Looking Beyond the Nest: Navigating the College Process by Susan Kassler-Taub, MSW, LCSW

Looking Beyond the Nest: Navigating the College Process

by Susan Kassler-Taub, MSW, LCSW 
 

It is that time of year again for high school juniors and their families. Spring has arrived,and that means college visits, SATs, SAT IIs, ACTs, APs, finals, papers, communityservice, summer jobs… The pressure truly mounts. In my more than twenty-five years as a psychotherapist, I have watched the psychological pressure on adolescents and families start earlier and grow exponentially as they progress through the college process. This psychological stress affects the family as a whole, the adolescent as an individual, and the adults in their role as parents.

This increased psychological stress can lead to varying degrees of symptoms of anxiety and depression for both adolescents and parents. Adolescents and adults will describe to me that they have many of the following symptoms: trouble falling asleep or staying asleep through the night, waking up with their mind racing and their heart pounding, decreased appetite and nausea, decreased energy, trouble concentrating, lethargy, dizziness, tightness in their chest, and feeling angry, nervous, and sad. One adolescent described his turmoil to me in this manner: “I am wigging out – I don’t know when it will start, and when it starts I feel like it won’t end.”

The first step is for the adolescent or adult to have a thorough medical check up to rule out any medical problems. Seeking the advice of a psychotherapist can then be useful. There are numerous coping strategies that I have found to be effective in helping adolescents and families prevent or cope with the anxiety and depression that can arise during this process.

Adolescents frequently tell me that they feel as if they can never escape the college process. It becomes the dominant topic of conversation amongst their peers, with their teachers, and certainly with their parents. They will complain that near-strangers, when finding out they are juniors or seniors in high school, will ask the inevitable, dreaded question: “Where are you applying?” One student joked that if one more person asked her where she was applying, her plan was to smile ironically and say: “My parents don’t believe in higher education for women.”

The pressure amongst peers is intense. Often within a friendship circle the students will be applying to the same or similar schools, and must cope with feelings of competition with their close friends. Just when they might be feeling the most anxious about the process, those closest to them are having similar anxieties. While this may at times be helpful in terms of sharing a common emotional experience, at other times it can overwhelm the student as the groups’ mutual anxiety grows synergistically. When the conversation is unrelenting amongst their peers, I coach the students in my practice to change the subject, remembering that there are a lot of other facets of their lives to discuss, and that focusing on enjoying their time with their friends is important. One student told me that she finally said to her friends: “We are more interesting people than this, we need to talk about something else!”

Relationships within the family are often under great strain during the college process.  Parents tell me that they worry that their child isn’t “on top of the process”, while their children tell me that they worry that they will disappoint their parents. I have seen in my practice a full range of family reactions, from the over-involved parent whose own

investment in the process greatly angers the child and supplants the adolescent’s ability to invest on their own, to families who believe that since the child will soon leave home,they must handle the process completely on their own, leaving the child feeling abandoned to handle tasks for which they feel ill equipped.  Sadly, these tensions often leads to loud fights and hurt feelings, which only raise feelings of anxiety on the part of both parties. Students tell me that their parents are

“always freaking out” while their parents describe their child as angry and uncommunicative. While it helps to know that these fights are also happening in the households down the street, it is clearly better for families to implement strategies to avoid the fighting in the first place. In fact, adolescents will often say to me: “I am tired of fighting with my parents, I really do want us to get along.”

These fights can be particularly noteworthy during the spring and summer college visits

when families spend extended periods of time together in the car driving long distances,

with the application foremost in their minds. I suggest to families that these drives

represent precious time together which will soon become even rarer, and that they should

focus on seeing these trips as bonding time, rather than fighting time. This will allow for

clearer thinking during the college visits, and will help make the visits a calmer rather

than more anxious time.

As in most areas of family conflict, focusing on what is developmentally appropriate for

the child, improving communication, and emphasizing moderation are critical in reducing

conflict between family members during the college process.

While we often think of adolescents as being on a fast-track to maturity, certain

developmental traits of college-bound teens may feel familiar to parents from their

child’s pre-school years. Remember when your three year old child exclaimed in

frustration “I can do it myself!” when you tried to help as they struggled to zip that first

autumn jacket on the way to the first day of nursery school? And yet, moments later, as

the child entered their new classroom, they clung to your leg for dear life, terrified by the

realization that they were about to enter a room full of strangers.

We can draw a connection between the trials and tribulations of the first day of preschool,

and two facets of adolescent development as the student embarks on the college

process. First, we can think of the bureaucratic labyrinth of the college process – replete

with endless paperwork, innumerable phone calls and emails, and seemingly interminable

exam prep – as the jacket zipper, a skill which the high schooler is at once unprepared to

complete on their own, and yet loathe to accept help in carrying out. Second, we can

think of that moment of entry into the nursery school classroom as a metaphor for the

great – and often unspoken – fears harbored by the college bound student, who is faced

with the idea of leaving parents, home, friends, and all that is familiar and safe.

Ah, and not to forget the wrenching feeling the parents have at the moment when they

leave their child in the nursery school classroom for the first time, and its echo in the

near-future moment when they will move their child into their first college dorm. I do

believe that at times the fighting between parents and children during these late high

school years is directly related to the preparation for, and fear of, this upcoming

separation.

Let’s return to that jacket zipper for a moment. I find it notable that “the process”

assumes a level of organizational knowledge and skill by the student, while actual lessons

in this area may have never occurred. We can think of the college process as having four

areas: the bureaucratic (the maze of paperwork and deadlines) the content (the actual

written essays and applications), the student’s current life (classes, extracurricular

activities, and standardized testing), and the emotional fallout from the perfect storm

created by all of this happening at once.

In tackling the bureaucracy, we should ask, whether the student knows how to set up an

appropriate filing system (whether on their computer or the old-fashioned way) to track

the myriad requirements, deadlines, testing dates, study dates, interviews, and different

facets of each application? Have they learned how to comfortably and properly approach

teachers or community members for recommendations? Having a parent, family member,

or outside coach who has good organizational skills teach these to the student can be

invaluable, in lowering the student’s anxiety, improving the process and outcome of the

college undertaking, and as a long term skill set which will continue to reap benefits in

the actual college years and beyond.

When looking at the content portion of the process, students often tell me that the college

application essay causes them great anxiety, and is a source of frequent fights with their

parents. If essay-writing skills are a challenge for a student, I would recommend that they

seek out writing coaches at their school. For instance, some schools have a writing center

or college essay writing class, and these can be valuable resources. Other students find

that getting the main essays written as early as the summer before senior year greatly

diminishes their stress, as does having a non-family member such as an English teacher

read the essay and offer critique. If a student has a known learning or processing disorder,

additional support will be critical during these more intense high school years.

In terms of the rest of the student’s current life, how has the student handled time

management and study skills in the past? If those are weak areas, then the added volume

of tasks in junior and senior year will be overwhelming. This is an important time to

review or teach good general organizational strategies and time management skills.

Working with a student on planning strategies to incorporate all of the class work, testing,

writing, athletics, community service – and breaks for simple pleasures – will circumvent

the inevitable feelings of being overwhelmed each morning as they try to imagine how

they will get through the day.

Parents can take many steps to repair, limit, and prevent the emotional fallout of the

college process. Here is the area where good communication between parents and

adolescents is most critical. All of the adolescents I work with wish for a “cheerleader” in

their lives, an adult who is reassuring and supportive. At this time in their lives, they

often need someone to remind them that this is an individual process and that what is

right for them may not be right for a peer, and to assure them that they will get into

college, as it seems all students fear that they will be summarily rejected.

The calming voice of the parent who believes that the student can be successful in the

separation from home and in making new friends will bolster the student’s own belief in

a positive outcome. Remember, at the base of family relationships, children need to know

that someone loves them just for who they are, unconditionally. Moreover, the child

needs that person to demonstrate their commitment to the child regularly, and particularly

during a stressful time.

I remind families that students do not come to the college process as an emotional blank

slate, and it is likely they have been struggling to varying degrees with typical emotional

issues of adolescence, including: difficulty in friendships, body image insecurity,

fluctuating self-confidence, and moodiness. These issues seem to grow exponentially

under the stress of the college process, and parental communication and support become

ever more critical.

In particular, adolescents will often tell me that they find that one of their parents is

playing the “good cop” to the other parent’s “bad cop” as they tackle the college process.

I ask families to reconsider this dynamic by using more effective methods of

communication. Specifically, I advocate that parents follow the model I describe as

“collegial problem solving,” in which they consciously take account of each family

members’ appropriate ownership of their part of the process. This enables the family as a

whole to focus on communicating honestly about their feelings, with the parents

practicing what I think of as an “empathy first” model of problem solving, and thus

demonstrating a calm, flexible, and reassuring approach to issues that may arise for the

student.

Maintaining good communication between the two parents at the adult level is equally

important. Adolescents tell me that the tension around the process causes their parents to

fight, which only greatly increases their own anxiety and fear of disappointing their

parents. Parents do well to “divide and conquer” by delineating the parts of the process

they will each support their child in, and communicating amongst themselves so that the

student is not playing the role of go-between. Communication between the adults

becomes ever more important in families in which there has been a divorce, as there may

be even more adults involved in the process, and a greater need not to overwhelm the

adolescent with competing adult agendas.

I ask many of the individuals I work with to use relaxation response techniques, such as

guided imagery, and to pay attention to the quality of their nutrition – a struggle for many

adolescents – and to maintain appropriate levels of exercise. Families will benefit by

reaching an agreement to have “college free days” when they don’t discuss the process at

all - something often harder for parents than children to achieve.

I assure the families that I work with that they are more than the college application

process – this is only one stage on the developmental path of both the adolescent and the

adults. While it represents a huge challenge for all family members, with good

communication skills, and proper attention to the psychological implications of the

process, they will, with their relationships still intact, comfortably reach that beautiful fall

day when they hug good-bye outside that first dorm room.

Susan Kassler-Taub, MSW, LCSW 
Psychotherapy: children, adults, couples 
330 North Harrison Street - Suite 6 
Princeton, NJ 08540 
609-921-1994 

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