Why I Pray In The Shower

I wrote a post a few days ago about teenagers and violence called Teen Violence No Longer Shocking, and although it wasn’t necessarily a negative commentary on today’s youth, it still wasn’t as positive as I would have liked it to be.  A lot of people think the majority of our youth don’t care about anything today and that drug use among teenagers is more prevalent than what it really is. Because I don’t want to add to these misconceptions I want to say this. Many of the troubled teenagers I worked with in the past and the majority of teenagers I talk with today are doing well and aren’t getting into trouble or taking drugs, and this is despite any lack of parenting and the way the world has changed over the years. I talked in my book about how much I loved all the teenagers I worked with and explained how negative and extreme changes that began in the mid eighties has made an impact on many people today and not just our teenagers. I know there are some teenagers who make the news today in very unflattering ways and some don’t seem to have the best education, but it certainly doesn’t help when others talk about it as if that’s the norm. Perhaps having been a troubled teenager myself it strikes a nerve when I hear people talk badly about our youth, but it’s more to it than just that. I understand and believe in our youth today and am living proof that anyone can turn out to be a good and decent person no matter what type of teenager they were.

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Tags: believing in todays youth, teenagers, teens, working with teenagers, youth in america

I have the fortune to talk to teenagers on a regular basis at a local youth center near where I live. Some are in a shelter part and some in lock up. There’s a difference in the two groups I talk with. The teenagers in lock up who are both male and female are more rigid in their views about life. This makes it very hard to gain their trust and help them understand how their choice to live the way they do and do some of the things they’ve done isn’t the way they need to live in order to feel better about themselves. One young man I talked with killed someone and another had held people up at gun point and even pistol whipped a few on occasion. Both told me they understood why they were locked up, but admitted it took a long time to see any error in their actions. Some important needs we have in life is to feel loved and that we belong with others.  When these needs aren’t met by family, some teenagers look to have them met in the wrong type of friends and even gangs.  We live in a country where many of us, especially our youth has been desensitized to the things that use to be shocking to us and unfortunately some become so effected that they act out in ways that hurt others and not care about it.  Esteem needs are also important ones to have met. They include our need for self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others and respect by others. I suppose in some groups, violence does somehow fulfill these needs. I also believe that these needs are not being met by the parents or parent. However, if you look how our world has changed over the last 25 years, I think you would agree it’s not just bad parenting that has effected our youth in a negative way. We live in world we’re our standards for being a better person than we were before has been lowered and our standards for being someone special has as been raised. This may not cause everyone to kill another, but it has effected many of us to the point that it’s no longer shocking when we hear about it.

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Tags: desensitization, teen viloence, teenagers, youth development

In my drinking days, I would often play the role of a victim whenever I experienced unwanted or unfortunate circumstances in my life, and I usually blamed others for them. I felt like no one understood what I was going through or had it as bad as I did, and I would dwell in the negative emotions that I actually took comfort in because they gave me an excuse to drink. Poor me was always the theme that included anger and sadness, and as my self-pity grew, my anger would usually turn into a deep seated resentment that inevitability got me drunk.  This feeling of being a victim was also evident in some of the teenagers I worked with. Although not many of them drank, they did use the negative emotions they felt as an excuse to act out and do the things that got them into trouble. There are many reasons why people like playing the victim, but none of them come from healthy emotions. I will say, however, that many of the teenagers I worked with were indeed victims. None of them asked for the  awful childhood they had that often involved bad parenting and an unstable environment, or worse. A few of them had been abandoned as a child, and some of them were sexually or physically abused by a parent or family member. The goal for me was to help them understand why they seemed to like playing the role of victim and why they needed to stop, but sometimes professional help was needed to help with the more deeply rooted causes for their behaviors. Although I never pretended to understand what some of these young men had gone through, I was still able to help at some level because I understood the emotions behind feeling like a victim. I would talk openly about how I felt through my childhood and adolescence and what I did to stop playing the role of victim, and try my best to get them to do the same. Much trust was needed, and I certainly didn’t get every teen to open up and talk to me, but the fact that many of them did gave me a feeling that I could help anyone if they were open and honest with me, and more importantly with themselves. I learned how being honest with ourselves and someone we trust can be of benefit by doing the 4th and 5th Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Doing so helps us to uncover things that can cause both real or perceived emotional pain, and also helps us see what we need to change about ourselves to live a better and happier life. My experience with people in AA also helped me reinforce to my teenagers that it was possible to overcome the awful things they experienced. I would tell them about the stories I heard from people who went through horrible things as a child and teenager, and still became emotionally well despite it. This more than anything else left them with an undeniable conclusion that whether victims or not, it’s possible to change how we feel about ourselves and our lives, and begin to play the role of survivor.  

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Tags: alcoholics anonymous, self-honesty, self-pity

Although my book signings aren’t creating large crowds and long lines yet, I do get to meet quite a few people who like what I have to say and some like me, feel that it wasn’t just a coincidence that we met. This helps me to keep believing in what I’m doing and I thank them for that. The stigma of addiction isn’t going to go away over night, but I know as I continue walking the path I created over 14 years ago, I will do my part in helping to remove the shame associated with alcoholism and drug addiction.

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Tags: addiction, alcoholism, creating our path, shame