HOPE for the Future

In my practice as a therapist, over the years I have seen many adolescents and young adults. They have individual life issues they are struggling to handle, but they also have a lot in common. Some recurrent themes in our discussions are:

• defining self as distinct from family
• understanding their values and beliefs – where they came from and whether they want to hold onto them or make some changes
• choosing a direction – schools, classes, career, etc.
• making decisions about friends and relationships
• deciding how to manage the inevitable issues of alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes, other drugs, and sexuality
• determining how to make and keep friendships, while also staying true to their personal values

I am now working with several adolescent and young adults with Misophonia. Understandably, the content of our sessions is very skewed toward managing their reactive emotions, surviving classroom situations, and dealing with their family members, who are generally their first and biggest triggers.

Recently, I had a session with one of my young adults with Misophonia. We have been working together for a little more than two months, and our sessions are always concerned with those issues. On this occasion, however, we spent the entire session on the more typical issues faced by young adults: school, classes and majors, future career directions, relationships, living circumstances, etc. The topic of Misophonia actually was not raised or discussed, other than one time when it was named simply as a factor or descriptor (like height or gender or number of siblings are just descriptors of who I am).

I do not know where we will be heading next. I’m sure we will be having many future discussions focused on Misophonia. But for this one little snippet of time, we were addressing the concerns of any normal young adult. To me, that expresses hope for the future.