YOUR INNER TEEN

What is he/she like? How do they feel? What decisions do they make? What is happening in your life now because of the inner teenager? What are their needs?

My inner teenager has different manifestations: capriciousness, protest, ambivalence, friendliness, shyness. This is the first thing that I can recognize, but I think there are other manifestations.
When I listen to him, I feel something inside me relax. Some part of me that seemed to have been tense for a long time now suddenly unfolds, straightens out. As if someone once took a crumpled sheet of paper carefully in their hands, unfolded it, smoothed it out and began to read what was written there. It seems that my teenage part has long wanted to be heard, seen, noticed by me. I feel our common desire to establish a dialogue.

When I talk about the inner teenager, I mean the experiences we get at that age, the thoughts and feelings that were prevalent then, the defense mechanisms that were formed then and how we carry this experience into our adult life.

Adolescence, in my opinion, is a period of exposure not just of loneliness, but of existential loneliness, when you suddenly realize that no one will ever understand 100% what you feel. Roughly - yes. Similar, but somehow in its own way. And this realization causes different kinds of suffering.
“I really want my parents to always understand exactly what is happening to me now and when they need to not interfere, “back off,” and when they need to support me.
I really want my girlfriend to love that dark guy from BTS just like I do, or for my friend to also love the “skating rinks” in Fortnite and be able to play them endlessly just like me.
But they don't understand or don't feel as much as I want them to. I would like to figure out for myself what I feel and why. I so often don't understand what I want. I'm tired of everything being fine now, and then half an hour later there's melancholy, tears, decay. Or that now I'm full of energy, but an hour has passed and I'm lying on the couch because I feel weak and apathetic.
But what I know for sure is that everything pisses me off, you and you piss me off! But I so need to understand and feel that you exist and that you are nearby!”

I also went through this difficult period))) Like all adults. And some are still going through it. Not everyone goes through it stormily, but I think everyone has encountered certain difficulties.

My inner teenager now responds to the words about loneliness. This is a painful experience, on the basis of which many of my defenses were born - friendliness (yes, yes, it can exist as a form of psi defense), fear of offending, fear of being judged, etc. And now, already in adulthood, it happens that my decisions are made from the role of the teenage self, especially when it comes to my place in some group - a study group / place of work / project team. Then friendliness can turn on in full (to make friends and be accepted), fear of offending (so as not to destroy such fragile, as it seems to me in this role, communication) and fear of evaluation (not to show up, so that the group does not reject me for being somehow different).
By the way, many people can feel this way in their own family. Family is also a collective.

Is it easy for me to discover this in myself? No. Just like another person who asks questions similar to those from the beginning of the post. Either in a psychologist's office or on their own.

But I sincerely believe that the process of discovering some part of yourself that has suffered or is suffering is important and valuable.
After all, in your teenage years, you and your needs and feelings could have remained unheard and unnoticed. But these needs and feelings have not gone away with age, they remain and from time to time make themselves known, influencing decisions now.

And being in a parental role, an adult, remembering and imagining himself as a teenager, increases the chances of understanding a little more his child, who is 10+ years old, and better understanding the meaning of his parenting.