Real parent questions, answered!
A 21-year-old who can't stand the word "mentor," a 41-year-old who can't manage money, and what we'd actually do about each.
Two weeks ago, I asked a favor in my post about what Jonathan Haidt was missing in his Anxious Generation (spoiler: how to help the young adults who grew up in that gen but are too old for you to take their phone away).
I asked you to, if your young adult is stuck in the exact way Jonathan Haidt keeps describing… i.e., under-connected, no older adult who takes an interest…then reply or comment on the post, tell me the situation, and I’ll walk through what I’d actually do about it.
Two of you did. Shout out to Melanie and Kathy Ann! Appreciate you sharing what your young adult is going through with me :)
Both of their situations touched on something I couldn’t have set up better if I’d written them myself.
The stuckness both of these families are describing isn’t a sickness. It’s a missing relationship. That’s my whole thing right now, based on my own lived experience and everything we’ve seen with our Not Therapy clients.
Next, their real situations on how to help their young adult find a mentor, answered!
Melanie’s daughter already did the hard part.
Our 21-year-old daughter recently opened up to us about how hard it is not only to find friends she can connect with over shared interests - and not just going out to bars - but also to find an older adult who genuinely takes an interest in her life (parents don’t count, of course!).
The challenge is that many of the places where those relationships naturally develop just aren’t part of her life right now. She has a part-time job, but her coworkers are her age and dealing with many of the same things she is. She hasn’t been involved in sports or other activities since she started using substances 6 years ago. Professors she felt connected to become distant memories once the semester ended, and there isn’t an older cousin or family member who consistently reaches out and stays involved in her life.
On top of that, some of the more obvious opportunities for connection come with their own barriers. She’s not interested in attending DBT, 12-step, or other therapeutic groups because of a negative experience she had several years ago. Her depression and current substance use also make it harder for her to reach out to adults she might otherwise consider connecting with.
And last but not least, she had what she considers a bad experience with a (paid) mentor after returning home from wilderness therapy, so even the word “mentor” carries a negative connotation for her. I think she knows she would benefit from having supportive adults in her life, but finding those relationships -and being open to them - has been much more complicated than it might seem from the outside.
-Melanie
Melanie’s 21-year-old opened up to her parents about something that most stuck young adults never say out loud. That it’s hard to find friends she actually connects with (not just people to go to bars with), and harder still to find an older adult who genuinely takes an interest in her life. Parents don’t count in this case.
Read that again tho…she named the hunger for real relationships herself!
In the mentor post, I said the buy-in has to come from the young adult, and you can’t manufacture it. Melanie’s daughter walked up and handed it over. She wants the thing. That’s the rarest starting condition there is, and plenttyyyyy of families would trade a lot to be standing where Melanie already is.
Now for the hard part, because Melanie laid out every reason it’s complicated. Trust and believe, we’ve been there when we have convos with new potential clients who’ve been tossed around the mental healthcare system and inherently don’t trust yet another professional who is being thrown at them by their parents.
Her daughter aged out of the “natural” rooms where those relationships usually form, years ago. No sports since she started using in high school. Professors who became strangers the second the semester ended. No older cousin who keeps showing up. And the obvious replacements come with their own walls, because she’s not going back to DBT or 12-step or another therapeutic group after her experiences with them in the past. I’ve been there.
She had a bad experience with a paid mentor after wilderness, so the word “mentor” itself is basically ruined for her.
I get it, so many of our clients have been there. So let’s stop using that word. The word is doing damage that the person wouldn’t.
She already told her mom, in plain words, that she wants an older adult who takes an interest, so the wanting is fully there. The word just carries the memory of the last time. She got assigned to a relationship, as part of a plan, with an adult who was getting paid to be interested in her, and she could feel every bit of it. It landed like treatment in a friendlier coat.
So don't go find her a Mentor. Capital M. A person she has to sit across from and be mentored by on a schedule.
Find her a person. One human a few years ahead of her who's been through some version of what she's in, who would actually be into knowing her, and who is never once announced to her as “An Intervention.” Start with someone you know or know of in your real life.
You can still follow the step-by-step process to find a mentor for your young adult, which I laid out in my previous post. The key part is that nobody says, “so this is your new mentor.” It’s just someone who has done something that she thinks is cool or aspires to, and she gets to decide if she likes them. Then, as her mom, Melanie has to let the ball be in her daughter’s court after that initial connection or intro is made.
And because Melanie flagged it: the depression and the substance use are real, and I'm not going to pretend a relationship replaces treatment for either one. We work alongside therapists, not against them, and a lot of our families run both at the same time. But the specific thing her daughter named wanting, an older adult who takes an interest, is not something any clinic provides. She already hinted at what's missing: a person, not another diagnosis.
Melanie’s action item:
Don’t look for a mentor this week. Look for the one person already a little ahead of your daughter who’d truly want to know her, and let your daughter decide about them. Drop the “mentor” word entirely.
Kathy Ann’s son is 41. This still works.
I have a son who is 41 (yes I know, a bit late to the party) and cannot manage his finances. He’s really trying but he’s typically out of money the last 10 days of the month. I believe he needs someone to help manage his finances and it shouldn’t be me:). I like what you say about the buy in and having the young adult choose who they want to work with . I don’t know how to go about finding someone to help him with his finances that he will buy into. If there is someone he can connect with, I believe he would buy in because he needs the community if that makes sense. I’m a therapist and yet don’t know how to access resources for him. It’s kind of crazy making.
-Kathy Ann, M.Ed MS DC PC MFT
First of all, I love that Kathy Ann named that her son is actually trying to change his financial habits, but he’s still struggling. She’s right to identify that this is the exact moment when a mentor could make a huge difference, since he’s already seeking to change. She’s right in identifying that he probably needs a community for it to work.
What her son is missing is a person he chooses, ideally with a few other people around working on the same thing, so it feels like belonging instead of a lecture from someone who's decided he's bad with money.
Being herself a therapist who still can’t find a resource, I can totally understand how frustrating that could be!
And quite frankly, she’s not missing anything obvious here. The resource mostly doesn’t exist in a form you can go find, which is a hole in the market and honestly most of why Not Therapy exists. The system is fantastic at producing legible things like a class, a program, or an app with a streak counter.
It’s terrible at producing the one thing that can actually move a stuck person: a relationship they opted into with someone who can and wants to hold them accountable.
Kathy Ann’s Action Item:
Same move as Melanie, plus the community piece she already named. Helping him find a room of people working on the same thing will do more than any advisor could do alone, because he gets to choose to walk into it.
Quick recap, because Melanie and Kathy Ann are the whole reason I’ve been writing this series.
First, I said Haidt's right that these young adults are under-connected, but he skips the part that matters: the fix is one specific person in their real life. Then, I walked through how to actually find that person. Now these two comments are the real-life version.
And look what they have in common. A 21-year-old who hates the word mentor, a 41-year-old who runs out of money. They are different ages with different problems, but have the same missing piece. They are at a point where they’re open to seeing how a person a few years ahead, who is genuinely interested in them, AND who they get to choose, could help them.
That’s it. That’s why stuck isn’t sick keeps holding up no matter who writes in.