Dealing with teenage anger

Clinical psychologist Bruce E Levine -  I have never spoken with a school shooter, but I’ve talked with many teenage boys and young men who—though behaviorally nonviolent themselves—emotionally connect with the anger, alienation, and hopelessness of school shooters.

Regardless of whether they received poor or excellent grades, these teenage boys and young men all tell me that high school was an oppressive experience. When we talk about Trump’s support for arming school teachers, they make caustic remarks such as: “Prison experts have long known that it’s a bad idea for prison guards to carry guns.”

Cynical about virtually all societal institutions, these young people tell me that NRA leaders care only about the NRA and gun profits and couldn’t care less about them. And they have no hope that gutless politicians’ gun control laws will decrease school shootings.

These teenage boys and young men are acutely sensitive to the variety of ways adults try to coerce compliance, and they dislike both self-identified “conservatives” and “liberals.” For these young people, conservatives’ religion and militarized society and liberals’ schools and shrinks are different faces of the same oppressive box.

... The teenage boys and young men whom I speak with tell me that they have no hope that school shootings will decrease because all they hear in the news are authorities’ ideas about how better to control them. These young people tell me that they are angered by compulsory mental health screenings and “zero tolerance” for an insensitive joke told in school, and so they are certain that the effect on kids with greater potential for violence could be disastrous.

.... I have no antidote for young people’s hopelessness about U.S. society, but there can be an antidote to hopelessness about their personal lives—a mutually respectful and affectionate relationship with a nonviolent person. If they connect with an adult who has experienced overwhelming pain but who has come to live a more joyful life, they can acquire hope that their own pain may not be permanent. Some troubled young people are so distrusting of adults that they will never risk such a relationship, however, some will take the risk.

Such a healing relationship begins with an adult emotionally connecting with a young person’s anger, alienation, and hopelessness. Unfortunately, teachers, principals, politicians, police, psychiatrists, psychologists, parents, and other authorities are socialized to the idea that being an authority for young people means denying anger, alienation, and hopelessness. So, from them, young people experience lectures that—even on their Adderall—do not compel attention; and they receive questioning that—even on their antidepressants—feels like torturous interrogations.

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