While transitioning into adulthood can feel exciting, many people experience new challenges due to physical and mental growth. Learning how to find your balance during that time is often made more complex because of new environments, experiences, outside pressures, and feeling a loss of support, or a safety net. There can sometimes be this overwhelming sense of, “You better get it right.” In part one of this three-part episode, Kirk and Tiffani share some of their past experiences transitioning from adolescence to adulthood to help guide listeners through their journey.

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Thank you for joining us today for part one of our three part series on the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Welcome back to our podcast on mental health issues and all things kind of mental health as somebody is transitioning from adolescence into adulthood is going to be our main topic today because there are a lot of things that are taking place during that time both physically and mentally,

and as we're trying to gain autonomy, that freedom from our parents and trying to get out there on our own, making our own life decisions, often during a very tumultuous time,

both physically and emotionally, because our bodies are going through so many changes, chemically, brains still developing, things like that. So I'm here with Tiffany who works with me at Peace River Center.

Hello Tiffani. Hi there. I am a licensed medical health counselor and we have Kirk you just spoke with. He is a licensed clinical social worker. Yep, exactly. Been doing this work for 35 plus years so we have a little bit of insight and our hope is to share some information that's clean and simple and and give you some pointers on going forward with things.

- And Kirk, today the topic, as you mentioned, just the challenges of transitioning from, you know, late adolescence into adulthood, I think it's more relevant now than ever. The latest statistics from NAMI,

the National Alliance of the Mental Illness, has said that one in five young people report that the pandemic has negatively affected their mental mental health. Yes, and we're seeing it more and more when we,

one of the things I do with Peace River Center is operate a 24 -hour crisis line and we do outreach into the community and so when we meet with somebody they,

yeah, anxiety and depression are two of the main themes that we see When we go out and speak with students and individuals in the community,

a lot of anxiety came out of that pandemic. People were in isolation, and that did not help matters. That's one of the key problems.

I used to teach sociology classes for a while, an introduction to sociology, and One of the things we did talk about is humans as a social animal and you always get somebody to say,

"Well, I really don't like to be around people," and it's like, "Well, you have to. It's good for your development both physically and emotionally because there have been unfortunate circumstances where children have been left into the wilds on their own.

It's very few cases, but still What they learned from those instances is those children, when they tried to reintegrate back into, you know,

humans, it didn't work out well for them emotionally, physically, and often they did not live as long either. So with the pandemic,

we all started isolating and isolating from peers and our reference groups and things like that made, you know, a difficult time, even a little more challenging for everybody,

especially those who are trying to gain some autonomy and yet they weren't quite able to do so being isolated. And because we see even without a pandemic,

We see changes in sleep pattern, eating and other routines and learning new things because and things you don't even think about when you're transitioning from adolescence to adulthood because and we're going to kind of look at it from two vantage points,

one from the emotional side and the other probably from behavioral side things that you did like with teens, "Well, my laundry was done by mom," and if you don't know how to do laundry and now you're out on your own,

"Uh -oh, now what do I do?" Oh my gosh, you're bringing me back. Right? I think even like with, you know, late adolescence, right, you know, 16, 17, 18, adolescence is hard,

high school is hard, even under the best circumstances, like there are absolutely challenging moments, and It can be a very difficult thing to get through, but once you're there and the thought of leaving it all behind,

entering, you know, this new season, right, of early adulthood, that can almost be debilitating at times because even though it was difficult, it's what you knew, right?

It was your normal. And I think a lot of us, you know, we've mentioned before, you know, I went to a college very far from my home as did you, and it can be scary to go to a new place,

you know, knowing that you're going to go back to your home at the end of the day. It can be even more challenging to go to a new place and realizing, okay, I'm not going back home today. I'm not going back home this week, maybe even this semester, and being responsible for all the things that maybe you were never responsible for before.

I remember my first week on campus, I had someone approach me and offered to pay me $10 a load to wash their laundry because they didn't know how.

And I would have never said this out loud. Neither did I. And I had to figure out how to do my own laundry, which sounds so silly, but I mean, there's little things that you don't realize that you don't know until you don't know.

Exactly. I remember some of my first forays into doing my own laundry. I was a little bit on the obsessive -compulsive side of things.

I was making sure my whites were separated from my colors. And, you know, that-- Did you really? I did. I was very careful. And I did, like, five loads of laundry, just for one laundry basket.

We are not the same, Kirk. We had to-- so at our college, you had to pay per load, and you had to go get the quarters, and you had to bring them back. You know, you had to get a roll of quarters. And I remember thinking, well, this is ridiculous,

like I only have like a dollar and a quarter, so everything went in. Everything went into the same, as much as I could grant, because I only had so many quarters. Well, going back to just like,

what are some, you know, general challenges, and so I know for me, and for a lot of people, it's starting over. So I come from a very small town, and everybody that I knew,

I had known my whole life, Right? You know, you see everyone, you know, you're driving down the road and if you don't, you know, bring your finger up to say hello and wave at them, then they're going to be angry at you. The grocery store tomorrow,

right? Because everyone knows everyone and it might sound unusual, but the thought of going somewhere and not knowing everyone or someone not knowing my mom or,

you know, not knowing my name and also like not knowing your And so you're starting over and almost having to prove yourself again, that can be really hard.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's risky to step out of that comfort zone that you have, you know? And that doesn't always work well for some people.

They tend to get more anxious as a result. And that all depends on some of the upbringing, I mean, I don't want to blame parents for everything because,

you know, we're all individuals, but we're learning from what the previous generation struggled with, and hopefully we don't struggle as much, but there'll be some things that we have to repeat because I don't know about you,

but in my life it's like, well, I want to try it out for myself, wasn't always successful there either. But you explore,

you learn, you get advice. And yeah, as you're moving into strange new places, that for some that's very exciting, for some that's the end of the world.

And I remember growing up in central Massachusetts thinking to myself, having seen many people that have not traveled very far, generation after generation from the local areas,

I wanted to see more. That was me. That was who I was as a person, still am. I like to venture forth and have had that opportunity to do many adventurous things and hopefully will continue to do many adventurous things,

but there is a risk. There is that "I don't know anybody, what do I do?" And so, let's figure it out. - Well, and I think sometimes that I don't know anybody and nobody knows me,

can almost be freeing. Not all of us come from healthy environments. And so, the chance to start over fresh, the chance to really have a new start at you don't know me,

you don't know my past, you don't know my trauma, right? You can form a new opinion of who I am. And so coming to college, there were several that I met that I could really sense that people were figuring out who they were now that they weren't in the shadow of their family history,

right? And so sometimes that can be incredibly freeing to not have that, I don't know, just the weight of everyone's opinion on you.

And Sometimes it can be challenging because you don't have that sort of built -in accountability that family usually provides. And so it's not uncommon to struggle with healthy eating habits because you can go to the cafeteria and eat not vegetables.

Right. I don't have to eat that broccoli. Or stay up as late as you choose to stay up or no one's checking your homework at the kitchen table to to make sure that you've done it,

and so there's this level of that accountability isn't there, but that accountability isn't there. And so how do I balance myself when maybe I've never had the opportunity to govern myself before?

Right, and that's where our moms and dads come into play, you know? Whether you have a mom and dad, two moms, two dads, Or just a mom or just a dad,

you know, that they're the ones that are Holding our hands through that struggle of adolescence Our brain is developing and we're trying to find our own personality and trying to Explore different things Different clothing styles and we're not really sure today.

I'm into this tomorrow. I'll be into something else and It's all about Finding finding our way and everybody does that everyone struggles through that and most people make it through the other side Perfectly fine,

and they find their little niche and even then it changes Physiologically As you know, you know, we are developing well into our mid -20s our brain specifically And a lot of the activity is happening in the frontal lobe area,

which the executive functioning and all of that is taking place and coming together and we're letting go of some of those connectivity synapses that have developed in there temporarily until we create some new ones or more permanent ones And so our triggers,

for lack of a better word, a lot of things are happening around the emotional aspect of the brain and it doesn't always read those social cues very well.

And so when people say, "Oh my God, the children today are just so dramatic." Well, yes, they are because our brains are like oh they're not really sure they've got this new thing that they're playing with within the brain with regard to emotional regulation and so it becomes a challenge and again you need moms and dads and friends and family to kind of help you know help you regulate and learn some of that.

Well and I just have to jump in and say so as a parent of two small children, I think there's this always this constant inner battle of I wanna protect my kids and I wanna shield them from any pain because their pain is my pain times 20.

But then there's also this element of like shielding them completely hurts them because it robs them of the ability to problem solve and to develop their own threshold.

So there's this internal Eternal battle that's like I could go in there and I could fix this for them. No problem, right? Because I have a significantly more amount of life experience,

right? But they need to walk through that they need to experience, you know, a level of disappointment at times they need to wrestle with regulation within safety Right in order to develop that threshold,

because what I hear you talking about is, you know, that emotional regulation. So many times we have little kids with big emotional reactions. And why does that happen?

Because they do not have the skill set to manage those emotions, because you're not born with that. You have to learn it. And if your caregiver solves solves every problem,

smooths every disappointment to where you don't sit with those feelings long enough in an appropriate amount of time, then the moment you feel it, the moment you have something that doesn't feel quite right,

there's these giant reactions because there is no threshold. - Right, they haven't learned the parameters yet and it often gets misinterpreted in ourselves and and how we read others.

And that's where the drama comes in. And then you have hormones that are changing, especially through adolescence and into early adulthood. Men and women have different chemicals spewing and making those changes for us to become adults.

And our bodies are changing as well, which is phenomenal. I mean, now if I try to eat a whole pizza myself, I'm going to be paying for it in many,

many ways. But back in my youth, I could pound back a pizza like no tomorrow. But those are part of the changes that are taking place.

Hey, I can do this now. I can make healthy choices, not so healthy choices. I can make choices. Whether the healthy or not, you know,

it's going to depend on your culture, your lifestyle, what you're exposed to in the earlier childhood years.

So it's pretty important. It's, but it can be a very exciting time as well. I don't always want to harp on, "Oh my God,

the real challenges," and think, "Oh my God, this is..." This is the worst. This is the worst ever. When it could be great. Yeah. It can be. It can be. Now, going through it,

it sure does not feel like it's great, you know, speaking from experiences like, "Oh, high school years for me, most miserable time. College was better." Yeah. College was better.

But that's my experience. That's not gonna be everybody's experience I've got friends that absolutely enjoyed high school and loved it and miss it and all of that But great that was their experience mine was slightly different,

but it's a time for you know discovery experimentation, you know Figuring out. Hey, do I like this thing called coffee? Mike my favorite the answer - Yeah,

right, exactly. - Always yes. - Always yes for coffee. But those are some of the things you learn about yourself, what you like and what you don't like. I mean, some of that,

like you mentioned, having that support system there to guide you through that process, that person that's gonna kind of help you keep safe.

Now we're not talking about that totally, you know, watch the hands of the situation and throw the person into the, throw them out there to sink or swim on their own.

We're talking about, you know, having somebody there to kind of, okay, jump in, I'm gonna be here to watch you, and feeling comfortable that as a person going through that,

that you have that support system there. And, you So not everybody does have that, and so there are going to be that one person who's going to have,

I really don't have that support, so you start to create your own support network, which is pretty important, especially if it, like you, like you went away to college far away from home.

Well, now you've got to start choosing your friends, choosing your support systems. And even that can be a challenge because you're not really sure who to trust just yet,

but you're testing the waters. I remember some people that when I first went off to college, I connected with, you know, for the first few months, and then I was realizing,

"Eh, this is not really the person I want to be hanging out with," you know, for various reasons, and then you try out different Some some additional challenges come in if you've got some some special needs You want to be able to prepare for those special needs as you're you're breaking into it Into adulthood and Having some things lined up.

So there's a bit of planning. Yeah in those situations But not everyone has that fortitude to the plan ahead is just As an adolescent, you've got this dream that I'm gonna break free one day from my home.

I'll do it differently and lots of times Yeah, you do some things differently, but you stay with what you know And that there's some comfort there and you explore further well,

and when we think about You know moving into college or you know going to college or even, you know, maybe not college, maybe, you know, the path looks a little bit different for each person. Um, but I think there's this overall expectation of what is it going to be like,

right? And then when your expectation doesn't match reality, you have this deep disappointment of I'm doing it wrong, right? Or there's something wrong with me because like,

it's not the place, right? It's me. Right. And so if there's something wrong with me than like, maybe I don't belong here. And looking back, you know,

and we can only really speak to our own experiences. Looking back to my experience, it was a really big time of feeling like the weight of my family,

right? It was on my shoulder because as I've shared before, I was the first person in my immediate family to go to college and college is not inexpensive. And so there was this big pressure of you better get it right because look at what they're sacrificing for you look at the financial sacrifice look at the the emotional sacrifice of you not being in your nuclear family and them having to survive without you your

siblings having to to be without you right and so there's a lot of pressure to get it right because You know, it's all all on you, when in actuality,

it's probably a lot of pressure to put on someone who's 17. Right, exactly, exactly. And I remember, you know, getting to my college campus and thinking, oh gosh, right,

there's a lot of people and there's this sense of like, I gotta prove myself, I have to show them that their investment in me was, you know, the right investment. The right thing. The right thing and then,

oh gosh, I hope I picked the right place and I hope I picked the right classes and I'm just gonna screw it up and I don't even know what my major's gonna be. And so like so many things and I feel like there's this sense of urgency that you have to know now what you're gonna be when you grow up,

right? - Right, right. - When you graduate from high school, everyone, what are you gonna do? Where are you gonna go? What are you gonna study? past ten years, you know,

in my, you know, profession, and this was not my first profession, and I'm thinking, I still don't know, like, exactly, like, I'm not done. I feel like we're in this constant evolution of,

like, what's next, right? And I know for me, what was such a help was getting to the college, or getting to my new place, and trying to find a new support system,

because my old support system wasn't here. My family wasn't here. Like, were they a phone call away? Sure. But they didn't know what I was going through. They couldn't relate exactly to what I was going through,

because they had never walked on this road. And I remember thinking, okay, I have got to get a peer support group that is going to be like a sounding board for when I'm having a hard time because as much as my mom adored me,

she could not speak into this situation because she didn't have a frame of reference. And so one of the first things that I did was, you know,

I went to all of the welcome things, right? All of the student life things, and I got connected, and I think that that more than anything to me feel like, okay,

number one, I'm not alone. Number two, I'm being forced to socialize, which if anyone knows me, forced socialization is like the worst. (laughing) But I was being forced to create my new circle of support because I didn't have one anymore.

- Thank you for joining our show today. If you liked us, please hit the like and subscribe button. And again, if you know of somebody who might be struggling with any type of issues,

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