Dr Eve's Sex Book: A Guide for Young People. Marlene Wasserman

life as a teenager

      Your teenage years is a period of experimentation, exploration and excitement.

      No, it’s not all because of hormones, but the hormones trigger off growth changes, which bring about emotional and then behavioural changes. Your feelings will range from bad to sad to glad within minutes. It feels as if your very existence depends on that soccer ball being passed to you, that boy sending you an SMS, that girl smiling at you.

      You want to be alone, but you feel so lonely when you are alone. You feel afraid, you feel excited. You feel ugly, you feel gorgeous. You just feel too much!

      Your moods

      I receive so many letters from confused teenagers struggling with this problem. It is not always easy to find the right answers!

      Dear Dr Eve

      Help! I am a teenager, but I feel so different. Yes, I know my body is different – my penis seems to have grown, but jeez, it’s more than that. It’s this crazy feeling inside, specifically inside my heart. An agitation, an irritation.

      No, I am not horny, as I jerked off last night. I can’t give it a name, but it’s making me restless. This feeling rocks my world. I push my mom away when she wants to give me her usual morning hug, and yet I miss her when I am at school. I feel confused, confident, scared and like I am king of the class – but all at the same time! What is happening to me?

      Desperate Teen

      Hello, Desperate Teen

      I haven’t quite worked out which is worse: being a teenager or the parent of a teenager. Both are on a roller coaster ride, leaving the whole family in constant turmoil and often under unbearable tension.

      At times life is so sweet – until the next roller coaster comes by and whoops, life once again rock and rolls. You are riding that roller coaster, yet you have no control over it. You may go to school today feeling really cool, happy. Your best buddy teases you in front of the group about something silly you did over the weekend. At the time you also laughed, now you are humiliated and enraged. The only way to get through the next couple of years is knowing that this too shall pass. And that as you jump off the roller coaster, your younger brother will be jumping on, with you as experienced guide and mentor.

      Dr Eve

      Your teenage years are a transitional, exciting time in which you are discovering who you are and how you want to live life. You do not have all the privileges of being an adult, which freaks you out, because you feel adult. Too often you are forced to make adult decisions and are encouraged to take responsibility for yourself. Structures and rules are actually still much needed, as your body and mind want to run around with abandon. You are like an invincible runaway train. Your instinct is to play, to try new things, to test yourself in the world. But consequences may not always be that clear to you.

      The teenage years, which are roughly between the ages of 13 (even from age 9) and 19 (known as late adolescence), are the most crucial of your life. Without a foundation of good self-esteem, positive body image and self-confidence, an unhappy teenager will become an unhappy adult. Research indicates for example that low self-esteem in girls could result in teen pregnancies, chlamydia, eating disorders, self-harm and depression.

      “Self-esteem” means feeling good about – and relating positively to – your life, your feelings, your actions and your relationships. Often factors in your life do not contribute positively to your building a foundation of good self-esteem. You could be experiencing things like a divorce between your parents, abuse of you or your parent, a father who works like a dog and is seldom around – and when he is around he is actually absent, as he is so removed from you and the household. Or a mother who may drink too much, visit with her friends too long or work too hard; a parent who has had an affair; parents who constantly fight; a parent who is ill. Then there are also your own “younique” factors like feeling left out and not fitting into a group, too shy, no friends, feeling not as smart, pretty, slim, or cool as the rest of the group. That is why you, especially you, will have to make an effort to build self-esteem.

      Everyone is different. For most of your teenage years you will not want to be different. You will want to look and act the same as your peers. It’s all about needing to fit in and belong. As you grow into young adulthood, you will experiment, explore and eventually want to express yourself in your own unique way. You will join and form a clique with other people who have the same interests as you. You will be labelled a biker, skater, rugby jock, culture nerd, whatever. You are building bricks to self-esteem.

      Unfortunately many young people lack guidance, and the negative factors in their lives prevent them from making good choices about how to build their bricks. Drugs, alcohol, breaking rules and laws, belonging to a gang become their place of belonging, their family.

      Check out the factors that contribute to you creating this all-important self-esteem. Then find some bricks, cement, a shovel and start building.

      Building bricks of self-esteem

      Political bricks

      See Definitions

      It is really hard to feel good about yourself if you grow up in a family of many kids or in a crowded and run-down living space. Here you have no privacy to explore yourself and your moods. It’s also difficult to have good self-worth if you are “different” from the group. “Different” includes being an LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, intersexed) person, or a person of a different colour and/or culture from the majority of the group. If you have a learning disability, it could lead to your feeling not as smart as the other kids. The same applies if you have a physical disability. Bang! goes your brick of confidence.

      Build your political bricks by finding other people who are similar to you in ways that make you feel comfortable and hang out with them. Make your own unique group.

      Dr Eve says:

      The most important part of your brickwork is feeling as if you belong to a group. I know you want to belong to the cool group, but this is not possible for the majority of people. Make your own group, and make it cool for you.

      Social bricks

      No choice leaves you with no voice. You need to scream down your friends’ voices in your head and choose what you want.

      Friends are more important to you right now than your own parents. They are your second family, the people you choose to hang out with. You feel understood by them, you can share secrets, there is intense loyalty between you and trust is never to be compromised between friends. Unfortunately they can also be a major obstacle in building your self-esteem.

      Peer pressure is very real. It is a “fit in or fly off” mentality. That’s why it is extremely important to choose friends well. If you hang out with a group of people who are experimenting with drugs and alcohol, no doubt you will get into this stuff too. To you it might feel far worse to be left out of the group, and easier to be pressurised into this unwanted lifestyle. But is this right? If you feel your friends are pressurising you, jealous of you, competing with you, stealing your partners, telling on you or talking behind your back, dump them. They will compromise your self-esteem and make you feel bad about who you are. Young men and women learn about sexuality from their friends. Friends can learn from pornographic material, hearsay, the media and their own sexual experiences. This creates a distorted picture – which you might accept as truth because a picture of healthy sexuality doesn’t exist for you. Friends will brag about their sexual conquests and popularity, maybe leaving you feeling inadequate. Often you will deliberately seek to lose your precious virginity just to keep up with your so-called sexually active friends. No choice leaves you with no voice. You need to scream down your friends’ voices in your head and choose what you want.

      Build your social bricks for your self-esteem by choosing friends wisely – friends