and awesome as lightning.


It is in this cauldron that emotional or psychological crises occur.  At times the friction between these two forces becomes more than the student can bear, much as what occurs when two tectonic plates collide.  Something has to give.  The crisis is the equivalent of an earthquake, the means by which equilibrium is achieved and a new topography is born.  For many who interact with students there can be a very strong urge to dampen down the crisis, to soothe the eruption of emotion, to medicate away the discomforts, to relieve them of the responsibility to self and others.  While some students may need such interventions, because of the degree of their impairment, many, if not most, do not.  In short, the crisis needs to occur and if we prevent or distort it we are doing students and their future authentic selves a great disservice.  Growth does not occur without some pains, and sometimes the pains are quite intense and dramatic.


And so we find ourselves in a predicament of our own.  Using wisdom, good judgment and the best advice, we have to choose when and how to support the student.  We have to balance the need to soothe against the student's need to develop into a mature being.  This is admittedly not always an easy task.  Tragedies which have occurred across the nation have resulted in an attitude or climate of fear for some, and this can produce defensive responding when great patience and faith are needed instead.  Unfortunately the litigious among us, lawyers, and the court itself, can unwittingly reinforce this harmful posture through the apparent expectation of clairvoyance.  Growth occurs in the process of getting through the pain, not by going around it.


Many faith traditions include a prayer or edict about being thankful for suffering.  It is easy for mental health professionals to see why this is so.  This suffering is a gift, a way that our bodies and psyches tell us that change is needed.  All we need to do is listen to this inner voice, be patient and accepting in our comprehension, and respond.