A Second Adolescence

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Yesterday evening I had the great pleasure of witnessing a good friend get much of his head shaved.  The event took place at a local bar called The Saloon.  I got to see many good friends from the local leather community.

Events such as what took place last night feed my psyche and spirit in a way that few things can.  The fun and camaraderie I experience are something I need to continue to make a priority in my current and future life.  And I need to do so in part because they were so lacking in my earlier life history.

I have recently referenced the wondrous world of astrology here in my blog.  Those of you in the know will know we have been enduring a Mercury retrograde phase these last few weeks.  I myself have been affected by numerous delays due to the slow operations of other people and institutions.  It has been a retrograde phase period I would rather forget.  Today I am going to reference the writings of Erin Sullivan’s book Saturn in Transit to speak about the notion of a second adolescence.

It is my impression that deep trauma can cause us to become at least partially ‘stuck’ at developmental phases or milestones after they are expected to chronologically end.  When we become highly stressed later in life the stress can, in my opinion, cause us to respond in ways more typical of the developmental phases we have become somewhat mired in.  I have witnessed this in myself.  I have spoken about this phenomenon with my therapist.  And I have seen this unfold in other people when severe stress precipitates what I would call the adult version of a temper tantrum.  The consequences of severe stress can thus compound upon themselves and ultimately lead us to places in ourselves we would rather not journey to.

In Saturn in Transit, Erin Sullivan uses part of her book to tell the story of Saturn’s influence throughout the unfolding of a person’s life.  The nature of Saturn’s movement is such that Saturn makes one revolution about the sun in the equivalent of approximately thirty Earth years.  She breaks down human life into seven year increments which roughly correspond to one quarter of a single Saturn cycle around the sun.

What I find especially fascinating is what seems to be a common occurrence once people pass the age of thirty.  Once a person experiences the Saturn return at the age of thirty Saturn will begin visiting the same places in a person’s astrology chart as occurred thirty years earlier.  And it seems that unresolved or poorly addressed issues from a person’s life thirty years in the past may become colorful and urgent phenomena in the present reality of a person’s life.  It thus follows that a person of thirty-five may find himself unwittingly revisiting his childhood when he was five.  A forty-year old may recall the time when he was ten years old.  And so it goes.

Sullivan says the following about the time between the ages of forty-five and fifty-two:

“The initial stage of the Saturn opposition can also give one the courage to shrug off social expectations and pressures.  That the period has been called ‘the second adolescence’ clearly shows that childhood and adolescence can be revisited.  People who had extremely difficult childhoods, or had their adolescence cut short in some way, find that they can recapture their lost years.  There are many ways one can ‘lose’ one’s childhood or adolescence.  An abused child (whether that is sexually, emotionally, or physically) is never a child; a child or teenager who has to care for an ill or alcoholic parent never experiences childhood; a teenager who becomes a mother or responsible father loses her or his adolescence.  There are many examples of people who need to recapture a period in their life which was truncated or never lived at all.”

There is so much astute observation and wisdom packed into this single paragraph that I could easily spend an entire day reflecting and writing on what thoughts and feelings it inspires in me.  I completely agree with Sullivan’s assertion.  As I noted above, developmental milestones (ergo critical thresholds) that go unlived, unacknowledged or uncelebrated can go on to virtually haunt a person later in life.  Sometimes the un-experienced joy, celebration or acknowledgment may be so dimly and vaguely felt that a person can barely identify what is the cause of his sorrow or sense of alienation.  But in other cases the gap in a person’s healthy development is so blatantly obvious that discerning what is the source of immense sorrow is quite easy.  I would definitely fall into the latter category.

I thankfully never had an alcoholic parent.  But I was exposed to a significant amount of mental illness and dysfunction.  And I see more clearly than I ever have that this experience did indeed distort who I felt I was and who I felt I could be.  I didn’t feel all that comfortable going out and socializing with my friends due to the fact that I felt such anxiety about my father and his earlier pattern of making poor choices.  And so from the approximate age of nine until the time I left home at the age of seventeen my pre-teen and adolescent years were strongly influenced by an anxiety borne of a fear that my home life would again become a house of chaos.  I thus stayed at home and hung out amidst my parents more than is healthy for a teenager to do.  I did so in part due to a mistaken belief that I could and should hang around the house because I was somehow responsible for my father’s safety.  But this belief was distorted and distorting.  As Sullivan notes a child who cares for a parent during his childhood loses out on something vital.

I clearly see that I am now attempting to do what I couldn’t do as a kid.  I am attempting to ‘recapture a period in…life which was truncated or never lived at all.’  And it is this desire to make up for lost time that sometimes overwhelms me.  I occasionally feel I have a lot of lost time to make up for.  It’s a sobering feeling to gradually realize the thoughts and feelings that predominated years of your earliest life were unpleasant at best and often painful at worst.

In sessions with my therapist we have repeatedly spoken of the concept of the mature adult self.  When done with conscious awareness I do indeed believe it is possible to live out a ‘second adolescence’ in such a way that minimizes the poorly discerned risk taking that can unfortunately sometimes characterize the first adolescence.  And yet risk taking is indeed a vital aspect of life regardless of what chronological age we are.  To live each day is to take risks.  Many times we may be unaware of the risks we take because they are so minor in the vast scheme of our lives.  A life devoid of the courage required to take large risks is, in my worldview, a dull life indeed.

As I continue to address the trauma of my early life history it’s clear I need to pay attention to the voice of my nine year old self who unwittingly began journeying down a developmental road that wasn’t the best.  I sometimes consider it a miracle that I not only survived to my adulthood but that my alienation and anger did not fester so deeply such that I became a reckless, violent and destructive teenager and young adult.  I very well could have become such a person.  But I held fast and resisted the temptation to let the anger within me conquer me.  But it did damage nonetheless.  I developed a false persona as a way of passing and making it through each day.

I have given myself an incredible gift in the last sixteen months.  I have given myself the gift of a great unwinding.  I have given myself the gift of self-inquiry, improved self-care skills and joy.  I am living out a second adolescence and, if Sullivan’s rendering of the typical chronology of such things is accurate, I am ahead of schedule.  The second adolescence seems more appropriate to the lives of people in their mid and late forties.  Such a time period corresponds to roughly thirty years after the first adolescence.  When Saturn comes round again watch out!

I received the diagnosis of PTSD exactly sixteen months ago today on June 25, 2013.  It has been quite a whirlwind journey of transformation.  I am looking forward to becoming the person I have always wanted to be.  The deep work before me now involves really tuning into the dreams I had in my earliest years of life.  Who did I want to become?  Who can I still become now?  These are not small questions.  But with sufficient and consistent support I do believe I can find my way.

Healing is possible.  It isn’t always easy.  But you can heal your life and create a bigger, brighter future.

POST SCRIPT

Fifty Day Challenge, Day #30

§  I did my best to remain patient in the face of frustrating delays and confusion

§  I ate a healthy dinner

§  I went to bed early as an act of responsible self-care