Friends as Anchors on a Stormy Sea
Our friends represent the anchor in our life—a life that is a storm of seeming betrayal, conformity and false truths. During these formative years in which there is significant physical growth and maturation, we are flooded with hormones that readily trigger emotions and poor judgements (Brezedine, 2006; Brezedine, 2011). Our critical thinking skills are housed primarily in the prefrontal cortex which is not fully in operation (especially for men) until the mid-20s. In a head-to-head battle between our head (prefrontal cortex) and heart (limbic system), the heart will always win at least until we are in our late 20s. All of this means, that reality and the emotions associated with reality are formed and reinforced during our late teens and early 20s by our equally-as-distracted friends. We live in a state of emotional reactivity with our “heart on our sleeves.” (Denworth, 2020, p 106) We find that life is defined primarily in relationship to some very important people in our life—and they often reside outside our family system.
There are important cognitive challenges that accompany the significant emotional challenges we face during these early adult years. In his study of moral and epistemological maturity, William Perry (xxx) finds that adolescents (college students) tend to manage the emotional and cognitive storms in their life by placing everything in a dualistic framework. There is only right and wrong, true and false. People wear white hats and black hats. There is legitimate authority and illegitimate authority.
Under conditions of emotional turmoil, it is essential we make things simple—and this includes the ways in which we classify the people with whom we interact. Are they friends or foes? Are they believers or those who have been led astray? It is not only a matter of hanging around the “right” people. It is also a matter of collectively defining the truth with our friends. “With a little help from our friends” we create a Bubble of Belief that shields us from the “others” in our life and makes our stormy internal world a little more tranquil.
Shattered Reality
Unfortunately, this Bubble of Belief and our dualistic frame is not always strong enough to fortify us from all sources of information and all versions of reality. We hear and see things that contradict our beliefs, leading us to question all truths and all versions of reality. William Perry (1970) uses the label “multiplicity” to identify this troubling epistemological stance. There are multiple truths, multiple rules of conduct and, ultimately, multiple versions of reality.
If this is what our world “really” looks like, then we are left to make our own decisions and this often means to be expedient and opportunistic. “Do what you need to do in order to get ahead.” “Don’t trust any authority, but do trust the power of money and position in society.” We see this multiplistic perspective being dominant among young people at various times in the history of many societies. As young people, we try to escape this challenge of multiplicity by “hanging out” with a small group of people who look and think just like we do. In these “tribal” settings, there is only one self and a rigid identity is formed.
Multiplicity will infuse our friendships during this period of time in our life. In some instances, other “disenfranchised” young adults will join with us to forge an identity that diverges from that of those who are in charge and purport to be authorities. The rigid sense of self we form is often founded on what the Ericksonians call a “negative identity.” As an adolescent we become “rebels (without a cause)” who don’t know what we want to be–but do know what we DON’T want to be. We don’t want to be like our parents or like “main-stream” America.
