The time of life between childhood and adulthood poses many challenges and rewards. Michael Gurian, therapist, social philosopher, and author of The Wonder of Girls, says that biology, hormones, and brain development all must be taken into account when exploring this critical period of a girl’s life.
Brain development in adolescence extends over a period of five to seven years, maybe more. A lot of changes are taking place, hormones are being produced, and different parts of the brain are growing at different rates. This creates missteps, self-esteem issues, and relational problems. Most of the time, these concerns are within a normal range. When someone has an actual disorder, such as anorexia or bipolar disorder, that can become clear. But, Gurian says, “a lot of girls are being pathologized, underserved, and under-nurtured because we’re thinking there is something wrong with them and we’re not looking at what’s going on with the brain.”
An area that is not addressed sufficiently is hormones. “There is a fear of dealing with hormones, and the fear comes from hormones having been misused in the past,” Gurian says. “With people saying, ‘Well, you know women are just hormonal,’ or ‘That’s just PMS,’ we’ve avoided the issue. But we can’t because— and I say this as a father of two very successful daughters—we have to look at the fact that hormones fluctuate, and there are periods of time of different strength for each girl in which she can experience feeling sort of nuts. We need to help her to look at why that is, and if she needs biological help we have to give her that.
“I tell the story in The Wonder of Girls about a woman whose daughter was sent from school to school and from psychologist to psychologist, and they weren’t looking at hormones. They were looking at self-esteem drops and was there a systemic problem in the family because she was incredibly angry and manifesting—she was also not eating. They finally found someone who looked at it hormonally and they noticed that her progesterone levels were not in sync with her estrogen. They got her on a progesterone patch, and within two weeks the behavior was altered. They had been going two years through these other systems. So sometimes going right to the biological is crucial, and especially if one notices a daughter who is going up down, up down, up down starting at puberty.”
Among the “conflicts” that take place in the brain during adolescence is the one between the chemical oxytocin and the cingulate gyrus. While oxytocin stimulates bonding, the cingulate gyrus causes reactions to stimuli that make girls feel that they can’t bond. “This creates a powerful, powerful disconnect,” Gurian says. “And if we don’t tell them about this, they think there’s something wrong with them. They’re trying to bond. They can’t bond. People hate them. People love them. They feel unattractive. All of these things are going on, and a lot of it’s biochemical.
“Now with the Internet, people have to be very careful. If we don’t understand this chemistry and we say to a twelve-or thirteen-year-old girl, ‘Go ahead and go on the Internet unsupervised,’ we need to expect that she’s going to have problems. She’s not going to know how to handle this bonding tool—which the Internet is—and she may well get involved in cyberbullying. She may be bullied or she may become a bully and not even realize it because what she’s trying to do is bond, and she’s paying attention to these internal signals of bonding and of personal attractiveness and self-esteem.”
Among the strategies that work best for girls during adolescence are close relationships with parents, close relationships with other caregivers in the extended family, and the setting of limits. “Girls are definitely taking in toxins, and they’re eating foods that are bad for them, and we’re not controlling that,” Gurian says. “There are a lot of toxins now, pollutants and very bad foods that mess with female biology. Estrogen receptors in food: there is a lot of that. The girls are gaining weight in ways that are not appropriate, and then we’re not telling them that they’re twenty or thirty pounds overweight. We think we’ll hurt their selfesteem. We need a strong family and extended family that says, ‘Here’s what’s dangerous to you. Don’t eat these foods. Eat these foods. In our house, these are the foods we eat.’ Excessive freedom or excessive liberty for any child to do whatever they want is dangerous in adolescence.
“Girl drama is a lot about biology and helping girls through it means helping them understand their hormones and their brain. You know it’s not just nature, but how it all works together.”
Addressing these issues from the appropriate standpoint is critical. Unfortunately, there are too many people looking toward pharmaceuticals for the answer. “It’s no exaggeration to say that there are more children in school on psychiatric drugs today than there used to be in psychiatric hospitals for children years ago,” says Dr. Peter Breggin, a leading psychiatrist, expert on clinical psychopharmacology, and author of many books including Talking Back to Prozac and the new Medication Madness. “Years ago you’d go into a psychiatric hospital for disturbed kids and they’d be loath to give out psychiatric drugs. Back in the fifties we even had many of the same drugs like Ritalin and the other stimulants. But we rarely gave them out to kids, even in the hospitals. Instead we tried to work with the families. Tried to work with the schools. Tried to help empower the child. Now you’ve got higher rates of kids in our schools getting psychiatric drugs than in the mental hospitals before the psychopharmaceutical industry took over. The schools then become triage centers, and of course this has expanded and is going to continue to just mushroom over our culture because there is practically no opposition at all.”
Columbia University’s TeenScreen Program, which may sound to many people like a good idea, is another quick-fix idea that should be avoided, says Dr. Breggin. TeenScreen is a nationwide mental health and suicide risk screening program that claims it is not affiliated with or funded by any pharmaceutical companies. In actuality, says Dr. Breggin, “it’s totally a pharmacologically based concept. It’s a concept of the drug companies to get consumers. One of the inspirational points for the whole screening process comes out of Columbia, headed by a woman who has been a lifelong associate of the drug companies working to promote their interests.
“As a parent, if you hear anything going on in your school that you’re supposed to sign up for, to have your child screened in any way that looks like it has mental health or psychological consequences, you should absolutely refuse; if, by chance, it slips through the cracks and your kid ends up getting screened without you even knowing it, do not follow up on any recommendations. It is nothing more than a conduit toward clinics that will give psychiatric drugs to your child.”