The Role of the Mentor

The only way for an adolescent to develop integration, containment, and identity is through mentorship. The impulse of kids to form groups is healthy. In evolutionary terms, groups of young people seek leadership from adult mentors. In the absence of healthy adult mentors, adolescents form a youth gang, which comes to be led by the adolescent among them who is most aggressive, gregarious, or risk-prone. The absence of mentorship for adolescents is the most serious problem in our society today. Absence of mentorship is a primary cause of the addictions problem among both youth and adults, the suicide problem among youth, the homelessness problem in youth and adults, and the depression and anxiety problem of many people.

A mentor is someone who can assist a child to complete their unfinished childhood themes and to further develop their character. After parenting, it is the most important role a human being can undertake (despite the low status it earns). A good mentor encourages an adolescent (or child) to feel safe, to take appropriate risks, to express whatever remains unexpressed. Mentorship does not have to be a long-term intervention. An adolescent can undergo a transformative experience in a single meeting with a good mentor. One outstanding experience is enough to complete the learning for an entire unfinished developmental stage. (This is a possible but not common experience.)

Mentoring requires immense sensitivity and interpersonal skill. Just as a good mentor can profoundly influence a child or adolescent, so can a poor one. An inappropriate mentorship experience can severely damage the psychological development of a child. Mentorship is a trust, a role that is profound and powerful. It is a gift offered to us by children. Usually, parents cannot fulfill the mentorship role, which requires a balance of deep caring and emotional neutrality. Parents possess deep caring, but they cannot be neutral about the choices their children make.

We live within a scientific context that is almost completely brain-centered. In many ways, our hyper-focus on the brain allows us to forget that the brain is only part of the larger nervous system, which in turn is part of the body-mind. Body and mind, as research consistently affirms, cannot be separated. And healthy development, of course, involves the entire body-mind.

One of the ways to simplify the immense complexities of the body-mind system is to use terminologies of the nervous system. These in turn can be grouped into mentorship roles:

• Flight response mentorship encourages trust, safety, and belonging
• Freeze response mentorship encourages need fulfilment and solace
• Orienting response mentorship encourages healthy action and exploration
• Fight response mentorship encourages healthy empowerment

Mentorship involves both physical and psychological work. The nervous system of the developing adolescent must be addressed on a physical level, through activity, as well as on an interpersonal level.