by Luba Palter, MFT

My first job out of grad school was as a therapist at a long-term residential facility for dually-diagnosed adolescents. Teens and their families were court-mandated to receive multi-faceted family and individual counseling therapy services. The program was based on the philosophy of behavior-modification. The goal was to break down kids' defenses to build them back up. While I did not always agree with the methods or the intensity of constant confrontations, the work felt like political activism. Our clients were coming to us because they were exposed to violence, abuse, traumas (including intergenerational), abandonment, poverty, and institutional racism early on in their development, before a full self was formed, before one could make wise choices, or even know they had choices. Or maybe another way to think about it is that they dared to have options despite the unjust horrors of this world.

Initially, I applied for this job because I needed the coveted adolescent/child/family therapy hours to complete the necessary requirements of my Masters in Counseling program. My goals quickly widened upon my submersion in the world of the residential. To say that I was terrified is an understatement. Not only did I not have any idea of what I was doing, adolescents were often seen as a polarizing population to work with: you either hated them or loved them. The boys – I was assigned to work solely on the boys’ unit – had nothing to lose. Whole systems had failed them. This residential was just one stop on the rollercoaster of their lives. They did not come to this program because they wanted to face their pain and trauma, or to detangle their complicated family dynamics; they came because they wanted to leave juvenile hall, to eat tastier meals, and eventually have more privileges than they would if they remained incarcerated.

One particular day, when I was feeling rather despondent about the usefulness of what we were doing, a fellow therapist advised me, “We are planting seeds. We may not see the results of those plantings. But it is our job to plant these seedlings nonetheless.” These words remain with me still while I sit with patients with chronic mental illnesses or debilitating traumas. To have hope feels like a revolutionary act when all else has failed. To dream of possibilities feels naïve and foolish when at 15 years old, your only stable parent is your grandmother who cannot protect you from the everyday violence you experience when you walk out your front door. When bodily safety is in danger, who has the luxury to think about their emotional safety? Who has the spaciousness or the observing ego to identify the feelings that triggered the most current marijuana binge that consists of 40-50 blunts a day?

I still wrestle with my privileged position of hope when the kids were the ones who had to defy to live fuller lives. And yet, I hold them foolishly, naively, tenderly, relentlessly in my heart while praying they are still alive with gardens of possibilities inside them.