Articles
Adolescence and Beyond
When I think about my own adolescence, it involved confusion about my role in society, as my body changed and developed and this impacted on my external relationships. I was moving from childhood to becoming a sexual adult and felt a lot of family tension as I challenged my parents, whose guidance I no longer wanted. Our parents do give us sexual messages, even if they are not directly spoken, by the way they experience their own bodies and how they relate to each other.
The work I do now with clients often draws on going back to their adolescence, when they felt they did not fit in. In retrospect I can see that if you did not bond with your same sex at this time, it becomes very difficult to move into having good relationships with the opposite sex. This is true even if you are a lesbian or a gay man, because an inability to bond with the same sex will mean you can have difficulty bonding with them in an adult emotional relationship. For us to heal issues around adolescence we need to be open to exploring friendships with the same sex and the opposite sex which will nurture us.
Many deep sexual wounds are first experienced at adolescence, often because we looking for love through sex. These are based on not having clear boundaries of how we should be treated and how we should treat others. Without a good primary emotional experience we will feel a sense of separateness and isolation in an intimate partnership. Intimacy is an intrinsic part of forming a good sexual relationship as well as trust and communication.
At adolescence we draw on the foundation we have experienced in childhood and so our childhood messages become even more significant at this time because we are trying to form intimacy or love as a young adult. My adolescent peer group provided my sexual information, which more often than not was incorrect, unhelpful and raised more questions than it answered. There was a lot of negative comparison and competition amongst us over appearance, body size and our success (or lack of success) with boys.
For most people who come to me, their first sexual experiences were normally not what they had expected. They were full of pain, trauma and misunderstanding rather than the idealised romantic view that the media and the movies portray. We often believe that we should innately know how to have a fulfilling sexual experience, but this is rarely true for anyone. Men usually expect their first sexual relationship to be raunchy, adventurous and conquering, but if it is in fact about premature ejaculation or impotency this can give them a high level of anxiety around sex. When young women fantasize that sex will lead to love evermore they are often disappointed to find sex a disconnecting and isolating experience. When I look back on the way I was taught about sex at school and am sad little that little has changed. There are some ground breakers who are implementing a new system and they must be supported.
Article: Adolescence and Beyond
Interview: Samsara Tanner