Kike Esnaola: "To say that today's young people are more fragile is a brutal reductionism"

Everyone thinks that fora comes from Greek, but its origin is different. Kike Esnaola's WhatsApp photo is the logo of @forapsico, the account with which he began his outreach work on psychology during the pandemic. Fora comes from Foratata, the crag in the Aragonese Pyrenees where as a teenager he felt he could “be without judgment”. In April he published Habitando el malestar (Planeta).

He has written about “emerging adulthood”. What is it?

— A bridge between two stages that we collectively have very well defined: adolescence –which has already been left behind– and adulthood –which has not yet been established.

Did my grandparents not go through there?

— It was probably expected that they would make a more abrupt and earlier transition. Today, emancipation and stable work have been delayed significantly. And there is more and more evidence that the brain continues in neurodevelopment until the age of 30.

Today I went to the fishmonger and I thought: I am an adult.

— But perhaps in the afternoon you stay out for a few beers and, the next day, with a hangover, you say: wow, this girl and the one from yesterday morning are not the same. Often, the suffering comes from not being able to integrate these two parts.

Does adulthood reach us all at the same age?

— No. I work with a population that escapes the norm and I see many late adolescences.

For example?

— A trans woman, from a migrant family, who suffered school bullying, who never dared to go to the beach nor felt like an object of desire. Suddenly, at 28, she lets go of the shame, accepts her body, and an entire stage of exploration is unlocked. But this stage arrives late, and that causes a great deal of suffering, because at 28 it is expected that we are calculating for a mortgage.

But wasn't adolescence all about hormones?

— Hormones change the body, but adolescence is also cultural. It is a stage designed for us to make mistakes: everyone expects a teenager to mess up. It is not the same for a 14-year-old girl to steal a lipstick as it is for a thirty-year-old woman.

Are young people today more fragile?

— To say that is a brutal reductionism. And if we were to look for those responsible –not the guilty ones–, perhaps those who point the finger should point it at themselves: this fragility that is attributed to us is the manifestation of how adults have raised us. But the fact is that malaise has increased in all stages of life.

Why do your young patients suffer?

— The main reason for consultation among these emerging adults is the family. Our families did not go through this stage of their life as we do, they lack role models and do not know how to be parents in this scenario. Growing up implies repositioning the pieces of the game, and here there is a lot of resistance.

Why does this change of roles generate so much tension?

— Because everything needs to be renegotiated: we are no longer an adolescent and an adult, but two adults who need to redefine our bond. Often we fail to put into words that this process is taking place and all that appears is conflict.

On social media, I keep seeing young people talking about grief over friendships.

— It is a great topic. Going through different stages transforms us, and as we transform, our emotional needs change. The shoe that fit us at 12 years old no longer fits us at 16.

As When love sets sail?

— Suffering appears when the change goes in only one direction: I no longer find what I used to find in the bond and the other person does. For romantic breakups we have a cultural script; for friendships, we do not.

Are friendships the new couple?

— For millennials and Generation Z, they are just as important, if not more so. For our parents, what was meant to last a lifetime was the couple. For a generation that experiences this framework with greater fragility, friendship can be a lifebuoy in the middle of the storm.

How many arrive at your practice with the diagnosis already made?

— This is something that has changed radically in ten years. I started at the Suicide Behavior Unit of a hospital in Barcelona. There, they talked about attachment, narcissism, OCD, and I thought: how much of the patient do we lose by talking like that. But it was the language of those of us who wore white coats. Now the entire population talks the way we talked at the hospital ten years ago.

Can't a label help?

— Without a doubt. They provide access to aid, medical leave, and support at school. And they have an identity function: they help us to situate our suffering, to understand that we are not alone. What is dangerous is the trivialization, explaining our discomfort exclusively through these labels.

How about the 45 tricks to distance yourself from toxic people?

— In reality, the gesture is the same: “toxic people” is just another label. And hand in hand with the label comes a mechanistic view of the human being: what happens to us is caused by A, B, and C and is resolved by A, B, and C. It is not like that at all.

Twenty years from now, will we be the ones calling young people "fragile"?

— It is a generational bias that always occurs. It will happen to us, even if we do not believe it.

How will I know that the moment has arrived?

— When I hear something like “farming aura” and I look at it with bewilderment.