March
2003
Our daughters
by Dr. Madeline Behrendt
When
I was a teenager, my parents thought the greatest threat to me was my
fascination with the Rolling Stones. Today, rock and roll renegades are
nothing compared to what teenagers face in our culture.
What
can be in a typical teenage girl's day today? Sugar, Ritalin, monster
backpacks, no exercise, growth spurts and scoliosis, scheduling stress,
cultural fear, hormonal transitions, eating disorders, Internet issues,
pressure of college choices and her future, social temptations, media
influences affecting self esteem. Whew! These are just some of the
challenges she can face.
While
navigating these years and any detours triggered by careless influences,
teenage girls need authentic support. In reality they are society's
daughters, under all our care, and chiropractors can make a difference for
them.
The
essence of being a teenager is about adaptation. The first kiss, the first
car, the first job. Adapting to a new body, new feelings, adapting as the
barriers structured by age fall away and legal independence emerges. Along
with these visible external changes, there are also many internal changes
occurring.
The
success of adaptation relies on a healthy nervous system. As the
experiences in a teenage girl's external environment became broader, as
her internal environment becomes flooded with the business of hormones,
all this stimuli is taken in and processed by the nervous system. It is in
those moments, when the integrity of the nervous system is so essential,
the message it sends back out to the body as a response can only be as
healthy, coordinated, and organized as the nervous system itself.
Interference
can create greater interference. Disorganization begets disorganization.
Undetected, life in the subluxation zone can result in a disconnection to
health, and the shift to a lifestyle congruent with illness.
When
we consider illness, we consider a state that promotes a lack of autonomy.
It confers needing to be "managed," to be fearful, to be behind.
Someone making choices congruent with illness may choose to pull back, to
say "I can't" or "I shouldn't" excessively or
inappropriately. As a teenager develops her independence and identity,
illness can interrupt independence and promote an identity associated with
a disease or disorder. These young women are really longing for validation
and connection, yet since they are living in an environment surrounded by
illness, they seek connections and attachment there.
The
teenage years are precious, this lifecycle only happens once. It offers
the opportunity for an exercise in self-discovery and self-celebration. It
is a time to explore what the main interests of life are, to dream, to
design a life track. Truly, it is an heroic journey.
Wellness,
and all its benefits, is harmonic with the essence of potential that the
teenage lifecycle offers. Yet, the question is, will the choices made
during this pivotal time be made from the experience of wellness, where a
teenager engages with her life opportunities, or from the experience of
illness, with it's discouragement and shrinking sense of possibility?
As
teenagers begin to develop responsibility for their own health care
choices and taking care of their body, now is the time to for them to
learn the distinctions among different approaches, to become educated
about wellness care and a culture that supports and promotes well-being,
as well as how to identify overly aggressive, high risk choices that
promote dependency.
As
chiropractors can we do a better job of outreach to teenagers? Are we
aware of the teenagers in our offices and are we connecting with them? Are
parents under care leaving teenagers at home? Can we introduce a
conversation about that? Have we been caring for children over time and
now that they're teenagers, can we stimulate a conversation about their
thoughts about chiropractic care?
Are
we discussing that some of the people most admired by teenagers seek out
chiropractic care -- X-games and Olympic athletes, performers, etc.? Are
we visiting high schools and junior highs?
Now
is the time to create positive behavior and health habits. Are we
educating teenage girls differently than teenage boys in what we focus on
and what we expect? Do we tolerate health habits and behaviors in boys
that we would never tolerate in girls? And vice versa?
One
of the aspects I love about chiropractic is that we aren't waiting for
these young women to blow a disc, to have chronic back or neck pain, to be
sick. Subluxation-based care is about health, wellness and possibility. It
is up to us to show teenagers they are valued in our culture, to show them
we are committed to their well-being. Many may not yet know anything about
subluxations, but we can tell the story and then watch their faces
transition from ignorance to awareness.
They
are all our daughters. Let's make a difference for them.
(Dr.
Madeline Behrendt is chair of the WCA Council on Women's Health and
associate editor of the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation [JVSR]. An author
and speaker, she is committed to connecting women to chiropractic and
chiropractors to women, and may be contacted at drmadeline@drmadelinedc.com)
