Untangling the pandemic: Preparing girls for what’s next
In 2001, after the planes hit the twin towers, our country was left in shock. For many of us, it changed how we felt about our safety. It changed, too, how we traveled and left us with a new normal. It was a moment in history that shifted our society. In fact, what we had experienced is what therapists call a societal trauma. Today’s pandemic is no different. We are already living in a different world, and no one really knows what it will look like on the other side. For our girls, it will shape who they are and how they live in the world.
“In adolescence, our brain is firing and wiring so quickly that our experiences become part of our personality, part of how we see the world,” says Jordan Klekamp, a mental health counselor with Atlas Counseling. She specializes in the treatment of children, teens and their parents. ”These experiences are much more deeply ingrained than how it might impact me in my 30s or 40s or 50s.”
Experts expect the long-term mental health impact of the pandemic to outpace the economic or physical effects. The question is, how do we help girls navigate the transitional phases as things start to reopen, and we move into what will be the new normal?
Klekamp emphasizes the importance of prevention and offered three critical things those of us who care for and support girls can do: teach them to see grey, provide regular support and manage expectations for the new normal.
Teach them to see grey
We are currently living in a state of constant change and ambiguity. We don’t know what will happen next week, much less next month. A decision made today may change tomorrow. Adolescent girls are at the age when they are learning to think abstractly, to live in a world that is not black or white, right or wrong.
“One of the skills we have the unique ability to support right now in tween and teenage girls is learning to see grey,” Klekamp explains. “And learning to understand that sometimes reality is subjective.”
This idea of a subjective reality becomes especially apparent as we see differences in decisions made by elected leaders about how and when to reopen and the choices other families and friends make about their interactions. Now is a time to teach girls that people make decisions based on the pieces of information they have, what they value and what they think is best.
The more you can engage girls in the brainstorming portion around making decisions for them and your family, the better they will develop their problem-solving abilities and help them in future decision making, says Klekamp. To help inform these conversations, teach girls how to get information, and inform their own opinions.
“We live in these echo chambers of ‘I only listen to the people who believe what I believe or see the world the way that I do.’ Or, I Google something and the first thing that pops up, I believe that’s the truth,” Klekamp points out. “This is an opportunity to teach our girls what good research looks like and what are reputable sources.”
Be supportive
What girls are experiencing right now is what Klekamp calls a tangled ball of grief. Like a tangled ball of yarn – everything connects, and it is hard to know where one part starts, and another part ends. They are experiencing a combination of sadness, irritation, anger, cabin fever, expectations of what this year was supposed to be like and loss for the things that aren’t happening. “Overall, there is this underlying layer of anxiety for girls in all of this that is happening, and there is no true resolution point,” she says. “There’s no ‘This is when it will go back to normal,’ and, in fact, there is no going back and that ambiguity increases anxiety.”
One way to help girls start to untangle this ball of grief is to talk with them. Girls are more likely to process things verbally and seek out emotional support.
Make checking in part of your routine. Set a time each week for everyone in your household to check in and talk about what they are feeling and what changes are happening. Or, give girls access to a therapist with whom she can connect regularly. Normalizing these conversations will make it feel less like she is “being made to talk about it” when struggling in a tough moment.
We can also teach girls ways to cope with emotions that come up and to be intentional about it.
“When I do an inventory of ways tweens and teenagers manage their hard feelings, I often find the list full of ‘I take my mind off of it,’” says Klekamp. “We think that we are coping by distracting, but in reality, what we are doing is avoiding.”
If we avoid stress, it will ultimately show itself in other ways, Klekamp says – getting sick, sleeping poorly, eating poorly, or worrying about other things.
Teaching girls coping strategies can help them process emotions and anxiety as it comes. These skills come in different forms and can be learned in therapy, skills groups, at home, in a webinar or with books.
In her book, Coping Skills for Kids, Janine Halloran outlines four categories of coping skills:
1. Calming, like deep breathing or taking a walk
2. Distracting, like baking or playing with a pet
3. Physical, like dancing or squeezing a stress ball
4. Processing, like journaling or talking to someone they trust
“As much as possible, find ways to strengthen skills in all those categories,” Klekamp says. “Intentional coping is very different than reacting and just trying to take our mind off of it because it’s stressful.”
Manage expectations of what comes next
For parents and caregivers, there is no manual on how to help your girl navigate a pandemic, making it difficult to know how to set expectations and offer guidance.
“Normally, in situations like this, we are giving historical knowledge to our children – this is what you can expect will be happening during this time – but we don’t have that ability right now,” Klekamp says. “We are literally walking the road as we pave it.”
Paving the road together can help. As our worlds start to reopen, have conversations around what you do know and what you think things might look like. We know we’ve faced diseases and viruses before, and vaccines were developed. We know this summer likely won't be the summer we had imagined. We know school will probably look different in the fall.
Klekamp suggests making a list and building up those brainstorming skills. What was normal before? How might it look different? Talk through it, all the way down to specific details – for instance, if thinking about school, think about things like how the classroom will be set up and how desks might be arranged.
“The more we think about it internally and don’t share that with our children, the more we leave them to make up their own stories of what the world will look like,” Klekamp says. “They may experience more distress and more disappointment than was needed than if we had just said, “This is where we are at.”
Ultimately, we don’t know what the world will look moving forward, in the short and long term. Let girls know you are there to support them in the discomfort of the unknown and help them build coping skills. Together these two will go a long way in empowering them to manage that tangled ball of grief.
Resources
Klekamp recommends the following resources and readings:
- Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain, Dan Siegel
- Trauma & PTSD library, Child Trauma Academy