The importance of the life project in adolescence free of addictions

The development of a life project is, from my point of view, the goal that defines an extremely complex concept in today's society: the search for meaning.

The life project is a construction. A vital construction that defines that our life has a direction and a meaning. A frame of reference that allows us to act according to a defined structure. Thinking of the absence of a life project is like thinking of a ship drifting without a compass.

• Related article: "Personal Development: 5 reasons for self-reflection"

What does the life project consist of?

we know by Victor Frankl that the search for meaning is inherent to the human being. As well as Freud argued that the human being possesses the innate tendency towards the search for pleasure and according to Adler towards the search for power, Frankl takes human tendencies to a more existential plane by arguing that the human being is mobilized mainly by the search for Meaning.

This search enables the construction of a life project. Both the absence of a project and the deviation from the search for meaning, take us to the plane of existential emptiness.

.

Supporting the idea of ​​a tendency towards the search for meaning does not imply that the construction of a life project is easily achieved or even attempted. There are numerous forms of deviation from meaning, as well as dealing with existential emptiness. Ways, many of them, faster and easier than facing the many external and internal difficulties involved in building a life project. Addictions are an example of these deviations.

How to build a life project? Multiple factors intervene in its development: social, family and individual factors that we will expand on below.

• You may be interested: "Existential Emptiness and the Search for Meaning: What Can Psychology Do?"

The project of life in adolescence

Does today's society provide the necessary tools for adolescents and young people to build a project according to their desires and needs? Does the family promote hierarchies and clear limits (sufficiently firm and flexible depending on the life stage of its members); open and explicit communication and ability to adapt to change?

If we go into a brief sociological analysis of the here and now, we can clearly differentiate that the main tool offered by consumer society is based on immediate gratification through external objects.

Said tool, and the absence of institutions that function as reference frameworks, offer the adolescent, who is in full development of her identity, a simple path to direct her desire. Their unsatisfied needs and their tendency to search for meaning are linked to the consumption of objects.

The representative institutions of the social group and its implicated actors function inadequately as a frame of reference, support and containment required by young people and adolescents in their search for sense. On the contrary, the modern social system proposes an underhand nonsense that represents in young people the hard task of having to deal with a social vacuum, for which they are not prepared. Without clear and concise frames of reference that offer the possibility of acquiring social and individual values, the adolescent requires greater support from her family nucleus.

• Related article: "The 3 Stages of Adolescence"

The importance of family

As we pointed out earlier, there are multiple factors identified in the construction of a life project. today more than ever young people require a functional nuclear family that it be installed as a frame of reference and help them direct their search for meaning in a healthy and responsible way.

The family institution is today faced with the complex task of assisting its members in a constant tension between family values ​​and social values. In other words, the family nucleus must, on the one hand, help young people to build a life project that is consistent and healthy adaptation with today's society, while at the same time denouncing and highlighting the contradictions and harmful elements of this last.

What role do addictions play?

When we refer to the absence of frames of reference, we understand by this the absence of clear limits and values ​​necessary for the healthy growth of the human being. The increasing use of drugs and alcohol, as well as the increasingly earlier start of adolescents in the world of addictions, denounce the values ​​transmitted by today's society.

Addictions are largely a symptom of the consumer society. Social symptom that prevents young people from materializing the search for meaning in a stable life project.

What prevails today, and with which we health professionals must work hard, is with young people immersed in confusion and empty, with the always latent risk that they find in external objects a quick and easy way to deal with emotions that they cannot communicate.

It is in this context where the family nucleus takes on vital importance in the psychic-physical development of young people. A containing family is one that enables a healthy communication space among its members, that is, enable and encourage the expression of emotions. Likewise, it is necessary for the family to establish clear and concise limits. The family must thus install a healthy framework that transmits values ​​and meaning in a social context that lacks them.

The interaction between individual personality traits, the family environment and the social context, defines the internal tools that the person develops.

What happens when these tools are not enough or are dysfunctional? Young people and adolescents who did not develop basic skills such as the ability to deal with certain frustrations and unpleasant moods or who grew up in a hostile environment, where emotional expression is synonymous with weakness, they have serious difficulties in building a life project and are at risk of developing pathologies, including addictions.