Snowflakes

I love working with snowflakes. I have been working with teens and young twenty somethings more often. Most of the teens I work with come from middle class families; therefore, their lives have been rather easy, with all their basic needs taken care of. They spend to much of their time in their rooms, particularly during covid, using social media and playing video games. Besides having most of their basic needs taken care of they have created rather bad habits that are not conducive to growth and social support. They go outside much less than before, they isolate from family, and worry about what they are going to do when they leave the home. Anxiety is often high. Occasionally they are asked/told to come to therapy by a parent. Just as with any client, I will not see them unless they choose to be there and participate in therapy. Recently, young clients choose to be there and have been highly engaged. Some stop after a shorter number of sessions than most clients. My work with clients is aggressive and it may be to much for their developmental stage. I often label them as being snowflakes, not a diagnostic identification in the DSM-5 of course, but a description of those who have never been challenged by real life. It is surprising how much they identify with the label and the impact it has. It is characterized by a lack of resilience, since they have rarely been challenged to deal with responsibility for themselves or others. They are highly insecure socially; although, I have often found them to be better communicators verbally than I expected. They are naive to basic developmental changes of teens and sexually naive, with significant false information about their peers. Identifying them as snowflakes has supported them in taking more responsibility and placing less blame on their parents or guardians. The benefit of working with young people is that if they are engaged change can happen quickly. If they get on the right path when they are young they have the ability to thrive much earlier and have a greater impact with those they interact with. They can take on greater challenges where more risk is acceptable and leave the snowflake label behind.