#12: Reclaiming the Inner Teen with Avi Zer-Aviv
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
One of the most important aspects of healing is tending to our emotional wounds. We have all been hurt. It might look different from one person to another, but some of our wounds are deep and carry a specific age. When we are trying to work on our wholeness, we may have to pay attention to our inner child or our inner teen. Bringing back the lost parts of ourselves and integrating into maturity is the essence of self-development.
On this episode, we have a conversation with Avi Zer-Aviv, a Toronto-based Psychotherapist and educator. Avi is a member of the Canadian Humanistic and Transpersonal Association and a LGBTQI positive Practitioner. Avi’s holistic approach to psychotherapy is informed by decades of deep inner work and spiritual exploration. In this conversation, we discuss the role of psychotherapy in modern society and learn the tricky dance of working with activated “inner teens”. Avi shows us how our deepest wounds can end up becoming our biggest doorways to personal transformation.
Highlights:
- Difference Between a Psychologist, Psychotherapist and Psychiatrist
- Psychology of the Inner Teen
- Healthy vs Unhealthy Shame
Resources:
- Brainstorm: the Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain, by Daniel Siegel
Listen:
Poem Inspired by This Episode
Full Transcript
Thal:
Hello Avi, Welcome to the show.
Avi:
Thank you for having me.
Thal:
Thank you. Thank you for coming on. Um, we wanted to start today with, uh, your personal journey. Um, you have been a psychotherapist now for a few years. Um, please let us know how did you get there?
Avi:
I’ll give you the coles notes.
Thal:
Alright.
Avi:
Um never thought I would be a therapist. Never set out to be a therapist. I had a sort of an early awakening when I was a teenager, sorta grew up in the suburbs of Toronto up in York region and white picket fence sort of life. I’m not really religious. I’m very much consumer. And I started to find myself wanting more of probably around 12 or 13 starting to think about things that, um, mystery, the mystery of life, but I didn’t really have any one to bounce anything off of. Um, and um, I had an, I have an aunt and uncle were kind of at the time were sort of the black sheep of the family and they, uh, asked me up to their cottage up in a Bancroft Ontario and I spent 10 days there, and it felt like I found my tribe. I remember thinking that when I was teenager, like, oh, these are my people.
Adrian:
So how were they different from the rest of your family? How are they black sheeps?
Avi:
Uh, they were, they just didn’t drink the Kool-aid of, you know, what is your, what the program of life is supposed to be. They were travellers, they were um, uh, spent a lot of time in Asia. They owned, they owned a, uh, an Indian clothing store on Queen West and meditated and were vegetarians and just things that were off the beaten track. Um, and um, yeah, so I, I intuitively felt that I’d found people I could talk to about things that I’ve been really hungry to talk about and that was kind of where it all started.
Thal:
That’s awesome because those questions that you have at that young age, a lot of people do have those questions and don’t know where to go and sometimes that causes more anxiety.
Avi:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s very easy to get isolated. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Um, so I felt really lucky, but then I had to come back to my suburban life and the contrast made things even more painful. Um, so I became kind of a rebellious teenager and uh, just was counting the minutes until high school was finished so I could go traveling, which is something really wanted to do and that’s exactly what I did. I, I the minute high school ended I set off and lived in Asia for a year and I myself in India for six months, on a spiritual pilgrimage and meditated my brains out. Lived in south India, different ashrams. The Aurobindo Ashram, Ramana Maharishi Ashram, and I went pretty deep with my meditation practices. But when I got back to Toronto I realized that wasn’t really in my body. I was very much opening a lot of doorways, but I was kind of, my energy was going up and I sort of left body behind and um, that’s how I just might, my instinct was to just to meditate more and that just seemed to perpetuate this kind of feeling of ungroundedness and just feeling of kind of not wanting to be in the world, just wanting to meditate back to whatever source was/is. And uh, then I started getting panic attacks in my early twenties, which was the invitation to psychotherapy.
Thal:
How old were you when you were in India?
Avi:
18.
Thal:
And it’s usually at that age, um, and you know, you going after the spiritual path without the embodied part is what may have caused, um, you wanting to escape, escape your body.
Avi:
Absolutely.
Thal:
And, and so psychotherapy helped you integrate body and soul?
Avi:
yeah, it came very reluctantly. I didn’t really believe that psychotherapy was a valuable tool because of the sort of focus on content, on story and on narrative, on history. I sort of, from a, from a young sort of a this not in not integrated spiritual lens, that was just ego indulging itself and that wasn’t, that was just kind of getting caught in the web of you know, at the time when I called maya, or illusion and so I really didn’t come in, in an open hearted voluntary. I came in really because these panic attacks were getting worse so much so I would have them on the street and feel like I would just couldn’t interact socially. Um, and so I really came to just, I wanted someone to help me get rid of these panic attacks and I gave myself a year to get and get back to my spiritual practice. I could go and become enlightened [laughing]. You know, what is it now 20 something years later? For me, psychotherapy was a doorway into an integrated spirituality. So I didn’t have to leave my spirituality behind. What I did have to leave behind was an idea of spirituality, though that was really about not being here in the world, which in my opinion, any good spirituality is one that is of the earth and is in life. We’re here, we’re alive, we’re in this body, and so why not be here?
Thal:
Exactly. That’s very important to remember because even the word spirituality, a lot of people find it problematic or don’t understand it and assume that it’s about escaping when in reality, all the authentic spiritual teachings are about being in the world and enacting your humanity in the world.
Avi:
Yes, yes.
Adrian:
It sounded like you had your panic attacks and so it was when things were so bad that forced you to, okay, now try, try new things. And psychotherapy, you went into it somewhat skeptical. It sounded like you, you know, you didn’t really fully buy into the idea of it. Um, you even set a deadline in a year if you want to be fixed and then you can just continue on with your meditation. What changed? So what at what moment did it start to shift for you when you realize, okay, this is not what I thought it was and what was it? What, what did it become for you?
Avi:
I worked with a really interesting therapist who was very much all about the here and now. And I thought, oh great. The present moment. There’s nothing like the present moment. This is a spiritual approach. Yet I didn’t, I didn’t have a sense of how much I didn’t want to be in the moment emotionally and vulnerably that I wanted to be in the moment with lofty concepts of mysticism and um, uh, you know, big picture stuff. But to be finite in the moment, to be raw, naked, emotionally naked in the moment was not only painful but was… Opened the door to my deep wounds and all my… And so I, this therapist was really challenging, did not, did not really like it, did not, not so much like, but really challenged me to stay in the moment with him. And, um, that’s not an easy thing when you haven’t been, when you’re not steeped in that and when that isn’t the way you’ve been brought up.
Thal:
Absolutely. And this is the, um, I guess, psychological arm of this spiritual path. A lot of people, um, you know, seek spirituality as a way to bypass a psychological trauma.
Avi:
yes,
Thal:
You know, developmental trauma, whatever, the pain of being human. And um, and so it sounds like psychotherapy in your life was a tool to bring you back into your body.
Avi:
It was. But you know, it’s interesting, when I first started spiritual practices at a really young age, Yoga, vegetarianism, I was amazed at how much clearing happened. And I think it’s a very common experience for a lot of people that don’t, that have just kind of, it’s a great starting point, spiritual practices. And it really does have a way of. A lot of these practices have a way of clearing energy and opening energy and expanding energy. And so, um, you know, in the moment you can be a little bliss bunny because you go from living a humdrum, mundane life to all of a sudden having visions or feeling waves of energy. I, everyone has a different thing, but it’s very intoxicating and beautiful doorway possibly for a lot of people in it. I think psychotherapy is just the downward movement. So if you think about spirituality is an upward movement. This is just the, the integration of, so you could say cosmos and the mundane and the transcendent and the imminent.
Adrian:
Since Thal and I are both training to be therapist, we are commonly asked what is the difference between psychotherapy and seeing a psychologist or psychiatrist? There’s all these kinds of terminologies and credentials. Maybe this is a good chance for us to help kind of differentiate a little bit some of the differences and why you might seek one over the other.
Avi:
Sure, sure. Um, you know, psychotherapy up until the last few years has not been regulated in Ontario. So anybody could call themselves a psychotherapist and the focus of psychotherapists is psychotherapy, is counselling. It’s interventions around looking at people’s struggle, all of our struggle that the human struggle that we’re all in, but then our own personal struggles in our lives and essentially what gets in our way. That’s the, that’s the core of everything is what’s, what gets in our way of who we know we already are in how we want to live. And uh, the work of a psychotherapist is to help a client open to that and explore that and help the client get out of their way if they want to. Tt’s soul work. It’s the work of deep soul work. Now this is my lens of psychotherapy. Now there’s a lot of different types of psychotherapies. There’s cognitive behavioral therapy, which is more practical and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, which is more interpretive, but the kind of psychotherapy that I’ve been trained in and that has been my healing path is more a relational psychotherapy. It’s more psychodynamic, more, um, more opening to the mystery of self and without trying to fix or solve, but really taking the invitation to go deeper into the mystery. So that’s my unique experience and sort of how I look at psychotherapy. Now psychotherapy is now regulated in Ontario as of the last few years, um, through the college of psychotherapists, CRPO and um, uh, so to be, to call yourself a psychotherapists you have to be a registered psychotherapist. There’s a whole training involved. Um, do you want to know now that it’s sort of the distinction between…
Adrian:
I think it’d be helpful because some people have heard of, okay, I saw a psychiatrist and maybe they are also don’t know, is that psychotherapy? Right? Or a psychologist, you know, even looking at like in a very practical sense like insurance coverage, they might see, oh, I’m covered for all these things, but what’s the difference? They all start with a ‘p’ and I don’t know, you know, they’ll have psyche in it. They seem to be related to the mind because I, I’m sure there are lots of overlaps, but for a consumer who is new and is searching, it might be helpful to provide some guidance.
Avi:
Psychologist, it’s a doctoral program and they’re trained… The specialty with a psychologist is diagnosis. They’re very much trained around diagnosing mental health issues, mental health conditions, and they’re legally allowed to diagnose. Psycho therapist can assess, we can’t diagnose, but we can treat, um, whereas psychologists can diagnose and treat. There are a lot of psychologists that do psychotherapy in the sense of counseling and having these kinds of conversations with people. Um, the focus for many psychologists is diagnosis in that sort of their specialty area. Whereas the psychiatrist is a medical doctor who is trained in their specialty is prescribing medication. And um, uh, now, you know, a psychiatrist can do psychotherapy and psychologists can do psychotherapy, but psychotherapists can’t diagnose like a psychologist can and psychotherapists can’t prescribe like a psychiatrist can. So does that kind of clear up a little bit of the…?
Adrian:
I think that’s a great distinction. Having a sense of even the scope of what they’re trained to do and what they offer.
Thal:
I’m a second year student, a phd in transpersonal psychology. So, I definitely cannot prescribe or diagnose even because it’s not clinical psychology.
Avi:
Right.
Thal:
Um, it’s more, I would say it’s closer to the psychotherapeutic arm of mental health. Um, but a lot of people do also ask what does transpersonal mean? I’m from your description of psychotherapy. That’s, that’s the transpersonal, that’s the, uh, the, the, the space beyond the ego and um, and, and, and through my program, um, we’re able to sort of connect that with empirical research and I’m sort of, we look into how the brain functions during meditation and altered states and all that. So, um, and that’s all within the realm of mental health.
Avi:
The word transpersonal is misinterpreted heavily because the word itself, trans beyond personal beyond the self. Yes. There is an aspect to us that is bigger than ourselves, but it doesn’t mean we don’t get to take the self with us. It doesn’t mean the self sort of dissolves into nothingness and the spirit comes through and um, you know, is running the show without any. I like to the, the sort of adage that I really like when it comes to helping people understand what is transpersonal psychotherapy and what is just the transpersonal itself is, you know, do you guys know the saying it’s not the uh, you know, that whole idea of spirituality being like we’re like all like drops that drop into the ocean and sort of the ocean as the bigger, bigger consciousness, bigger, whatever your name for that is, whether it’s God or Goddess or whatever your thing. So I like to, when I, when I’m trying to explain what is transpersonal, I really like to say it’s not the drop that slips into the ocean, but it’s the ocean that slips into the drop. And that to me is what an embodied spirituality is. You don’t actually get to dissolve yourself, but you do get to take yourself along with, for the bigger ride that is bigger than you. It is bigger than your what do I want? What do I fear? It’s bigger than your wounds. So there is a place that’s bigger than our wounds. Truly. Yeah.
Thal:
And to get to that place, we have to understand her wounds and confront them.
Avi:
Absolutely. Absolutely. That is the price.
Adrian:
So on that note, since we brought up, um, you bring up a few things that are, I think are really important to highlight just so your approach to therapy as embracing the mystery of self, right? So really it’s a journey of getting to know parts of yourself that maybe you have either forgotten or didn’t place much attention and the wounded parts being probably a key part to actually focus on in the therapeutic relationship. Can you maybe share with us what that’s like for people that might not have experienced therapy? What does that process like and how might these old wounds show up in people’s current lives and how they experience the world?
Avi:
Do you mean how therapists work with wounds or how I would work with a wound as a therapist?
Adrian:
Maybe give an example for how it would show up for a person that might not be aware that these old wounds are affecting their experience of the world and that the way they interact with other people because it perhaps is not conscious yet.
Avi:
I see. I see, um, well wounds are a tricky business because to be alive is to be wounded. And what I mean by that is we’re our, our true nature is vast and spacious and wants to merge with everything. This is kind of like the true spiritual identity of who we all are. And so, and then we’re all tossed into this existence where you have a body and you’re called Adrian and we all have different names and you have a, you know, we have separate bodies and separate experiences and we’re sort of tossed to figure it out on our own. So that in itself creates an existential crisis that is just called life, right? This vast, expansive spirit trying to reconcile, living in a finite, um, singular experience. It’s William Blake, one of my favorite, a really great poet, uh, you know, he says eternity, which he’s saying like life source, eternity is in love with time and space. But to become, to go into the time and space, it has to be dismembered. It has to be broken. That pure vast spirit has to be. It’s like a shard of broken glass that you call it, that we’re all calling our separate selves. So it, you know, um, just to breathe and to take up space in a way is to be wounded. There’s a book called, uh, I think it’s called The Trauma of Birth and it’s essentially not, not birth trauma, but it’s just traumatic to be born in an existential sense.
Adrian:
It’s the price of admission.
Avi:
It’s the price of admission. So it’s, it’s a negotiation and um, you don’t have to have had a terrible childhood to… You could have a great childhood and you’re still in those waters. Now, for some people, like you said it, some people are more tuned into that level of, of their self, of their being, and other people are less tuned in and that’s okay. That’s, there’s no, I don’t think that, you know, at some point in life we all will struggle with this for a lot of people. It does come out around Midlife. It’s when a lot of people start to become a little more reflective, but some of us, and that’s all of us in this room actually, um, or just kind of have more of an orientation to introspection.
Thal:
And some people want to tune in, but have palpable wounds that maybe act as an obstacle. Um, and perhaps that’s what Adrian was trying to or was hinting at. Um, maybe developmental traumas or actual traumas. I mean, we’re not gonna go into the details of that, but that, those also can be obstacles or the tools. Yes. If confronted to, to, um, like tune in to the bigger self.
Avi:
Well, because our culture doesn’t give us enough tools, there aren’t enough elders in the culture to help us understand what these wounds are when they come up. The they come up through symptoms is, is because we don’t have enough elders to guide us. They do show up, but they come up through, you know, when I mentioned panic attacks in my case or it will be something different. Most people come to therapy for one of two things. Anxiety or depression or some variation of anxiety or depression means a hyper state (anxiety) or a hypo state (depression). And most, you know, the way, um, it’s like coming back to my story, just I want to get rid of this. It’s just that helped me get rid of my wound to help me fix my wound so I can go back and become spiritual person again. Whereas from an integrated, from an integrated psychotherapy and an integrated spirituality, those symptoms are the doorways to the gods. And what I mean by that is that in, in the exploration of what we’re calling wounds. What we’re calling our symptoms is not just pain and suffering, but is a whole ocean of, of who knows what, desire, longing, yearning, heartbreak, unmet dreams, unmet potentials. And if you follow that, it’s hard to follow that. To follow that means you have to really feel it. And, but if you can stay with it, if you can, if you can follow that thread, um, entire doors that were not there will open for you. So at the end of the day, it’s not so much, okay, I fixed my wounds. Now it’s more, the wound is an invitation into living a fuller, richer, more embodied life and having richer connections with people. I think the deep longing of the times is around connection. Um, there’s a deep isolation that we’re all of us experience and um, the instinct is to fill it with stuff, just name the substance that you know, just think about your life and what substance you go to to fill your need for connection. Right? And so this approach is like an alternative to just try and fill that place inside with stuff. It’s actually looking at the raw energy itself of the desire of the need and seeing how you live in your own skin and how do you, how do you feed yourself spiritually, how do you care for your own being? And a lot of that, that’s a mystery to a lot of people. How to just self care in the sense of …
Thal:
Inner work.
Avi:
Inner work and just being kind, being kind to self. That’s a mystery from..
Thal:
Self compassion.
Avi:
Self compassion, right?
Adrian:
I think a lot of people might actually be surprised to hear this, but even as adults, you’re walking around thinking, okay, I’m a full grown adult that we’re carrying with us many parts of self, including our child selves, right? Especially the ones who are carrying the wounds if these wounds happen early in life. Um, so we are walking with all these selves all the time and I think it’s a helpful language almost to even be able to name some of this stuff and start to just begin to get some clarity in the potentially messy experience that we’re having, you know, when, when someone is overwhelmed with anxiety to realize that, you know, maybe some of it is a longing or a crying for help and it’s coming from the inner child parts. Um, would you mind sharing with us what that might look like in a therapeutic setting where people are working with their, their inner child or. Sure. Or the term, you know, we often hear is reparenting, you know, when we’re learning to reparent these wounds.
Avi:
Something that you said just now, I’m sorta just, I just want to come back for a second to the cult, to our culture itself.
Thal:
Modernity.
Avi:
Modernity. Krishnamurti, a modern philosopher from India said, it’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. And the reason I want to come back to that is there are people that are just more sensitive by nature and those are the people that often end up in therapy, younger. It’s all of you, all of us. And uh, you know, to be sensitive in a world that is on fire, on, in so many ways is a very challenging thing to be really awake in these times or environmental catastrophe. And crisis of meaning. It’s to really look at that, to really be open. It’s, it’s not an easy time to be an awake person and to be a sensitive person. So, um, I just want to say this because just to give people listening a compass here actually, if you’re, if you’re feeling wounded and you’re probably more healthy. So I’m being a little facetious, but what I mean by that is, um, it’s okay to. It’s okay to feel. It’s okay to, um, you know, struggle. It’s actually a sign that you’re alive when you struggle.
Adrian:
I think that’s so important to highlight. I mean in a, in a culture that is I think celebrates intellect and being able to rise into the cognitive parts of being that we lose sense of like it’s talking about the sensitivity through the body, through our emotions, and although it’s painful, it might actually be a sign that you’re waking up, that your beginning …
Avi:
And that you’re and that you’re part of you is listening to what’s happening around you.
Thal:
That you’re alive!
Avi:
Yes, that you’re alive! And reacting to what you know.
Thal:
Congratulations, you’re not a robot. [laughing]
Avi:
You’re not a robot, you’re not a robot. There’s such a fear right now of being impacted of impacting each other, that, that what you do and what you say in how he, God forbid that should impact me or God forbid what I do or say should impact you. It’s like we’ve come to a point now where it’s like, it’s that absurd, right? We’re afraid of impacting each other, where that is the whole point right here. That’s the whole reason of being alive is that’s the other word to say that is relationship. I impact you and you impact me. That’s the nature of relationship and so I’m coming back to being wounded, um, you know, using that as an invitation to what’s happening around you, what’s happening inside of you and all of your relationships inner and out. And so yes, we have Adrian about your question. We have relationship with parts of ourself that are at different stages developmentally, including a younger, more, um, a younger aspects of our own history, of our own self that live in us and we are in relationship with them. Uh, whether it’s our infant, part of our nature, pre-verbal part of our nature. I’m sort of more adolescent aspect. We, we do have relationship with aspects of self and I don’t mean that in a sort of defined sort of compartmentalized way. I mean it in the sense of who we are as a tapestry. Yes, just like life. And so we’re, we’re relating to different aspects of ourselves all the time. Unconsciously. Mostly.
Thal:
It is the complexity of being a human. We are not too deep, like, you know, there, there are so many layers to our existence and speaking of that, we’d like to go into the inner teen. That’s a term that we’ve heard you mentioned before. And um, what, what, what does that mean? And um, yeah, yeah.
Adrian:
How is it different from the Child?
Thal:
Exactly.
Adrian:
Yeah. There clearly are differences when we entered teenage years and how it affects us psychologically.
Avi:
So just coming back to what we’re talking about is the collage of our inner self. There’s different parts, um, were mostly encouraged to walk around with what we call an adult. If we are in adults, assuming we’re assuming chronologically we’re in that part of our life. And that could be different things too, but the idea is to be, you know, the adult part of us is autonomous and can make decisions for ourselves and is in negotiation with life, with prioritizing what’s important. And it’s, it’s kind of, you can think of it as a muscle in your, in your mind that, uh, is discerning and that knows how to respond to situations and people. And, and, and there isn’t, I just want to say when, because it’s very easy to fall into, um, perfection. We’re not talking, I’m not talking about any kind of utopic idealized sense. It’s just you could say the part of you that the part of us that knows how to navigate our life and knows how to, um, I don’t know, what’s the word I’m looking for is that knows how to.
Thal:
I’m thinking maybe like these are like bringing up these terms are just tools for us, like you said, to help us navigate our lives. Um, and uh, it’s not an end goal and it’s not. When we talk about the inner teen does not mean, okay, that means I have to grow into the adult. Yes. It’s, these are just tools for us to navigate our growth, our path in life.
Avi:
Yeah. It’s a lens to Lens.
Thal:
Yes.
Avi:
So this lens of adult is this lens of who we think we are mostly. And um, and then what do we do with the parts of us that come up that are more at a different developmental stage, the teen, the child. And so what is the teen? Uh, you know, it’s really interesting because there isn’t a lot of, we don’t often talk about our inner teen. You hear in popular psychology in books, the inner child is like, there’s hundreds if not thousands of books written on the inner child and how to work with the inner child. And that’s an easy concept for most people. Yeah. You got to have a young kid living inside of you. The kid feels things that kids feel it just named them. If the kid is, if the kid is a happy kid, the kid feels spontaneous and joyous and wants to play. And if the kid is not happy, the kid feels ashamed. The kid feels, um, maybe self-loathing, whatever it is. But it’s a very easy concept to grasp and most people can go, “oh yeah, yeah, there’s part of me that feels very young and shy and all these things”. But when it comes to the inner teen we’re getting into the weeds, because what happens when we actually move in our actual lives, when we move from being children to being adolescents, there’s a radical change happening in our bodies and in our minds and it’s a time where so much energy has to be mobilized to make that transition from childhood to adulthood. It’s a liminal intermediary time. And so the sort of life force us to really mobilize because if biologically, if we can’t do this, we really don’t grow up psychologically. And so there’s a tremendous energy that comes through in being an adolescent and we don’t, again, coming back to the culture, we don’t have a lot of guides for adolescence. Um, you know, there’s, there’s just such a lack of mentorship around what all these changes are. And so we’re, we, we’re often taught to shut it down and anything you shut down goes on the back burner and then it will show up later. And so a lot of us adults are walking around with a very activated inner teen and this inner teen is different than the inner child is not so much about the child kind of just wants to be nurtured in a very basic, elemental level. Children need gathering, support, to be seen, to be acknowledged. It’s very much about dependence needs from a childhood developmental level, an adolescent as a very different developmental need. It’s a time where you don’t want to be coddled and sort of held in that same way. It’s actually a time of… But it’s actually not a time where you want to be left to do your own thing either. In that liminal time it’s a time of rebellion, but even in their rebellion, you want to be there. There’s an energy that teenagers… I don’t know if anyone has teenagers in their life here…they want to be met often, even in their rebellion.
Thal:
My son is a preteen, so this helps.
Avi:
Okay. Well, especially boys, a lot of, a lot of boys with their mothers. Relationship with their mothers. It’s really a time that the psychological umbilical cord is cut and so on the one side that’s “get away from me, mom” but on the other side, on the other side, it’s “don’t leave me”, right?. It’s helpful for when the teenage knows there’s a place to come back to, to check in. So it’s an interdependent time, not a time of independence and not a time of dependence. It’s an interdependent time. It’s a very tricky dance and again, because the culture is very young in the sense of what to do with these energies. For many of us, we just bury that teen at the time when it’s happening, or spin out. You can bury the energy or you can spin out and act it out. So it’s that more stereotypical, rebellious teenager that tells everyone to F off and, you know. But even that it doesn’t fulfill the deeper need there, which is, um, “what do I… What the hell do I do with all of this life force channeling through me?” There’s an inner sexuality that’s being awakened. There’s um, you know, there’s an identity that’s being shed, but the new identity hasn’t been formed yet. So many, so many things happening. And so.. Fast forward later in your life, we all have an inner teen. I was a very rebellious teenager and just did what I wanted and didn’t really care. It’s a time of risk taking. I took a lot of risks as a teenager. Like I had a lot of luck. I didn’t get into as much trouble as I could have. And not everyone’s that lucky, but you know, I find that people that have been more on the Yang side of risk taking and acting out later in their life. Like I’m in my forties now and what I’ve been confronting over the last few years is an inner teen that is more quiet and shy. And that is a really unfamiliar territory for me because I was the exact opposite. So it’s kind of as when I tune into my teen he’s often really shy and I find working with people who have had the opposite experience kind of people that say “that oh my teenage years were fine. I didn’t really have any, you know, I was kind of just an obedient, quiet, good, good girl, good boy…”
Thal:
Yeah, you’re describing me! [laughing]
Avi:
People like you are fascinating because then they come to therapy and it’s like all this, all these jars just started opening and then all the, all the unmet, you know, all that life force. And it’s like, what do I do with it? So it’s good to create a podcast.
Thal:
Thank you Adrian! [laughing]
Adrian:
Even tuning into the energy of the conversation. I feel like this, you’ve mentioned the mobilization of energy. I’m feeling it as we’re speaking to, the teens are in the room now. You know, they’re mobilized. But I’m also getting… Kind of picking up on the importance of grounding that energy. And that sounds to be the key to this work is to find a way to work with that energy, not to diminish it and not to waste it.
Avi:
Yeah. The trick is grounding without shutting down because there’s a lot of talk about grounding and grounding is great, but you have to. We just have to be careful when it comes to the teen. The teen doesn’t want to… That energy does not necessarily want to ground. This is why working with our inner teen is not so simple. The nature of therapy is containment. You come in, you sit down, you have a conversation. Teenagers are future thinking. They don’t want to talk about what happened when they were five or what or what happened…Even when there are few…. it’s a drive. It’s visionary. A visionary energy. Therapy can feel like another suffocating place for an inner teen. So yes, that energy that you’re tuning into definitely needs grounding, but it has to be a very clever kind of grounding. Otherwise it can be instructive and it can come across as just someone telling me what to do.
Adrian:
Which is the last thing a teen wants to hear.
Avi:
So how to sort of, you know, trick somebody into grounding themselves. And it’s a, it’s like I love working with people’s inner teen because I know that place really well in myself and it’s not, it doesn’t freak me out at all. I actually find it really energizing and very… As a therapist, I’m learning a lot because I often get pushed back like, you know, “I don’t want to do that” or “God, I’m so sick of this”. Or “Oh God, you know, another therapist”. I don’t. “I’m sick of talking about my mom and dad”. Great. Because for me, I have to throw out the book of what I think I’m doing and I have to create a new therapy for this person by following them. And so yes, grounding, but on the teens’ terms. That’s where it gets complicated and tricky. Yeah.
Adrian:
Yeah. And, and the word sometimes I hear people use is transmute. So we’re maybe perhaps working with that energy. So by grounding it in where they feel like you’re trying to control them, it’s probably squashing it and we’re squandering this opportunity. I’m the visionary energy. It almost sounds it can be very productive. That’s going to actually, you know, it might be disruptive as it’s appearing in their life, but perhaps with the right guidance, it can actually be turned into a very productive transformation.
Avi:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think so. And um, it’s only as we are seeing in the culture right now, it’s only young people that are going to be the leaders, to face the evolutionary crisis that we’re in right now. The environmental crisis and the crisis of meaning. It’s really young people that are going to pave for the way forward. And we just saw it in the United States with the midterm elections that just happened. All these incredible young people being elected, um, that are visionaries and are not afraid to put bold ideas that are necessary if we’re going to meet the sort of struggle of the time. And so it’s really, we need this energy. We need the energy. And yet we have to figure out how to help people, actual real teenagers, how to hold that energy because the life force in us is not. It’s actually transpersonal in the sense that it comes through us. It’s too big to hold. And when that kind of awakening starts to happen in people, it’s scary.
Thal:
It is. And when you say the word grounding, I remember that word. I like when I first started my own therapy. I was so annoyed with that word. I’ve been in the ground like “I’m done with being in the..” you know. Yeah. So, um, so even that word, like what does it mean to ground? Yeah.
Avi:
For me, what it means is to help somebody figure out how to be in what’s inside without shutting down and spinning out. And that’s tricky. And maybe channeling is a better word than grounding. I don’t know. But working with, working with the life force energy.
Thal:
Energy.
Avi:
Yes. I mean sometimes grounding could be a matter of just speaking the truth. I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of feeling sort of incredibly grounded after you’ve spoken the truth.
Thal:
Yes. Yes. It’s actually part of my journey to, um, uh, you know, express and, and heal that the parts that have been silenced or repressed at a younger age.
Avi:
Yeah. For anyone that wants some reading on the inner teen. There is one good book. There aren’t many books on the inner teen, but there’s a book called Brainstorm by, I believe it’s Daniel Siegal. The book is called Brainstorm and it’s all about the inner teen, but also it’s written for teenagers. I think it’s one of the better books on what this whole wild phase is or transitional phase is all about. And it’s a very practical book. So it would be a good one for your son.
Thal:
Oh, absolutely. And we’re going to look into it. Um, I also want to bring up age and also the word that’s coming up for me is shame. That people might feel like, wait, “I’m an inner teen inside?” And feel shame. There’s that. And then there’s age where, yeah, well there is biological age. There is psychological age, emotional age. Perhaps even spiritual age. So yeah, these are things to put into perspective and think about.
Avi:
If the energy of shame is coming up around the inner teen, that’s a really good clue that shame has happened.
Thal:
Oh, absolutely [laughing].
Avi:
So it’s not a coincidence. If you’re listening to this podcast and when you imagine inner teen, you’re going “ugh”, that’s a clue for you as to… Probably something in your own psyche. It’s really more about, you know, so that would be an invitation for somebody who does feel shame because not everybody does get shamed at this time of their life.
Thal:
And to be okay with it and work with it to have self- compassion.
Avi:
Well shame has two faces, right? There’s the healthy aspect of shame, which is a teenager needs to learn. They are limits. They’re are finite… there are limits to what you can do with time and energy and you can’t just, you want to go future, but you can’t conquer the world. There are limits to what you can physically do. And that’s healthy. It’s kinda good to know. Okay, and if I, you know, I’m just go and do what I want. It will have impact. It might have negative impact and I need to know what my impact is. So shame has a good side, but where a lot of us have been mentored in is the toxic side of shame. Where it’s about an identity. Shame becomes an identity and it’s not about teaching limits, but it’s about the whole sense of “you’re wrong”. You’re wrong for feeling what you’re feeling. You’re wrong for doing that or thinking that. If we live in a family unit where the emotions, the life force is not allowed to flow and our parents didn’t know how to ground and channel that energy in themselves then all of a sudden it’s coming up in us, we will be shamed on some level. And shame doesn’t have to look like scolding. It can look like just being ignored.
Thal:
It’s a feeling in the body too.
Avi:
Feeling in the body but just being ignored or being, you know, that could that deeply, that can be deeply shaming. So when shame turns into an identity, that’s the work then to work with shame.
Thal:
And from my own personal experience and experiences of like friends around me that shame actually causes a lot of stuckness in life. And, and you know, that question of what’s wrong with me? Why am I like this? It becomes a loop in the mind. And um, you know, all I think about is more compassion, more forgiveness towards self.
Avi:
You know, the first step with shame is an not necessarily compassion because they’re just wishing there isn’t compassion. The nature of shame is almost itself punitive, right? It’s the first nature. The first sort of thing to do with shame is to externalize it, to speak it, to have someone witness cause shame lives in hiding places. It’s that thing of I’m defective. “Something is wrong with me” and “I have to keep that a secret”. “No one can know that I’m flawed”, so I need to, I need to hide. I need to shut down. And when you start speaking it like I feel unworthy. That is the first step in the direction of healing shame. And um, later it’s really about going into the feelings around it and doing the deep feeling work. Um, but you know, the self-compassion will come later.
Thal:
I was skipping ahead. [laughing]
Avi:
Well, and that’s the thing is, you know, oftentimes people will get shamed in about being ashamed. Why are you so hard on yourself? You’re such a sweet, sweet person. What? Come on.
Thal:
I’ve actually heard that many times. [laughing]
Avi:
“Just be nice to yourself”. And if it was that easy we would all do it and it’s um, it often isn’t helpful to, to, um, to just let someone know that, you know, they should be different. So yeah.
Adrian:
I think that’s so important. Just you talked about… Like we need the courage, we need the courage to begin sharing, you know, and the healing that begins when you start to allow these inner things to come out into the open. I mean just personally this project of doing this podcast has been incredibly challenging because our own shits coming up all the time. We are stepping into a new territory or being exposed feeling more naked than ever. And so yes, like we are seeing it firsthand, you know, our own stuff is mixed in with this creative project and so we’re not just talking about it, you know, as some sort of a theoretical thing. It’s live.
Avi:
I can feel it through the whole…. I can feel a sort of an energy as we’re trudging along that is multilayered and has different aspects and feels strange at moments. And inspiring. There is a real energy here. So you guys are cooking whatever it is that you’re doing. You’re really in something here. And what I love is that you’ve decided to not be perfect in it and not try to get it right. It’s like, let it be messy. That’s great. Forget your perfect offering. Have you heard that? It’s a that Leonard Cohen Song, forget your perfect offering. And the next line is there is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. So it’s, it’s your humanity that will probably make this unique.
Thal:
And you know, and I just want to also highlight that this is a universal human experience. I was brought up in a different culture that’s a little bit more collectivist and a lot of, you know, my individuality or individuality in general is usually squashed. And um, but then half of my, more than half of my life, I’ve been living here in Canada and I’m noticing that, wait, even here the same problems. It’s literally exactly the same problems that I’ve encountered as a teenager in the Middle East, people encounter here and personally, for me, I just don’t see the difference. Obviously context is different, but the essence of our human experience, our human pain, our wounds, shame, guilt, all those things are similar.
Avi:
I agree. Yeah. And I think Toronto is a unique place to be doing healing work in 2019, but we are. This is the social experiment. Toronto is a social experiment and it’s by no means, um, you know, a perfect microcosm of a global village. But it is, in my experience as a traveler, one of the better models we have in the world. I really …that the consciousness now is that we are, we’re all in this together. No matter where you’ve grown up, it’s, we have to figure out how to be with each other. And I think Toronto is a really good place to be doing healing work at this moment of history. A: we have the luxury of not having physical wars here at this moment and B, there is a consciousness in the city. I think if you’re tuning in, there is an openness to, to, to kind of stepping into the new. So I feel lucky to be here at this moment.
Adrian:
Yeah, we just had a conversation a few days ago with, with Andrew Harvey and he talked about we’re going through a birthing experience collectively and it’s a birthing of a new human that he was sort of referring to and it’s, we don’t know what it’s going to be. That’s part of the surprise, the mystery and we’ve been going through this, you know, on this planet time and time again, you know, there was a period where most species were underwater and we were a bunch of fish swimming around and at some point that the water got so polluted that some fish had to take the risk to go into the unknown. And some of them ended up on the shore, on the sizzling shore, in air without the proper, you know, gear to, to survive. And yet some of them did and that created the new birthing of an evolutionary transition and it’s such a beautiful metaphor because I feel like this is kind of what we’re referring to you right now, you know, with this collective, a yearning for meaning and people try new things and pushing the boundary that we’re about to see an emergence of perhaps many versions of a new human being or new ways of being.
Avi:
No matter what you feel about the times right now, whether you’re more cynical, “we’re all gonna go to hell in a hand basket” type person or, or more of the, “Oh, you know, we can, we can save our planet” type person, wherever you fall in that spectrum. And we’re all on that spectrum somewhere. And it might change every day for you. Um, these, these are fascinating times to be alive. Forget about what might happen. It’s just a pure wow, we get to be alive in this… What are we in? It’s like, what? What is this chaos that we’re in? Yes. It’s interesting.
Thal:
Absolutely.
Adrian:
There’s never a dull moment.
Avi:
It’s not dull. It’s not dull. Sometimes we, I think we’ve, a lot of us sometimes the wish for the volume to get turned down just a little bit, especially in the last few years with on so many levels, but I think coming back to what Andrew Harvey was saying, the volumes not going down if anything, the volume is going up and um, we’re gonna have to find ways… And this connects to the inner teen. We’re going to have to find ways to stay present with each other and with the crisis that we’re in a evolutionary crisis that we’re in. Um, we’re going to have to find clever ways to stay present because you know, it, it’s just too easy to dissociate. Right now [laughing].
Thal:
And mental health is at the forefront because of those reasons. And we’re learning now that mental health is just not just the brain or just the cognitive side of things and that there is more to mental health. Then just, um, then just that. Yeah.
Avi:
I agree 100 percent. Yeah. Yeah. We’re going to have to find a new model of mental health. I think too, that goes beyond…
Thal:
Everybody should go to therapy [laughing].
Avi:
Whatever your therapy is, I just want to say, psychotherapy is a method. And honestly it’s worked for me and that’s what I do with my life. It’s, you guys are all here because it’s working or has worked in some way for you. If somebody comes in and it’s just, you know, for people listening, you try it out. If it’s not your bliss, if it’s not your path, find another method. There’s really, there’s, there’s so many other ways in. What I, what I really do like about therapy, a good integrative therapy is non prescriptive and so it’s the hunger of the times, uh, to, to not be so regimented and not be so “okay I just need to improve”.
Thal:
Yes, one solution-oriented. Right. And that’s important. Because I’ve like, again, I’ve had people come and ask me, “Oh, so then what? We all need therapy?” And that’s why I made that joke. Therapy is just a tool inwards, like you said, there are many different tools and if it means that you seek a therapist world for a little bit in your life, then so be it. And if, I don’t know, if you decide to start dancing, then so be it. [laughing]
Avi:
I think. Yeah, you’re speaking of therapy is not so much like a session but just, you know, therapy in the sense of, the true meaning of therapy, which is the word therapy comes from a Greek word Tartarus. Tartarus is the underworld in the Greek mythological lens and the underworld is where you go to, um, find yourself in a deeper way and it’s where you go under your body under, down. And so we, yeah, we all need therapy in that sense of I’m tuning in, connecting to, to ourself into the larger sphere. Absolutely.
Thal:
Yeah.
Adrian:
Avi, thank you so much for your time and happy suffering. [laughing]
Thal:
Yeah, thank you. Thank you Avi and may we, you know, conquer our fears and shame and whatever it is that we need to do to become attuned with our inner selves. Thank you, Avi.
Avi:
My pleasure. That hour went really fast.
