Technology and our life styles have changed the way we live our lives.  We take in more information and more quickly than we did historically.  We have dual working families.  We move away from our home towns and our family homes.  And increase in divorces creates more blended families.

More people.  More places.  More information.

Our bodies, particularly our brains, have not evolved fast enough to adapt.  Studies have validated this piece of information about our brains.  Thus we take in more data, but have a harder time accessing it, thus the belief that, as we age, we forget more easily.  We will eventually access it; it takes longer because of the amount stored.

It is valuable to recognize how stress is affecting our lives, and it is more valuable to find ways to deal with it.  Exercise, verbalizing thoughts and feelings, are very helpful.  Finding the time is often the problem.

I was the speaker at a recent group of professionals.  I asked the group to break into pairs.  Each person was asked to write down on a piece of paper an adjective that was descriptive of them.  I encouraged selecting an adjective that they were proud of.  They exchanged papers with their partner and said nothing.

I then spoke about the trend to not talk to people; to email, text, leave messages on machines, respond to menus, etc.  I pointed out that we miss the personal interaction, the opportunity to visualize a person’s response as we talk, and we do not elaborate based on our immediate experience.  Our inability to elaborate also diminishes our opportunity to more fully disclose our thoughts, feelings, and a fuller sense of who we are.

After I spoke, I asked them to return the paper to its owner and begin a conversation about the adjectives.  They took turns telling each other why it was chosen, or whatever else each wanted to disclose.

These discussions went on for 15 minutes until I indicated our time was up.  The group disclosed significant enhanced awareness of the opportunity to talk to someone and said it led to valuable conversation.

This simple exercise demonstrates the value to talking to people.  It is valuable to be listened to.

A man came into therapy whose wife had died a few months earlier and he was not able to move past severe grief.  Within a matter of weeks, he informed me that he had found an friend from years ago on Facebook.  He was surprised she was back in California and had left her last partner.

The next week he informed me that he was in love with this woman.  I asked him when he saw her.  He had not.  He said the full substance of their interaction was through text.  I asked, “You have not even spoken to her?”  He said he had not.

I pointed out that he was not using his senses to establish a relationship with her.  I suggested he at least meet her for lunch.  She lived two hours away.  He did not.  Eventually arrangements were made for her to move in with him.  I heartily encouraged him to see her in person, and this was finally arranged when she was coming close to his community to see a friend who was very ill.

A bit extreme, one might think.  But it is the way too many people are communicating with each other.  Many people I have talked to are meeting over the internet and waiting long periods of time to meet in person.

It will be interesting to discover, in time, how this is working in relationships.

We are very technological in our lifestyle.  We are on smart phones, computers,  etc.  We text.  We send emails.  We avoid conversations.

What concerns me most is the discovery that younger people are not learning to talk to people face to face or voice to voice.  Messages are sent.  We avoid expressing ourselves directly and we avoid having to respond quickly.  Our anxiety levels are lower when we communicate our thoughts and feelings indirectly.

We also fail to learn body language.  To be able to visualize a facial expression and watch gestures often discloses a lot.

A woman told me about having lunch with a group of people and one of the women made a comment that was racist and anti-Semitic. She made the decision to not confront the woman in front of everyone and decided to call her after the lunch.  As the lunch ended, she asked another attendee of color if she was bothered by the comment.  The person said she had not heard the comment, but she asked, “Do you intend to send her an email?” The woman responded, “That would be too easy for both of us.  I could more easily confront her by message and she would not have to respond on the spot.  I will call instead.  It feels scarier, but I prefer not to avoid the feelings.”

She did, and the woman she called seemed to be uncomfortable about being told her comment was not appreciated.  She chose to say she did not mean to be insulting.

Perhaps she learned something.

Most schools offer sex education classes.  Typically, parents need to sign a form to give the school permission to include their child.  This alone suggests the sensitive subject of sex.

Teaching children at home offers a more personal and intimate way of discussing the subject.  It is not easy for most parents because we often did not have these conversations when we were growing up, thus no role modeling.  I suggest reading about educating our children beforehand if there is discomfort.

I had a parent tell me that she was asked by her four-year-old daughter how babies were made.  The mother was pregnant at the time.  She told her that the woman has eggs and the man has sperm and when they get together, a baby can be created.  The child paused, and went on, “How do the eggs and sperm get together?”  The mother said that she was proud of herself for having gotten this far, but the next step was causing her to feel anxious.

She told her daughter that couples who are in love communicate their feelings physically beyond hugging and kissing.  They share their bodies in an act called intercourse.  At some point the man puts his penis in his partner’s vagina and he releases sperm.  If the sperm connects with her egg, a baby can be conceived.

“Oh,” the daughter said, “can I watch when you and Daddy do it?”  The mother said that it is a very private act and she would not be allowed to watch.

The child’s response?

“I won’t tell anybody.”

The mother ended with the statement that it was not going to happen.  It never came up again.

Often children have minimal information. I was asked to evaluate a young girl who was suspected of having been abused.  I asked her where the man had touched her and she said, “Down there.”  When I asked her to point to the part of her body she was referring to she pointed to her vagina.  In order to present the evidence, it was necessary for her to know the appropriate term.  I taught her and showed her pictures of bodies of boys, girls, men and women to learn the names of the parts of the body.

It is interesting how we can easily teach the words eyes, nose, mouth, hands, stomach, etc., but we cannot label body parts that have any connection to sex.  Thus penis, vagina, breasts, nipples, are avoided.  We also do not teach universal terms for excretion: urination and bowel movement.

We are sexual creatures from birth.  We respond to touch.  It is a wise thing to acknowledge so that young people do not feel uncomfortable for their sensual feelings.  Children do have curiosity about the body parts of the other sex, and the opportunity to discretely see a parent or sibling naked is a safe way to learn.

We are able to experience a multitude of feelings when we are born.  It does not matter where we are born, our gender, our ethnicity, our color, or our language.  We cry, we smile, we frown.  We feel happy, sad, frustrated, jealous, anxious, melancholy, excited, thrilled, depressed, ambivalent, and on and on.

There is great value in being taught the word that describes our feelings.  It draws attention to our experience by giving it a name.

I encourage parents and teachers to provide this lesson for children.  When a child cries, to ask, “What are you feeling?”  If there is no answer, the adult can follow up with, “Are you sad?  Are you angry?  Are you disappointed?”  This helps the child identify the feeling and it validates the right to feel.

If an adult can ask the child to talk about the feeling, what it feels like, what caused it, the child learns to feel and to express words to describe the experience.  This enables us to work through feelings rather than holding on to them and not disclosing the experience fully, even to ourselves.

Emotionally, we feel better when feelings are expressed.

When I was growing up, after graduating from high school, most women married, or went to college, or got jobs.  In my community, most went to college.  I knew no one who made one of the other two choices.

Women who went to college were encouraged to become teachers or nurses.  It was before the feminist activity occurred and females rarely considered other professions.  When I was young, I thought of becoming a lawyer.  I do not remember where that came from, but it did not last long.

My mother decided I should be a teacher.  She felt it was a wise choice in case my husband could no longer work.  Consider the thoughts intrinsic to that message.  I would marry.  My husband would be the provider.  And I would not work out of the home unless he died or was disabled.  I was not alone as a receiver of this script.

To have courses to discuss careers, marriage, and other life options would be an enhancement to the life course of young people.  Too often the programming we are given is predicated on the views of our parents and teachers and society.

After high school, we have choices to make. The options include college, trade school, marriage, work, and the military.  How do we decide which path to pursue?

Some make the choice that was modeled in their family or community.  Some adhere to what family, peers or educators have noted is their strength.  Not often do people take time to question their own interests and career options.  Not often do people acknowledge that they may not really know what they want to do.

And who is available to discuss these options with?

I recall when my daughter went to register for classes when she was beginning college.  An advisor told her she needed to cite her major before she was able to register.  She said she had no idea what she intended to pursue.  She saw undergraduate school as an exploratory time.  He said she needed to put her major on the stipulated line.

She wrote, “Not math.”  Of that she was certain.

The emotional struggle experienced from middle school through high school is partly biochemical.  Our bodies change very quickly during these years.  For some it is a more rapid change than others.  We are also caught between two distinct stages of our lives: childhood and adulthood.

We are no longer children and we are not adults.  We are dependant and we want to be independent.  At times it is expected we be more independent and we want to be less responsible.  Often how we want to be in not how the adults in our lives want us to be.

When I attended my 50^th high school reunion, I had an experience that opened my eyes.  A man with a microphone approached me and four other women who were standing nearby.  He asked if the five of us would answer a question.  A photographer videotaped as we spoke.  The man asked, “How did you feel when you were in high school?”  I was the first to respond.  I said, “Sad and inadequate.”  The other women said, “Ditto.”

I had not been alone in high school though, at the time, I thought I was.