We Might Be the Most Powerful Nation in the World – But We’re Certainly Not the Most Well-Rounded
- Brainz Magazine
- Aug 21
- 5 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.
In a world focused on academic success, we often overlook the emotional well-being of our youth. This article examines the importance of teaching young people how to navigate difficult emotions such as heartbreak, bullying, and personal struggles, advocating for a more holistic approach to education that goes beyond preparing students to be workers.
A younger client of mine pointed it out to me recently. It was so simple. So poignant. So obvious. Hiding there, in plain sight.
His personal struggles began in high school, as do those of many. He was with a girlfriend whom he truly loved and cared for. She was unfaithful, the relationship went “kaput,” and he began to fall apart. Additionally, he wasn’t a “mainstream kid”, more of a misfit; his interests were of a more obscure variety. He leaned more toward the arts, tech, and gaming than aspiring to be a letterman quarterback for the school’s prestigious football team.
He went to a fancy boarding school and was a bit of an outcast. This breakup hit him hard. In addition to that, being the misfit he was, he didn’t have many friends to lean on for emotional support. He was often on the receiving end of exclusion and sometimes bullying. He is a natural introvert, so socializing and being outgoing didn’t come naturally to him.
Still, he’s a beautiful soul. But with all those issues piled up, along with his young age (15? 16?), his still-developing brain, and so on, he began to lean toward self-medicating with cannabis and alcohol to cope with the heartbreak and other difficult feelings he was experiencing. Things progressed rapidly, more powerful drugs, more acting out. His grades started slipping.
He was disciplined more often, but was never asked by any of the teachers or administrators: “Why the sudden change in behavior?” Their dereliction of duty on that front is something that makes my blood boil. Just one adult who he felt safe with, asking him that question, could have changed many of the problems yet to come. But what’s done is done. We don’t get do-overs in this life, and my client’s world began to shrink, become sadder, and more reactive in all the “wrong” ways. He didn’t know how to cope, except in ways that were detrimental to his life. Being that he was still a kid, he had no idea where that road was leading.
Long story short, it led to hospitalizations, involuntary committals to psychiatric units, self-harming, suicidal ideation (and one or two half-hearted attempts), progressively more substance and alcohol abuse, physical confrontations, the loss of friendships, worsening relationships with family members, the list goes on and on. The good news? He just graduated with a BA from a four-year university. His GPA was around 3.7. He’s doing great today, in a training program that could lead to a serious career, and he worked damn hard to earn it.
But what he said to me recently was this:
“Josh, I was thinking back to those high school days, and you know what I thought of?”
“What?” I replied.
“The classes. I was thinking about the classes I used to go to, English, math, social studies, science, physics, all that bullshit…but you know what I realized?”
“Go on.”
“We never had any classes about what it’s like to have your heart broken, or to be picked on and bullied. What it’s like at home with your parents. How we deal with hard shit, you know? We never had any classes about feelings.”
For a moment, it felt like the world stopped.
What are we teaching our kids? We’re teaching them to be workers. Full stop.
When you hear that bell ring, you go sit in your seat. Don’t speak without raising your hand. Ask permission if you need a bathroom break or need to see the nurse. Listen. Learn. Do the work, and do it well. Get good grades so you can get into a good college and become a good piece of machinery in the grand device that keeps this economy humming. But we don’t teach our kids how to cope with feelings, and what we’re creating is a world of young people who don’t know how to deal with the very stressful times we’re living in.
So much so that it’s commonplace now to hear yet another story about a young man walking into a school or another public place and just unloading on everyone with semi-automatic weapons; it barely even tracks as front-page news anymore.
Feelings. It’s all about feelings.
Listen, it’s important to have good, consistent, and disciplined workers to keep this economy pumping. We do live in a capitalist/free-market system, after all, but the scales aren’t balanced because the “workers” (our young people) aren’t well-rounded. And the reason they’re not well-rounded is that they’re not being taught how to deal with heartbreak, being bullied, shunned, outcasted, introverted, or whatever the case may be. There’s no one asking them what it’s like at home with their family in all of its glorious and dysfunctional dynamics.
What if we incorporated coursework into the school curriculum with the aim of not just grooming our young people to be good workers, but also giving them the tools to cope with their feelings in healthier ways? Just imagine. It would be a story of a healthier society. It would be: crime prevention, substance and alcohol abuse prevention, and violence prevention. We wouldn’t be blowing away the world competition in the direction of mental health disorders, conditions like depression, anxiety, self-harm, eating disorders, suicidal ideation, and on and on. No country on earth has America beat.
Such a simple solution to what seems like such a complex problem, but really isn’t. Kids don’t learn about coping with feelings at school. Further, they don’t learn about them, relatively speaking, because mom and dad were never taught either, and the cycle of generational trauma continues. Where most kids go nowadays to receive the support they think they need are online forums, often veritable cesspools of vicious character assassinations, stupid cartoons, inappropriate memes, and a “group-think” community of other youngsters who feel just as lonely, sad, and disenfranchised as the next.
It’s often in these forums where a young person considering going after a crowd with a weapon is encouraged by their peers to “go for it.” If for no other reason than “it’ll make you famous,” as they spend the rest of what might have been a pretty nice life locked in a cage of a private prison, in which some Wall Street investor profits off their despair as just another data point in their financial portfolio.
The great irony is this: many of the immigrants flooding our borders seeking asylum don’t realize that they’re actually trying to gain entry into a country that’s becoming as dangerous, if not more so, than the one they’re fleeing.
Young people need a safe forum, in person, where they can sit with each other and learn how to label, acknowledge, cope, and carry their difficult feelings. If we can’t, or won’t, provide them with that, it might snowball into the unraveling of our country’s biggest source of pride: that the USA is THE most powerful country in the world! Are we? Perhaps.
But at what cost?
Because in this life, nothing comes for free.
Read more from Joshua Bennett-Johnson
Joshua Bennett-Johnson, Licensed Addictions Therapist
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.
