America, The Land Where We’re Not Taught to Be Human
- 5 hours ago
- 8 min read
For nearly 14 years, I've helped individuals navigate the complex landscape of addiction in order to achieve recovery. Nicknamed "The Casual Counselor", my approach is unconventional but undeniably effective.
It was a young person who taught me this. We’d been working together for a number of years. When I first encountered them, it didn’t take long to get a sense of why they were behaving so self-destructively. For a long time, I didn’t think they were going to make it. They did. I was wrong. I’m so grateful I was wrong.
They told me one day, “You know, I was thinking back to my high school years again…”
High school had been where the shattered pieces had come from. That had been the venue in which many parts of their life had been broken and wounds inflicted, the most significant being an actual breakup after someone they truly loved and cared for betrayed their trust, and the relationship went up in smoke. Follow the breadcrumbs that inform present-day behaviours.
Additionally, this individual had gone to a fancy private prep school. The type of place where you see endless polo shirts, boat shoes, sundresses, and high-end handbags adorning the typical and popular group of peers. This was not my friend. They had been of the more sensitive and eccentric variety. A bit of a misfit, they enjoyed street art and acting and hanging out in more edgy environments compared to the country club or the quarterback’s kegger.
And they were picked on and outcast for their differences and idiosyncrasies. Few friends. Head down. Heartbroken. This is where we find the shattered pieces that turned into seeds that grew and blossomed into deep depression and very intense relief-seeking and self-harming behaviours. By the time we were acquainted, this had been the story for several years, and it wasn’t abating. A half-hearted effort at treatment, when they wanted no part of it, had put them in touch with an MD and a counsellor for an attempt at aftercare. Enter Josh.
We established a relationship of depth and trust and shared some very powerful moments during the years to come, along with periodic episodes of big-ticket crises, hospitalisations, and drastic escalation of risk behaviour throughout the time we shared. Theirs was one of the sessions I looked forward to most each week. I always knew it was going to be something to really “do some work on,” come what may, up or down, left or right.
In the in-between, I was very much, and often, worried about them. As I mentioned before, there were times when things that happened in their life frightened me into believing that they might not get there, to that healthy person inside trying to emerge and get to know themselves in a new and unfamiliar way. But it turns out, flanked by a good-enough psychiatrist on one side and a good-enough counsellor on the other, it proved to be enough in the end. It just took a while to get there.
They’re no longer with me, but during one of our close-to-the-end conversations, that topic of high school came up again. They’re doing great today, by the way, working now in a pretty high-end sector of the adult workforce. Entry-level, but fully equipped and healthy enough to climb the ladder to more success and, hopefully, full independence in time. This time, though, the conversation wasn’t about the broken pieces or the emotional toll of those years; it was about something else entirely.
It was about the classes. The curriculum. What the students at school were, and were not, being taught.
They went on, “Josh, I was thinking about the classes they’d send me to. What were they teaching me? English, history, mathematics, science, physics, art, gym, all the other extracurricular stuff. It’s not that those classes aren’t important or anything, but what were they really teaching me? We never had a single class about feelings. About what it’s like having your heart broken. Being teased or bullied. How to cope with feelings, shit, how to even name feelings! And I wasn’t learning it at home either because my parents weren’t taught! The bell would ring. Be at your desk on time. Don’t speak unless spoken to. Raise your hand. Memorising information. Exams. Homework. The bell would ring. Off to the next class. Just repeated, over and over.”
“Josh, they didn’t teach us how to live in the world. They were just teaching us to be obedient, to be workers. Guidance counselling was a joke. It was just about prepping and applying for college. We might have a banging economy, but most of my friends still act now like they did back in high school. Partying. Getting fucked up. Doing stupid shit when they’re not working at the job they hate.”
See? I told you our conversations got deep. They always were after we found our rapport, our rhythm, mutual trust.
And they were, and are, right. We’ve got an impressive society of hard-working people, but our culture is otherwise nowhere near well-rounded when it comes to coping with the human experience. If our schools didn’t teach us how to cope with our feelings, our media and pop culture stepped in. Before we even have a chance to know who we are, we’ve already been told, by our families, by society, by products, by trends, by competition and comparison.
“Work hard, play hard!” (Don’t forget to bring beer for the “play” part.)
“Consume!” (All that hard-earned money you’ve acquired? Have we got the deal for you! Give it back.)
“Invest!” (Give it back and we’ll give you a slice of it, but we’re in charge of the pie, so sorry if your slice inexplicably disappears and you’ve nothing to eat.)
“Consume!” (Again, and again, and again, in perpetuity. Merchandise. Clothing. Food. Tech. Decor. Mattresses. Medication. The free market goes on and on forever.)
“Productivity!” (Till you drop. Drop from drinking.)
On a more personal level, as a man, I can confirm that I was taught by our culture things like, “Boys don’t cry,” “It’s a weakling move to ask for help,” “Don’t be a puXXy!” Women were objects of sexual conquest, and they better be “hot.” Don’t talk about feelings. It’s better to be dumb and tough than educated and scared. The quest for money, fortune, fame, and notoriety are noble pursuits. It goes on and on forever.
I’m not a woman, so I won’t speak to the societal lessons they were taught and conditioned by, but some are in plain sight. Beliefs like, “It’s important to possess a certain body type and maintain it in order to be valued,” that this is a man’s world, you’re going to be often objectified, so make sure to present yourself in such a way that you dazzle people, staying home to tend to the family instead of pursuing your dreams is a noble pursuit. A whole litany of other archaic tropes that are still perpetuated in this modern day.
And hey, to each their own. Live and let live. But let’s face facts. A lot of our beliefs, communication styles, and lifestyles paint a rather unhealthy picture. Just scroll your feed for evidence.
My friend is right. When our parents were never taught to label, talk about, and cope with big feelings, how are they expected to teach us? Clearly, their own parents didn’t teach them either, and it probably spans back for centuries. There are always exceptions. Some are fortunate to receive an education about feelings, emotional maturity, and self-awareness from their caretakers, but I would posit that they are the few out of many. And that societal voice that tells us who we should be and how we should deal with it, pop a pill or crack open that bottle, just hit the drive-thru, it gets in. It gets into all of us, even if we have had the good fortune of learning about more substantive parts of being human and being healthy and whole.
The fact is, it is damn hard to be a human being, especially in this modern day. Readers, I urge you, have empathy for the younger people of our society. Look at the world that they have inherited. The younger people I’m fortunate to know, they’re hard-working and intelligent. They have a potent work ethic and ambition. They are talented. They want to work and be independent. They are capable of getting there, but it isn’t as easy as it once was. Gone are the days when you could build a career and a good-enough salary with a BA in philosophy.
The competition. Advanced degrees. The cost of higher education and those letters after your name. They are not just competing against each other. They are competing against cheap automation. Robots. AI. They’ve only known a lifetime of existential unrest and threat, with skyrocketing prices of everything from eggs to real estate. It’s not that they’re lazy. They just want a fair shot. They don’t want to take on six figures of student debt only to get stuck in entry-level positions and wages for years. Often, nowadays, living in the family home, working full time, and saving as much as possible is the healthier option for people in their 20s and sometimes into their 30s.
Healthier, I said. Not healthy. It could be healthier. It’s not. It’s in a state of growing decay. No wonder young people just want to wear their noise-cancelling headphones, scroll their feeds, and check out. When they look forward, what they see looks bleak.
It’s ironic and paradoxical. If someone is fortunate within their misfortune of “crashing out,” that’s often the first “university” they’ll encounter which teaches all things feelings. How to label them. How to sit with them. How to cope with them in healthier ways, compared to looking for a solution in the bottom of a bottle or a codependent relationship with an equally stunted partner. Water seeks its own level.
I’m talking about therapy. Treatment. Psychology. Psychiatry. Becoming whole. Not dying on the hill of seeking relief from a culture of excess, a culture of stress from constant productivity just to give it all back, a culture of an unending deluge of information that is beamed into our collective psyche, a culture of unaffordability and inequity. A rigged system. “Tilt!” on a pinball arcade machine. And everything that comes from a shot at reconditioning oneself into becoming a changed person. Creating a new consciousness and perspective on how to navigate and manoeuvre, rather than suppressing and settling for less.
Sometimes I ponder. I think my younger friend is right. I’m not sure what the most appropriate methodology would be to integrate more social learning into the heavy academic curricula we place on young, developing minds, but I do think it would give us a real chance. During those difficult formative years, if we placed more emphasis on honouring the wholeness of the human experience, becoming an emerging adult with all of its responsibilities and challenges, understanding the feelings that come after a ten-hour workday or an argument with a lover, and knowing what to do with them, might that not create a healthier society?
Read more from Joshua Bennett-Johnson
Joshua Bennett-Johnson, Licensed Counselor & Owner of JBJ Counseling
After working for 7 years in an amazing clinic, I launched into private practice in 2018. I love my job. I can say that without reservation. Watching people rebuild their lives is something that is worth more than any dollar amount.
