Honestly, in my work as a therapist, I’m seeing this A Lot, and tbh I still don’t have a satisfactory approach to it. A heavy dose of Existentialist “create your own Purpose” tempered with “when the plane’s going down, put your own oxygen mask on first”, but… yeah, there is no ethical way to work on individual emotional distress without acknowledging the systemic socioeconomic, geopolitical fuckery going on at the moment, and the sheer grief that comes with it.
I’m a guidance counselor/psychologist for teenagers and it’s getting really hard to motivate young people to work for a future they don’t believe in.
They look at ther future and see global warming, wwIII, unemployement, political unstability, poison in everything they eat, the earth and animals dying all around them.
I saw this video where someone was asking french teens in the 50s how they imagine the future would be. The war hadn’t been over for long and yet it was all positive with like peace and flying cars and such. Then they went and ask the same questions to nowadays teens and hell that was depressing. Some still had hope, but it was just that “well I hope I’ll have a nice house and maybe some kid” but there was such a hesitancy to it, like they didn’t dare to hope too much.
People mock Greta Thunberg but what they don’t get is that when she said “you stole my dreams”, it was the truth.
Young people don’t get to dream like they used to. They don’t dream anymore, they grief all that won’t be anymore and that’s just so fucking sad.
