Young people react to crises in various manners
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A peaceful globe today and tomorrow
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“We need to get angry and understand what is at stake. And then we need to transform that anger into action and to stand together united and just never give up.” - Greta Thunberg
According to our personal values and resources, we all react to different situations in different ways. While one of the crises in the world today might feel distant, another might touch you deeply. The worlds that other people are living in are mostly a mystery to us. They might be going through all sorts of things in their lives that we are unaware of. They might have personal processes with health or studies, social struggles with friends, or their families might be going through divorce, death or other types of crisis. They could be experiencing discrimination in some or many of their social surroundings. All these circumstances affect every person in different ways.
People respond to a crisis in very different ways. The ability to react to a (new) crisis in a safe way may be affected by the amount of stress that they are going through in the first place. A person taking care of a sick family member probably has fewer resources to think about a war in another country. On the other hand, because of their family’s vulnerable situation, they might feel more intimidated by the war than other families in the same region. As adults, we can foster sensitivity for overlapping vulnerabilities.
There is no right or wrong way to react to a crisis. Reacting to a crisis is not a sign of weakness – on the contrary: it is important to support the body-mind process and find its way in stressful situations. Typical reactions are:
And many others.
Some of the reactions might seem more difficult to handle than others, but we can build our own capacity to recognise different kinds of reactions and react to them in a safe way. Maybe it is worth exploring what are our own most natural ways to react – they might be in line with what kinds of reactions we find easy and hard to support.
While we as adults might not be able to change the circumstances for the young people or even affect them, what we can do is to create safer environments for them to enter and be in. This environment might mean a place where they can feel seen and heard just the way they are, a place where there is an adult who is present and ready to listen and who takes them seriously, or a place free of discrimination where they can hang out without feeling threatened. More detailed guidelines for creating spaces like this can be found in the next chapter (5d) as well as in chapter 4.
TIP! You can find more exercises that help you support yourself in chapter 3.