The inspiration for this article and its title came from David, a teacher who often requests support regarding one of his students. It is no accident that David is in demand in his role as advisor to students with learning difficulties. He possesses an amazing natural ability to connect with young people. He communicates his belief in their ability to succeed, even when they are not feeling capable at all. While speaking to him in the hall one day, another teacher passed by and asked, “When you get a minute, may I talk with you?” David asked me how I felt about being asked to “hold this” all the time. His question confused me.
David explained by describing a pattern he observes frequently in dealing with students who are having difficulties at school: a faculty member will request my help as the consultant responsible for students with problems, as if I were a holding container of some sort. The implication of the “holding container” designation is that I should “hold this (mess)” so they are free to distance themselves from the problems and/or be released from further responsibility or participation. This makes me very uncomfortable, as I do not view my role this way at all. The danger in this pattern is that it risks removing faculty from the helping process with children (and often their parents) with whom they have cultivated close and meaningful relationships.
In my work as a family therapist, I regularly encounter the same “… may I talk to you about…” moment. When young children and adolescents have problems, the significant adults in their lives, or Principal Players as I refer to them, naturally struggle to help them. The Principal Player might be a parent, a teacher, a school counselor, a coach, or a pediatrician. In most instances, these resourceful, caring adults succeed in their attempts to help the child.
However, when their efforts are unsuccessful, a Principal Player may seek help from a mental health professional, with the implicit request to “hold this.” Immediately the danger of disengagement arises: Principal Players, discouraged, frustrated or overwhelmed, start to step back or even drop out of the helping process entirely.
This pattern extends beyond the school context into our culture as a whole. The current state of affairs with mental health services for young people reinforces this pattern of disengagement. Insurance providers focus excessively on psychiatric diagnoses and brief emergency treatment. They rely more and more on medications to manage and provide relief from symptoms. While diagnoses and medications can be helpful to the helping process, when used in isolation of the child’s family and school context, they tend to reinforce the child’s sense of isolation and support the thinking that both the cause and solution for complicated problems lie only within the child. Far too little attention and effort are given to identifying and using what David provides to the students he interacts with: there is a dramatic undervaluing of the power of relationships as vehicles for understanding and solving problems in young peoples’ lives. When these essential connections are ignored, disrupted or absent, young people often become distracted and stuck in their attempts to grow.
Searching for creative ways to disrupt this pattern of disengagement is a necessary challenge for all of us involved with children. It means expanding the focus beyond the presenting symptoms to see the young person in context –within the family, the classroom, the school and the community in which he or she lives. It means taking time to talk with the Davids in the lives of young people. It means engaging them in a way that allows them to feel held and appreciated.
When mental health professionals build connections with the Principal Players, they, too, can experience what David gives to his advisees: a belief in their ability to succeed even when they aren’t feeling competent. A new pattern of collaborating allows parents who feel helpless and blamed to experience hope and a more effective connection with their child and his/her teachers. Teachers who feel frustrated and unsupported can begin to feel less isolated, more appreciated and reenergized. Young people who are failing and feel out of control may find themselves challenged and engaged in more productive struggles. An invitation to “hold this” can be transformed into the construction of a web of meaningful connections between a young person and the Principal Players in his/her life.