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Listen to this
That’s a terrible word, “overtherapizing", but it has appeared once or twice in the literature. It refers to the tendency of Child and Youth Care workers (no doubt out of their concern for the best interests and protection of kids) to bustle about and be too solicitous for the young people in their programs. It refers to the possibility that kids continue to be seen for too long as being "in therapy" while they may in fact have finished with our work and now need a chance to test out their new insights and abilities in the real world.
The real world is a place where we (all of us) test out our new learning, where we might fail, get hurt, screw up – yet where we learn our most valuable lessons. It is also a place, when we are working through our middle and late adolescence, which is at times a necessarily lonely and personally challenging place which we have to "do" by ourselves. The demands of young adulthood usually expect of us a quality of autonomy and commitment which we earn during our individual accommodations during adolescence. We who work close to kids who have been through difficulties do tend too easily to rush in when we see them alone or lonely, forgetting that these are signs of generic adolescence just as much of troubled adolescents.
One of the most moving descriptions remembered from years of practice was that of a Child and Youth Care worker who had walked a long and agonizing walk with a young girl who had had to learn some really tough lessons. In the final stages of this struggle the worker had found it almost unbearable to watch the girl grappling with her doubts and lack of confidence in the face of a crisis; the worker longed to reach out to hug and reassure the youth – but in the final moment she withheld the hug and the support, leaving the girl to rely on herself. The worker’s generosity in that moment lay in not giving, rather allowing her the space to find her own solutions and strengths – and thus achieving the better outcome.
We remember that the word therapy means "waiting upon".
In our work today, instead of doing too much for them, we will prefer to
watch how kids are managing, giving them opportunities to read situations
and make choices for themselves, and to see how satisfied they are
with their performance. When it is time, what we may offer will be only
temporary and only what is necessary for them to function by themselves.
