November 19, 2025 • 27 mins
Some of the hardest questions our teens wrestle with don’t have answers. Why am I here? What’s the point? Who am I becoming? When your neurodivergent tween or teen starts circling those big, existential questions, it can feel unsettling and even a little frightening. But what if this discomfort isn’t a crisis to fix—what if it’s an opening for connection?
In this conversation, I talk with therapist and fellow neurodivergent parent Matthew Fishleder about helping teens navigate the messy, meaning-making side of adolescence. We explore how “not knowing” is part of growth, how regulation and connection support that process, and why your calm presence matters more than your wisdom or answers.
Matthew shares powerful ways to shift from fixing to accompanying—to sit beside your teen in uncertainty instead of trying to solve it. Together we unpack how nervous system regulation, shared curiosity, and honest “I don’t knows” can turn existential anxiety into deeper trust and emotional safety.
If your teen is questioning everything—and you’re not sure what to say—this one’s for you.Listen now and learn how to not know together.
You can find additional resources at parentingadhdandautism.com and Regulated Kids.com — because it’s not just about the struggles, it’s about progress, one step at a time.
Show notes and more resources at parentingadhdandautism.com/335
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beautifully-complex--6137613/support.
In this conversation, I talk with therapist and fellow neurodivergent parent Matthew Fishleder about helping teens navigate the messy, meaning-making side of adolescence. We explore how “not knowing” is part of growth, how regulation and connection support that process, and why your calm presence matters more than your wisdom or answers.
Matthew shares powerful ways to shift from fixing to accompanying—to sit beside your teen in uncertainty instead of trying to solve it. Together we unpack how nervous system regulation, shared curiosity, and honest “I don’t knows” can turn existential anxiety into deeper trust and emotional safety.
If your teen is questioning everything—and you’re not sure what to say—this one’s for you.Listen now and learn how to not know together.
You can find additional resources at parentingadhdandautism.com and Regulated Kids.com — because it’s not just about the struggles, it’s about progress, one step at a time.
Show notes and more resources at parentingadhdandautism.com/335
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beautifully-complex--6137613/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
It is uncomfortable not to know what we're here for.
It is uncomfortable to think about being mortal, about life
being limited and temporary. These are scary things. And just
to speak to our own experiences to some extent, broadly
because kids don't always want us to go into detail
about our deep emotions about our past experiences, but broadly speaking,
(00:23):
to find some space to validate what kids are going
through because it is uncomfortable stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to Beautifully Complex, where we unpack what it really
means to parent neurodivergent kids with dignity and clarity. I'm
Penny Williams, and I know firsthand how tough and transformative
this journey can be. Let's dive in and discover how
to raise regulated, resilient, beautifully complex kids together. Oh and
(00:51):
if you want more support, join our free community at
hub dot beautifully complex dot life. Welcome back to Beautifully Complex, everybody.
I am excited today to have a therapist Matthew Fish
letter with me and we're going to talk about a
(01:11):
topic that I went through with my own kid several
years ago that I think a lot of our nerd
divergent kids find themselves in this place at some moment
in time and parents don't know what to do to
help because it can feel really heavy and sometimes dark.
And so we're going to talk about kind of how
(01:31):
to navigate these existential crises that sometimes are nerdivergent. Teens
I would imagine even young adults have. But Matthew, will
you start by letting everybody know who you are and
what you do.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Sure? So, I'm a psychotherapist, I'm a licensed marriage and
family therapist. I'm a parent myself. I'm a neurodivergent person.
I'm licensed to practice psychotherapy in Maryland. In California, I
work with adults often parts that are navigating anxiety, identity,
and the deeper questions that come with being human. I
(02:07):
can talk more about what that looks like. I feel
like we'll touch on it along the way.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
We'll kind of get there. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I
think the existential crisis and I don't know if crisis
is the right word, but I'm sure we'll navigate that
together in this conversation as well, is sort of part
of the human experience for a lot of people, and
it can be really difficult, you know, as human beings,
we all have struggle at times we all have differences,
(02:34):
we navigate the world, we take in the world differently,
and sometimes our kids get into these places. I know
for my own kid, it was kind of this loop
and when he felt like he couldn't get out of
that loop or couldn't get unstuck, it got really heavy
and really difficult. And fortunately he was working with a
(02:55):
therapist some I don't think he was really engaged that point, honestly,
but it was really difficult. So I'm really wanting to
understand where we go as a parent. What can we
do that would be helpful. But let's start by really
defining what as existential crisis is, and if you want
to change that terminology, feel free to do that as well.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yeah. One thing, the word crisis is often thought of
as being kind of when something's at a catastrophic level,
and in psychological terminology or even in the terminology of existentialism,
the crisis is referring to kind of a turning point
or a potential pressure point in development. So an existential
(03:44):
crisis isn't always a sign that something's wrong. It can
be a sign that a young person's kind of waking
up to life's deeper questions. Yeah, in that sense, it's development.
That's not a disorder. It's not a true crisis. They're
in existential crises. Someone can be in a psychological crisis.
Someone can be at risk of not being safe. But gotcha,
(04:06):
the term crisis. It's sort of the psychological turning point
when someone's really starting to ask themselves those big questions,
like what's the point of all this? Who am I?
How long will I be here? What happens after I die?
It's not just about being like sad or confused about
starting to get in touch with the deeper truths about
(04:27):
being human or being alive on the world.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I was just going to ask you if kind of
this search for purpose also is in there would also
be included?
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah? Absolutely, Who am I? What am I going to
get out of all of this? What is going to
give me a feeling of fulfillment and purpose?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah? And where do you see this sort of start
start to ramp up? Maybe are there sort of signals
for parents that would say, oh, we might be getting
to a point where are they're really struggling with this,
with these thoughts, with these questions.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
It's hard to say, because kids of any age can
vary in how much they're talking to parents, if you're
hearing questions like why am I going to college? Or
what's the purpose of all of this? Or a kiddo
talking about a sense of purposelessness. Of meaninglessness could also
(05:26):
look like kids that are withdrawing from friendships or social interactions,
kids that are struggling in classes, struggling with grades, or
in school. He's not necessarily a sign that your kid
is losing touch with their goals. It's a touch that
their brain is kind of reorganizing and reevaluating what am
(05:48):
I doing all of this for?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
So some of those questions then maybe are a signal
to us to have conversations with them if they're open
to it.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
To have conversations with them, to ask if they'd like
to have a conversation with somebody if not with a parent,
with a counselor with someone at their college, with a
college advisor, with someone in the community. But yeah, it's
these big realities of being a person that these kids
are often coming into contact with, and especially for neurodiversent kiddos,
(06:23):
having a sense of the challenge of kind of organizing
the thoughts in such a way that they're able to
really make header tails out of it. It can be
disorienting in and of itself. And when there's a kiddo
that or young adult that is having a harder time
maintaining focus even and just in their own thoughts can
(06:45):
be harder to process.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, I hadn't really thought about the fact that that
executive function challenge that a lot of neurodivergent folks have
would also make it difficult to sort of work through
all these thoughts that you're having and trying to find answers.
I hadn't even really thought about that. That's such a
good point.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
And that's a tough one, because a kid can find
themselves in the midst of trying to piece this together,
and a bus could go buy outside the window and
suddenly there's a sort of reverie about what's going on
over there. In any number of ways, that the thoughts
can get derailed, or even that the process can get
the wires crossed internally.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Right, And I had read a statistic years ago that
it's more common to have this level of kind of
deep thinking about meaning in kids who are also gifted.
Do you think that still holds true?
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I do. I do, And that there can be a
degree of like hyper focus on something that once a
kid's brain starts to get wind of these existential realities
in the world around us, that they can get more
focused on it in trying to understand stand it. And
(08:01):
depending on what they read, for example, they may find
some existential writer that was more hopeful about meaning being
something that we create, something that we discover and uncover
with time, or something that's a bit more nihilistic that
there is no meaning to be found. And those are
(08:22):
kind of places where we can diverge into a more
hopeful or more cynical sort of attitude, especially for neurodivergent
folks who who might dive into something so they want
to learn more about it, read more about it.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, with more technology now they have more access to information,
but they have access to lots of different viewpoints, and
certainly an optimistic viewpoint, it would be more helpful for
a teenager in development who's trying to figure it out
and find their way. I know that you talk about
how an existential question can really be healthy growth and
(09:03):
not actually a problem. Do you want to talk a
little bit more about that and how we, as the
caring adult in their world, can lean into that same
sort of attitude and mindset about it.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
These existential questions, who am I? What does it mean
to be alive in the world, to be able to
some degree make my own choices and to want those
choices to lead to a meaningful life. These are uncomfortable questions.
These give rise to certain kinds of anxiety. I like
(09:38):
to call them existential anxiety, not my term. And it
can be uncomfortable for the kids asking the questions. It
can be uncomfortable for the adults to whom the questions
are being posed. Well, if my kid asked me, how
do I live a meaningful life? And I'm in the
midst of let's say, being Sandwich generation, caring for the
generation above me, the generation below me, my parents, my kids,
(10:03):
I'm wondering some of these same questions in a very
different context. So as parents understanding the questions themselves and
the discomfort with the presence of the uncertainty about these things,
not having the answers to the question, it can give
us a window into what things might be like for
our kids, and it can give us a window into
(10:25):
how as parents, finding that centeredness in being aware of
what's going on for us can help us to connect
with the kid that's in front of us asking these questions,
even just to say it is uncomfortable not to know
what we're here for. It is uncomfortable to think about
being mortal, about life being limited and temporary. These are
(10:49):
scary things. And just to speak to our own experiences
to some extent broadly because kids don't always want us
to go into detail about our deep emotions about our
past experiences, broadly speaking, to find some space to validate
what kids are going through because it is uncomfortable stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yeah, it's very uncomfortable stuff. I can feel it in
my body as we're talking about it, like ooh, I
don't know. It's hard to think about these things, I
(11:30):
think for most people. But then we add like that uncertainty,
as you said, can bring with an anxiety and a
lot of our neurodiversent kids crave predictability and certainty, and
so this is way outside of that for them. That
I think adds another layer maybe of discomfort or anxiety
(11:54):
or struggle with maybe feeling stuck in that place. And
a lot of us like don't do well with uncertainty.
I don't do well with uncertainty, Like I would rather
know these things, But how do we teach them that,
like some things sometimes are unknowable and how to sit
with that.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
We're in certain ways wired to be uncomfortable with uncertainty
as humans, I think, and wired to try to move
uncertainty towards more information, towards certainty. Uncertainty is uncomfortable because
we're drawn to find some solution. We're drawn to find
(12:37):
how can I get more information to understand what I
can do? And that's essentially what kids are doing when
they're coming to parents or others with these existential questions,
and especially like you mentioned, those that are on a
neurodivergent path themselves, can really rely on knowing what's coming next,
(12:58):
understanding why am I doing what I'm doing, and it
can help to get through that thing. And when it
comes to why am I doing this at all and
not having a concrete answer to it that there's real
buy into, it can be really it can be really uncomfortable.
So just validating that it is uncomfortable. I think of
(13:18):
something that I that I went over with my son.
He's six now, but I think he was probably four.
He would ask me a question and I would say,
I don't know, not necessarily a deep existential thing. But
why is this this way in the world or how
does this work? I don't know. And he would say, well,
I don't know either, And I would say, we don't
(13:38):
know together. It's a hard thing not to know. And
here we are, we're both not knowing what the answer
to this is.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Mm hmmm. I like that together piece that you put
in there.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Now it's not it's not in isolation. And he would say,
I like not knowing with your daddy as comfortable as
we can possibly be, and not knowing it's nice not
to know with someone else.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, Yeah, that togetherness makes such a difference.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah, And it doesn't necessarily take away from the scariness
of not knowing. It may diffuse it a little bit,
kind of disarms it a little bit that like, okay,
if I don't know, and that's scary, but also this
other person doesn't know and they're scared, but they're also
okay in this moment and they can stay present and
(14:25):
connected with me. Maybe not knowing is a little bit
less unsafe then it feels maybe it's tolerable mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
And it's an adult not knowing sometimes that too, is
like I'm only a kid, but an adult doesn't even know,
and maybe give them some relief that maybe they're not
supposed to know this thing yet, maybe you know, or
maybe it is a truly unknowable thing. But yeah, that
sense of like, let's not know together. It feels like
(14:56):
such a relief to know that somebody else can also
have that feeling and be okay, but be in it
with you and you're not alone in it.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
And it's a lot of what I do in therapy
is finding pathway to be in that place of not
knowing with my clients, whether they be young neurodiversion kids
or older adults in between. People often will come to
therapy looking for answers, looking for some kind of rescue
from what's going on inside, and in part recognizing I
(15:28):
don't have the answers, I can be here for the
not knowing and we cannot know together what to do
about this. That can be a really powerful place, whether
with my own kid or with people that I'm helping,
because it's hard not to know. We're in a big picture,
there's a lot of not knowing going on right now.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
It's uncomfortable, very yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Very uncomfortable. Yeah, I think a lot of us are
sitting with the discomfort right now and trying to regain
that ability of being able to sit in the fire
kind of.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And we're all here listening to this podcast not knowing
together and it's confusing.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah. Yeah, that doesn't make it go away as much
as we want it to.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, it's just not much you wish for someone to
come and say the unknown is no longer. We know
what's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, it's all for certain. Wouldn't that be great? Maybe not?
I mean there's some beauty in the in the journey
at least to discovering things and figuring them out things
that are completely uncertain and unknowable. Maybe there's not as
much joy in that or in that path. But yeah,
And then when neurodivergent kids, we're also adding this layer
of the fact that a lot of them feel things
(16:43):
more deeply and maybe notice things even that others might
not notice. Something that I might not see. All the
time my kid sees it or sees a different perspective
or ask a different question. I thought of things like that,
and could that be amplifying what happening for them when
they're asking these big questions when they're sort of struggling
(17:04):
with what their path looks like or what the meaning is.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, I can add to the intensity of call it
groundlessness of if there's nothing underneath me, where do I go?
And it can add to the weight of that feeling. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about the
shared existential journey that you talk about between kids and parents.
When I saw that, I was like, Ooh, that could
have been good to know way back when, right Like,
I didn't think about the fact that we could sort
(17:41):
of have this journey together. I was thinking about, Oh,
this is so hard. He is really I mean I
think he was depressed or close to depressed, Like it
was really really difficult, and it was something I hadn't
thought about. So I would love for you to kind
of walk us through what that looks like. I think
you've talked to about it a little bit in saying
(18:02):
like we can not know together what other parts of
it are there?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
I think really comes through in the idea that we
can grow our connections with our kids when we are
not focusing on fixing, but we're working on accompanying them
in the nut knowing where are they? We try to
sit with them and look out their window with them,
kind of the window of their journey. When we walk
(18:31):
beside them in their questions without being focused as parents
on giving them the answers, on fixing the presence of
the question. That's where the real connection and growth can
happen for both the kid and the parents.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah, and I would think that connection would alleviate some
of the aloneness that someone might feel when they're having
these big questions what's the meaning for me? Right where
am I supposed to be going? One of'm a I
supposed to be doing? Those sort of things can feel
automatically super alone. So just having that person to feel
like they're walking with you or just sitting with you.
(19:10):
I wrote down fixing as you were talking, not fixing,
because that's our instinct as parents. We want to fix,
We want to lead because we want our kids to
be happy, but that's not always the best way.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
And noticing the discomfort that we have as parents before
we respond to our kids can be incredibly helpful when
we're able to do it. When we can notice in
ourselves where the discomfort is. When we can regulate ourselves,
that gives us a more regulated and more centered jumping
(19:43):
off point to really connect with and hear our kids
and from there be with them alongside them as they're
trying to navigate these questions, as they're trying to find
their own answers for themselves. I'm thinking we were talking
this is I think a funny anecdote. We were talking
(20:04):
about the wish for someone to just come and give
us the answer, the wish for someone to just tell
us what is the meaning. And this came up a
few weeks ago with somebody who brought up the sort
of the metaphor of I wish that Ed McMahon, may
this may be dating us.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
I wish then.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Would just knock on my door and show up with
a check that tells me the next thing I should
do with my life and give me absolute clarity that
this is going to be fulfilling, This is going to
fill me up. And what we arrived at in talking
through that metaphor was that in the absence of that
Ed McMahon at our doorstep, finding the little Ed McMahon
(20:46):
inside and listening to him, finding that piece inside that's
scared of not knowing and that can find there's some
sense of direction for the next best.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Thing, the next best thing, the.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Next best thing in the sense of the next thing
I can do that's the best among the options. Mm hm.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
And you were talking about regulation. I'm wondering about pulling
the body in because we think that you know, we're
having questions. It's a mental mental health thing, but our
body is what triggers us to feel unsafe or safe.
And when we have these questions and there we don't
have answers. We're feeling unsafe, we're just regulated. We're just
(21:30):
wondering if there are things that we can do, like
somatic exercises, regulation exercises. Could those help also with getting
through this period.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
For parents and for kids. Yeah, but in the sense
of parents starting from noticing their dysregulation, their sense of
like ickiness and discomfort, the awareness of that, the noticing
of that is a starting point of kind of separating
from it, getting to a place where we can make
a choice about what did you next? And by noticing, oh,
(22:03):
I'm feeling tightness in my stomach, my heart rates increasing,
my palms are sweating. By noticing what's going on in
our bodies, we can be able to then make a
choice about what we're doing with our bodies. With the body,
and that has the effect of slowing down the stress
response in the brain. It creates a kind of loop.
(22:23):
It's the standing one of the standing theories about this
that the brain dysregulates the body, and the brain notices
that the body is disregulated and further disregulates the body.
And when we can notice that we're in that loop,
we interrupt it. And when we can say I'm going
to take three deep breaths, necessarily counting or doing it
(22:45):
a certain way, but I'm gonna breathe in and breathe out,
and breathe in and breathe out. One coworker used to
ask me when they saw that I was disregulated and
I was working in a clinical case management job, used
to ask me, Matthew, are your feet on the floor,
And I would look at the floor, Yeah, let me
check there they are. Something relatively simple can help us
(23:09):
to feel more centered and present and aware of what's
happening in our body, and that creates that pathway to
make more choices about how we're responding. So when we're
uncomfortable being asked these big questions from our kids, when
we can take a deep breath for ourselves, we can
ask ourselves probably inside where are my feet are they
(23:32):
on the ground. That actually allows more blood to the
areas of the brain where you can select how you
want to respond to your kid, as opposed to saying,
I don't know, go do your laundry.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Right, yeah, yeah, that reactive response.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yeah yeah, that's a big question, man, what's going on?
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Right?
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Such good stuff. And I think connection to you, like,
if we can lean into connect more of our kid
really fostering that relationship, that will help as well. It's
not a direct I'm going to do this and I'm
going to see an outcome with what you're struggling with,
but it settles the nervous system. Connection is regulating, you know,
(24:15):
we know that that sense of we're on the same team,
we're doing it together, as you were talking about earlier.
And there's so many ways that we can try, just
little small things. Five minutes of connection. You know, most
teens will tolerate a few minutes at least, especially if
you're asking about something they're interested in, right, But you know,
(24:35):
what is a connection point that you can weave in
that can really help as well? A lot of the
stuff I didn't know back then that I do know. Now,
I can think of a lot of ways that you know,
I wish I had had to focus on regulation and
just regulation, but that connection is really so so valuable.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yeah, I'd say a big takeaway is in recognizing that
these questions aren't something to solve, we can contextualize them
as invitations to connect. When a kid is talking about
these big questions, these are invitations to connect. And when
we can regulate through our own anxiety, our own discomfort,
(25:12):
we can help our kids to approach these questions not
from that reactive place, not from a place where we
unintentionally might add to their anxiety, but where we can
connect with them, foster that connection in the not knowing
and in the fact that that uncertainty is uncomfortable. But
(25:32):
we can get through that uncertainty.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yeah, which is tough because we're wired to pay attention
to that discomfort and to try to avoid it to
protect ourselves. So we're trying to override all this nature
within us and our biology to do that. But it
is possible. We just have to go at it with
attention and take some of these pauses and breaths and
regulating moments.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
As you were describing and remembering that we don't need
the perfect answer, We just need to.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Be there a good reminder. Yeah, we let everybody know
where they can find you to maybe connect work with you,
learn more.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yeah, I welcome contact questions about what I've talked about
or people that are looking for support. They can find
me at growingpresent dot com.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Awesome, and I will link that up in the show
notes for everyone. I appreciate you being here and sharing
in this tough conversation. Like these conversations are not easy
to have. When we think about things that are difficult,
it can create responses in our own nervous systems, but
this is how we get through them. This is how
we help others to be able to sit with that
(26:39):
discomfort too. So I really appreciate you being here and
sharing some of your wisdom and your time with us.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Thank you so much for having me, Penny, It's pleasure.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
I will see everybody in the next episode. Take good care.
I see you. You're doing hard and meaningful work and
you don't have to do it alone. If you found
this episode helpful, share it with someone who needs it
and leave a quick review so others can find this
support too. When you're ready for next steps, The Regulated
(27:08):
Kid's Project is here with the tools, coaching, and community
to help you raise a more regulated, resilient child. Get
more info at regulated kids dot com.
It is uncomfortable not to know what we're here for.
It is uncomfortable to think about being mortal, about life
being limited and temporary. These are scary things. And just
to speak to our own experiences to some extent, broadly
because kids don't always want us to go into detail
about our deep emotions about our past experiences, but broadly speaking,
(00:23):
to find some space to validate what kids are going
through because it is uncomfortable stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to Beautifully Complex, where we unpack what it really
means to parent neurodivergent kids with dignity and clarity. I'm
Penny Williams, and I know firsthand how tough and transformative
this journey can be. Let's dive in and discover how
to raise regulated, resilient, beautifully complex kids together. Oh and
(00:51):
if you want more support, join our free community at
hub dot beautifully complex dot life. Welcome back to Beautifully Complex, everybody.
I am excited today to have a therapist Matthew Fish
letter with me and we're going to talk about a
(01:11):
topic that I went through with my own kid several
years ago that I think a lot of our nerd
divergent kids find themselves in this place at some moment
in time and parents don't know what to do to
help because it can feel really heavy and sometimes dark.
And so we're going to talk about kind of how
(01:31):
to navigate these existential crises that sometimes are nerdivergent. Teens
I would imagine even young adults have. But Matthew, will
you start by letting everybody know who you are and
what you do.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Sure? So, I'm a psychotherapist, I'm a licensed marriage and
family therapist. I'm a parent myself. I'm a neurodivergent person.
I'm licensed to practice psychotherapy in Maryland. In California, I
work with adults often parts that are navigating anxiety, identity,
and the deeper questions that come with being human. I
(02:07):
can talk more about what that looks like. I feel
like we'll touch on it along the way.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
We'll kind of get there. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I
think the existential crisis and I don't know if crisis
is the right word, but I'm sure we'll navigate that
together in this conversation as well, is sort of part
of the human experience for a lot of people, and
it can be really difficult, you know, as human beings,
we all have struggle at times we all have differences,
(02:34):
we navigate the world, we take in the world differently,
and sometimes our kids get into these places. I know
for my own kid, it was kind of this loop
and when he felt like he couldn't get out of
that loop or couldn't get unstuck, it got really heavy
and really difficult. And fortunately he was working with a
(02:55):
therapist some I don't think he was really engaged that point, honestly,
but it was really difficult. So I'm really wanting to
understand where we go as a parent. What can we
do that would be helpful. But let's start by really
defining what as existential crisis is, and if you want
to change that terminology, feel free to do that as well.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yeah. One thing, the word crisis is often thought of
as being kind of when something's at a catastrophic level,
and in psychological terminology or even in the terminology of existentialism,
the crisis is referring to kind of a turning point
or a potential pressure point in development. So an existential
(03:44):
crisis isn't always a sign that something's wrong. It can
be a sign that a young person's kind of waking
up to life's deeper questions. Yeah, in that sense, it's development.
That's not a disorder. It's not a true crisis. They're
in existential crises. Someone can be in a psychological crisis.
Someone can be at risk of not being safe. But gotcha,
(04:06):
the term crisis. It's sort of the psychological turning point
when someone's really starting to ask themselves those big questions,
like what's the point of all this? Who am I?
How long will I be here? What happens after I die?
It's not just about being like sad or confused about
starting to get in touch with the deeper truths about
(04:27):
being human or being alive on the world.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I was just going to ask you if kind of
this search for purpose also is in there would also
be included?
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah? Absolutely, Who am I? What am I going to
get out of all of this? What is going to
give me a feeling of fulfillment and purpose?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah? And where do you see this sort of start
start to ramp up? Maybe are there sort of signals
for parents that would say, oh, we might be getting
to a point where are they're really struggling with this,
with these thoughts, with these questions.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
It's hard to say, because kids of any age can
vary in how much they're talking to parents, if you're
hearing questions like why am I going to college? Or
what's the purpose of all of this? Or a kiddo
talking about a sense of purposelessness. Of meaninglessness could also
(05:26):
look like kids that are withdrawing from friendships or social interactions,
kids that are struggling in classes, struggling with grades, or
in school. He's not necessarily a sign that your kid
is losing touch with their goals. It's a touch that
their brain is kind of reorganizing and reevaluating what am
(05:48):
I doing all of this for?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
So some of those questions then maybe are a signal
to us to have conversations with them if they're open
to it.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
To have conversations with them, to ask if they'd like
to have a conversation with somebody if not with a parent,
with a counselor with someone at their college, with a
college advisor, with someone in the community. But yeah, it's
these big realities of being a person that these kids
are often coming into contact with, and especially for neurodiversent kiddos,
(06:23):
having a sense of the challenge of kind of organizing
the thoughts in such a way that they're able to
really make header tails out of it. It can be
disorienting in and of itself. And when there's a kiddo
that or young adult that is having a harder time
maintaining focus even and just in their own thoughts can
(06:45):
be harder to process.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, I hadn't really thought about the fact that that
executive function challenge that a lot of neurodivergent folks have
would also make it difficult to sort of work through
all these thoughts that you're having and trying to find answers.
I hadn't even really thought about that. That's such a
good point.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
And that's a tough one, because a kid can find
themselves in the midst of trying to piece this together,
and a bus could go buy outside the window and
suddenly there's a sort of reverie about what's going on
over there. In any number of ways, that the thoughts
can get derailed, or even that the process can get
the wires crossed internally.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Right, And I had read a statistic years ago that
it's more common to have this level of kind of
deep thinking about meaning in kids who are also gifted.
Do you think that still holds true?
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I do. I do, And that there can be a
degree of like hyper focus on something that once a
kid's brain starts to get wind of these existential realities
in the world around us, that they can get more
focused on it in trying to understand stand it. And
(08:01):
depending on what they read, for example, they may find
some existential writer that was more hopeful about meaning being
something that we create, something that we discover and uncover
with time, or something that's a bit more nihilistic that
there is no meaning to be found. And those are
(08:22):
kind of places where we can diverge into a more
hopeful or more cynical sort of attitude, especially for neurodivergent
folks who who might dive into something so they want
to learn more about it, read more about it.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, with more technology now they have more access to information,
but they have access to lots of different viewpoints, and
certainly an optimistic viewpoint, it would be more helpful for
a teenager in development who's trying to figure it out
and find their way. I know that you talk about
how an existential question can really be healthy growth and
(09:03):
not actually a problem. Do you want to talk a
little bit more about that and how we, as the
caring adult in their world, can lean into that same
sort of attitude and mindset about it.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
These existential questions, who am I? What does it mean
to be alive in the world, to be able to
some degree make my own choices and to want those
choices to lead to a meaningful life. These are uncomfortable questions.
These give rise to certain kinds of anxiety. I like
(09:38):
to call them existential anxiety, not my term. And it
can be uncomfortable for the kids asking the questions. It
can be uncomfortable for the adults to whom the questions
are being posed. Well, if my kid asked me, how
do I live a meaningful life? And I'm in the
midst of let's say, being Sandwich generation, caring for the
generation above me, the generation below me, my parents, my kids,
(10:03):
I'm wondering some of these same questions in a very
different context. So as parents understanding the questions themselves and
the discomfort with the presence of the uncertainty about these things,
not having the answers to the question, it can give
us a window into what things might be like for
our kids, and it can give us a window into
(10:25):
how as parents, finding that centeredness in being aware of
what's going on for us can help us to connect
with the kid that's in front of us asking these questions,
even just to say it is uncomfortable not to know
what we're here for. It is uncomfortable to think about
being mortal, about life being limited and temporary. These are
(10:49):
scary things. And just to speak to our own experiences
to some extent broadly because kids don't always want us
to go into detail about our deep emotions about our
past experiences, broadly speaking, to find some space to validate
what kids are going through because it is uncomfortable stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yeah, it's very uncomfortable stuff. I can feel it in
my body as we're talking about it, like ooh, I
don't know. It's hard to think about these things, I
(11:30):
think for most people. But then we add like that uncertainty,
as you said, can bring with an anxiety and a
lot of our neurodiversent kids crave predictability and certainty, and
so this is way outside of that for them. That
I think adds another layer maybe of discomfort or anxiety
(11:54):
or struggle with maybe feeling stuck in that place. And
a lot of us like don't do well with uncertainty.
I don't do well with uncertainty, Like I would rather
know these things, But how do we teach them that,
like some things sometimes are unknowable and how to sit
with that.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
We're in certain ways wired to be uncomfortable with uncertainty
as humans, I think, and wired to try to move
uncertainty towards more information, towards certainty. Uncertainty is uncomfortable because
we're drawn to find some solution. We're drawn to find
(12:37):
how can I get more information to understand what I
can do? And that's essentially what kids are doing when
they're coming to parents or others with these existential questions,
and especially like you mentioned, those that are on a
neurodivergent path themselves, can really rely on knowing what's coming next,
(12:58):
understanding why am I doing what I'm doing, and it
can help to get through that thing. And when it
comes to why am I doing this at all and
not having a concrete answer to it that there's real
buy into, it can be really it can be really uncomfortable.
So just validating that it is uncomfortable. I think of
(13:18):
something that I that I went over with my son.
He's six now, but I think he was probably four.
He would ask me a question and I would say,
I don't know, not necessarily a deep existential thing. But
why is this this way in the world or how
does this work? I don't know. And he would say, well,
I don't know either, And I would say, we don't
(13:38):
know together. It's a hard thing not to know. And
here we are, we're both not knowing what the answer
to this is.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Mm hmmm. I like that together piece that you put
in there.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Now it's not it's not in isolation. And he would say,
I like not knowing with your daddy as comfortable as
we can possibly be, and not knowing it's nice not
to know with someone else.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, Yeah, that togetherness makes such a difference.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah, And it doesn't necessarily take away from the scariness
of not knowing. It may diffuse it a little bit,
kind of disarms it a little bit that like, okay,
if I don't know, and that's scary, but also this
other person doesn't know and they're scared, but they're also
okay in this moment and they can stay present and
(14:25):
connected with me. Maybe not knowing is a little bit
less unsafe then it feels maybe it's tolerable mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
And it's an adult not knowing sometimes that too, is
like I'm only a kid, but an adult doesn't even know,
and maybe give them some relief that maybe they're not
supposed to know this thing yet, maybe you know, or
maybe it is a truly unknowable thing. But yeah, that
sense of like, let's not know together. It feels like
(14:56):
such a relief to know that somebody else can also
have that feeling and be okay, but be in it
with you and you're not alone in it.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
And it's a lot of what I do in therapy
is finding pathway to be in that place of not
knowing with my clients, whether they be young neurodiversion kids
or older adults in between. People often will come to
therapy looking for answers, looking for some kind of rescue
from what's going on inside, and in part recognizing I
(15:28):
don't have the answers, I can be here for the
not knowing and we cannot know together what to do
about this. That can be a really powerful place, whether
with my own kid or with people that I'm helping,
because it's hard not to know. We're in a big picture,
there's a lot of not knowing going on right now.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
It's uncomfortable, very yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Very uncomfortable. Yeah, I think a lot of us are
sitting with the discomfort right now and trying to regain
that ability of being able to sit in the fire
kind of.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And we're all here listening to this podcast not knowing
together and it's confusing.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah. Yeah, that doesn't make it go away as much
as we want it to.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, it's just not much you wish for someone to
come and say the unknown is no longer. We know
what's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, it's all for certain. Wouldn't that be great? Maybe not?
I mean there's some beauty in the in the journey
at least to discovering things and figuring them out things
that are completely uncertain and unknowable. Maybe there's not as
much joy in that or in that path. But yeah,
And then when neurodivergent kids, we're also adding this layer
of the fact that a lot of them feel things
(16:43):
more deeply and maybe notice things even that others might
not notice. Something that I might not see. All the
time my kid sees it or sees a different perspective
or ask a different question. I thought of things like that,
and could that be amplifying what happening for them when
they're asking these big questions when they're sort of struggling
(17:04):
with what their path looks like or what the meaning is.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, I can add to the intensity of call it
groundlessness of if there's nothing underneath me, where do I go?
And it can add to the weight of that feeling. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about the
shared existential journey that you talk about between kids and parents.
When I saw that, I was like, Ooh, that could
have been good to know way back when, right Like,
I didn't think about the fact that we could sort
(17:41):
of have this journey together. I was thinking about, Oh,
this is so hard. He is really I mean I
think he was depressed or close to depressed, Like it
was really really difficult, and it was something I hadn't
thought about. So I would love for you to kind
of walk us through what that looks like. I think
you've talked to about it a little bit in saying
(18:02):
like we can not know together what other parts of
it are there?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
I think really comes through in the idea that we
can grow our connections with our kids when we are
not focusing on fixing, but we're working on accompanying them
in the nut knowing where are they? We try to
sit with them and look out their window with them,
kind of the window of their journey. When we walk
(18:31):
beside them in their questions without being focused as parents
on giving them the answers, on fixing the presence of
the question. That's where the real connection and growth can
happen for both the kid and the parents.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah, and I would think that connection would alleviate some
of the aloneness that someone might feel when they're having
these big questions what's the meaning for me? Right where
am I supposed to be going? One of'm a I
supposed to be doing? Those sort of things can feel
automatically super alone. So just having that person to feel
like they're walking with you or just sitting with you.
(19:10):
I wrote down fixing as you were talking, not fixing,
because that's our instinct as parents. We want to fix,
We want to lead because we want our kids to
be happy, but that's not always the best way.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
And noticing the discomfort that we have as parents before
we respond to our kids can be incredibly helpful when
we're able to do it. When we can notice in
ourselves where the discomfort is. When we can regulate ourselves,
that gives us a more regulated and more centered jumping
(19:43):
off point to really connect with and hear our kids
and from there be with them alongside them as they're
trying to navigate these questions, as they're trying to find
their own answers for themselves. I'm thinking we were talking
this is I think a funny anecdote. We were talking
(20:04):
about the wish for someone to just come and give
us the answer, the wish for someone to just tell
us what is the meaning. And this came up a
few weeks ago with somebody who brought up the sort
of the metaphor of I wish that Ed McMahon, may
this may be dating us.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
I wish then.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Would just knock on my door and show up with
a check that tells me the next thing I should
do with my life and give me absolute clarity that
this is going to be fulfilling, This is going to
fill me up. And what we arrived at in talking
through that metaphor was that in the absence of that
Ed McMahon at our doorstep, finding the little Ed McMahon
(20:46):
inside and listening to him, finding that piece inside that's
scared of not knowing and that can find there's some
sense of direction for the next best.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Thing, the next best thing, the.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Next best thing in the sense of the next thing
I can do that's the best among the options. Mm hm.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
And you were talking about regulation. I'm wondering about pulling
the body in because we think that you know, we're
having questions. It's a mental mental health thing, but our
body is what triggers us to feel unsafe or safe.
And when we have these questions and there we don't
have answers. We're feeling unsafe, we're just regulated. We're just
(21:30):
wondering if there are things that we can do, like
somatic exercises, regulation exercises. Could those help also with getting
through this period.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
For parents and for kids. Yeah, but in the sense
of parents starting from noticing their dysregulation, their sense of
like ickiness and discomfort, the awareness of that, the noticing
of that is a starting point of kind of separating
from it, getting to a place where we can make
a choice about what did you next? And by noticing, oh,
(22:03):
I'm feeling tightness in my stomach, my heart rates increasing,
my palms are sweating. By noticing what's going on in
our bodies, we can be able to then make a
choice about what we're doing with our bodies. With the body,
and that has the effect of slowing down the stress
response in the brain. It creates a kind of loop.
(22:23):
It's the standing one of the standing theories about this
that the brain dysregulates the body, and the brain notices
that the body is disregulated and further disregulates the body.
And when we can notice that we're in that loop,
we interrupt it. And when we can say I'm going
to take three deep breaths, necessarily counting or doing it
(22:45):
a certain way, but I'm gonna breathe in and breathe out,
and breathe in and breathe out. One coworker used to
ask me when they saw that I was disregulated and
I was working in a clinical case management job, used
to ask me, Matthew, are your feet on the floor,
And I would look at the floor, Yeah, let me
check there they are. Something relatively simple can help us
(23:09):
to feel more centered and present and aware of what's
happening in our body, and that creates that pathway to
make more choices about how we're responding. So when we're
uncomfortable being asked these big questions from our kids, when
we can take a deep breath for ourselves, we can
ask ourselves probably inside where are my feet are they
(23:32):
on the ground. That actually allows more blood to the
areas of the brain where you can select how you
want to respond to your kid, as opposed to saying,
I don't know, go do your laundry.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Right, yeah, yeah, that reactive response.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yeah yeah, that's a big question, man, what's going on?
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Right?
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Such good stuff. And I think connection to you, like,
if we can lean into connect more of our kid
really fostering that relationship, that will help as well. It's
not a direct I'm going to do this and I'm
going to see an outcome with what you're struggling with,
but it settles the nervous system. Connection is regulating, you know,
(24:15):
we know that that sense of we're on the same team,
we're doing it together, as you were talking about earlier.
And there's so many ways that we can try, just
little small things. Five minutes of connection. You know, most
teens will tolerate a few minutes at least, especially if
you're asking about something they're interested in, right, But you know,
(24:35):
what is a connection point that you can weave in
that can really help as well? A lot of the
stuff I didn't know back then that I do know. Now,
I can think of a lot of ways that you know,
I wish I had had to focus on regulation and
just regulation, but that connection is really so so valuable.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yeah, I'd say a big takeaway is in recognizing that
these questions aren't something to solve, we can contextualize them
as invitations to connect. When a kid is talking about
these big questions, these are invitations to connect. And when
we can regulate through our own anxiety, our own discomfort,
(25:12):
we can help our kids to approach these questions not
from that reactive place, not from a place where we
unintentionally might add to their anxiety, but where we can
connect with them, foster that connection in the not knowing
and in the fact that that uncertainty is uncomfortable. But
(25:32):
we can get through that uncertainty.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yeah, which is tough because we're wired to pay attention
to that discomfort and to try to avoid it to
protect ourselves. So we're trying to override all this nature
within us and our biology to do that. But it
is possible. We just have to go at it with
attention and take some of these pauses and breaths and
regulating moments.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
As you were describing and remembering that we don't need
the perfect answer, We just need to.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Be there a good reminder. Yeah, we let everybody know
where they can find you to maybe connect work with you,
learn more.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yeah, I welcome contact questions about what I've talked about
or people that are looking for support. They can find
me at growingpresent dot com.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Awesome, and I will link that up in the show
notes for everyone. I appreciate you being here and sharing
in this tough conversation. Like these conversations are not easy
to have. When we think about things that are difficult,
it can create responses in our own nervous systems, but
this is how we get through them. This is how
we help others to be able to sit with that
(26:39):
discomfort too. So I really appreciate you being here and
sharing some of your wisdom and your time with us.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Thank you so much for having me, Penny, It's pleasure.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
I will see everybody in the next episode. Take good care.
I see you. You're doing hard and meaningful work and
you don't have to do it alone. If you found
this episode helpful, share it with someone who needs it
and leave a quick review so others can find this
support too. When you're ready for next steps, The Regulated
(27:08):
Kid's Project is here with the tools, coaching, and community
to help you raise a more regulated, resilient child. Get
more info at regulated kids dot com.
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