It is a well-studied and known phenomenon – teenagers pick up the “vibes” of their friends more strongly than do younger children or adults. During adolescence, we bond very closely to friends. We pick up on their hurts and joys, sharing them in a much more psychologically intimate way than at other times in our lives.
I believe we may also pick up our friends’ traumas and make them our own. More than once have I worked with a client reporting childhood, teen, or young adult trauma that later turned out to be “ghosts” – imaginings based on a friend’s childhood trauma introduced to the shared sensitivities of an intimate group of young friends.
In other words – a false memory. Still, a memory with all the power and influence of a real trauma. And I, as the clinician, treated the symptoms of that trauma as though the original trauma belonged to my client. My client “owned” it, so why not treat it as thought it belonged to my client? Made sense to me. The mind is unable to differentiate between real and imagined when it comes to trauma.
The rub comes when the client insists on placing responsibility for the trauma upon people who didn’t earn it. And when the client was able to separate the trauma from the supposed cause, symptoms dropped like water to the ground.
Certainly real trauma occurs. Sometimes perpetrators must be investigated and prosecuted – which is an entirely different subject from this discussion. What I’m talking about here is the propensity for the human mind to pick up and own traumatic memories from others – particularly during adolescence.
My conclusion is to believe a teenager’s report of trauma – and treat it as real – because, in the end, whether or not a teenager has been traumatized by a real or imagine event doesn’t really matter. What matters is that they get adequate and effective treatment. Adults reporting adolescent trauma – like sexual abuse for example – should be treated in the same manner.
Later – after treatment – we can discuss the repurcussions on the circle of family and friends to which the psychic results of trauma may have spread.