STEVEN KALAS: Student’s sudden slowdown demands intervention
There is a young person in my family who is of high intelligence and is kind and good but seems to be exhibiting debilitating passive-aggressive tendencies. By that, I mean that all of a sudden his grades have crashed and, just as he is about to enter a university, he has lost all initiative, “forgets” to do anything that is suggested, has kept losing his homework or just hasn’t done it and seems destined to sabotage himself. He seems to shut out any problem solving or investigative possibilities, also. This started when his parents began divorcing and, with the economy, his high lifestyle crashed. I’m sure it has been devastating, but can you lend any light as to what can be done when there are such limited resources at the moment?
— J.H., Las Vegas
“All of a sudden” — that catches my attention. When an adolescent’s academic performance takes a steep dive “all of a sudden,” pay attention! There is no measure more consistently telling of a personal crisis.
So, this young man is 18? 19? A nephew? A younger cousin or perhaps your brother? And, by “limited resources,” I’m assuming you mean that the cost of individual or family therapy might at this time be prohibitive?
OK, then. Someone has to lead an intervention. Is that someone you?
First, we have to inventory the possibilities of what might be going on. The easiest and most obvious answer is that he is spinning in an eddy of complicated grief and accompanying fear/anger regarding his parents’ divorce. You say the divorce has cost him a formerly “high lifestyle,” but I would wonder if it hasn’t cost him ever so much more than that. Divorce is an unavoidable trauma to a child’s worldview. Children tend to see their parents’ marriage as archetypal — symbolic of everything that is good and consistent in the world. They do this even when the marriage is obviously distant and devoid of warmth and courtship. As long as there is not frequent open warfare (fighting), children would always vote for not divorcing.
However not so fast.
A less obvious answer is equally possible. This young man also fits the description of an adolescent in a leaving home crisis. Let me explain
In our culture, devoid of meaningful and effective rites of passage for turning children into adults, it is common, even ordinary for some of those children to “panic” at the threshold of adulthood. It’s a largely unconscious process. That is, adolescents do not calculate academic “tanking” in a deliberate effort to prolong their dependence. But, here’s an apt psychoanalytic rule: The consequences of our choices tend to reveal our motivations. Said another way: People tend to do the things they most want to do.
I’m saying that this boy’s academic flameout might not have one thing to do with the divorce. It might be an independent variable from his parents thriving or failing in marriage.
This distinction looms large for the intervention. Effective interventions, like effective therapies, don’t rush to interpret or draw immediate conclusions regarding cause and effect.
A third possibility must be acknowledged: The young man is reacting to some separate trauma he has not divulged to his family. A girl? Something in his peer circle? Some guilt or anxiety about a recent behavioral choice?
Having stockpiled the inventory, here’s the intervention: Ignore the inventory! Make time to talk to him. Be curious and concerned. Not strident, reactive or punitive. It might sound like this: “So, here’s a young man that has the world by the tail. He’s on the threshold of manhood, college, self-direction, autonomy. And, suddenly, he lets go of the steering wheel. The bus is driving off the road. He abandons his schoolwork. He appears, overnight, to have lost all direction and initiative. And I’m asking myself, ‘Why?’ What’s going on with you, boy? Are you scared? Anxious? Sad? Is it your intention to burn down your immediate future? Because, it seems to me, that is exactly what you’re doing.”
This intervention is called making the covert overt. Let him talk. Let him interpret himself to you.
While it sounds like money is an issue, I want to encourage you: A three-session intervention with a talented therapist could work wonders here.
I doubt he has some deep pathology. He’s just stuck.
Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Las Vegas Psychiatry and the author of “Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing” (Stephens Press). His columns also appear on Sundays in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Contact him at 227-4165 or skalas@reviewjournal.com.
