Guest blog from Duncan Gillard and Freddy Jackson Brown
Adolescence can be a complex and often confusing time. Finding ways to talk about and clarify what you’re thinking and feeling, and what you want your life to be about, can be hard, as you try to navigate the social world and the world of education and training.
The DNA-V model can be a profoundly helpful model to support young people in working through adolescence, and to help them build a life that’s nourishing and vital, and full of adventure, connection and personal growth.
One great example is working on Discoverer skills (the D in DNA-V!). When working in the Discoverer space, we can help young people try out new behaviours they think might be connected to what they care about; track (or notice) whether or not this makes their lives better; and make room for some of the tricky feelings and thoughts that might need to come along for the journey as they do so.
One young person we worked with recently desperately wanted to become a Marine Biologist but they had been too anxious to even leave their home for several months. Over a few months of work together, we built up to a Discoverer move that included getting in a helicopter for an island hike and a SCUBA dive. The young person’s Advisor mind (the A in DNA-V) got super busy in the preceding days, but they pulled it off! When they returned, we used the metaphor of ‘Hearts & Waves’ to frame how making Discoverer moves linked to things you care about (the hearts) is inextricably connected with ‘waves’ of tricky feelings like anxiety, nervousness and worry.
For so many young people we work with, life has become small and narrow, because they’re shrinking back from activities that make them anxious. They rarely leave their home; see very little of their peers; spend most of their time gaming in their bedrooms; and tend toward the same patterns of behaviour, day after day. Commonly, they want so much more than this, but the world has become such a scary place that it’s hard for them to even say this, as they’re scared they can’t have such things.
By working carefully and skilfully in the Discoverer space, we can begin to help young people connect with, think about, and build the life they really want, one small step at a time.
Join Duncan and Freddy for a training session!
Duncan and Freddy’s course ACT for adolescents will share ways to use ACT when working with adolescents in therapy, specifically looking at ways to adapt the principles for young people aged 12-24. They will also take you through the DNA-V framework which was specifically created for this audience. Help your teenage and young clients work through challenges like self-identity, managing their emotions, building relationships, and understanding their core values.