When No One Understands: Letters to a Teenager on Life, Loss, and the Hard Road to Adulthood

By Brad Sachs

Book Overview

When Amanda first came to Dr. Sachs for treatment, she had attempted suicide more than once. Withdrawn and cynical, she refused to speak during her therapy sessions. Determined to connect, Dr. Sachs tried something unconventional: he wrote letters to Amanda between sessions and invited her to write back, thinking she might feel more comfortable opening up in this way--and indeed she did. This correspondence gradually built trust between them, helping her to survive and ultimately to heal. When No One Understands consists of twenty letters that Dr. Sachs wrote to Amanda over the course of her therapy. In these letters, Sachs reaches out to Amanda with the core message that there is nothing wrong with her--that adolescence is painful, complex, and challenging for everyone and that her emotional pain deserves to be honored, openly explored, and viewed with compassion. Dr. Sachs also addresses many of the common questions and concerns shared by all teens on such topics as relationships, breakups, drugs and alcohol, parents, family dynamics, and more. Along the way, Dr. Sachs offers adults an inspiring image of a truly open, human-to-human relationship between an adult and a teenager. Parents, mental health professionals, guidance counselors, educators, and others who work with teens will see how they might also bring honesty, compassion, and humility to bear in their interactions with young people in order to create truly healing and supportive relationships.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590304071
• ISBN13: 9781590304075
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Shambhala
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Excellent reference for understanding teenagers

I purchased this book at the recommendation of a therapist who specializes in teenagers and their unique problems and struggles trying to grow up and relate to an adult world. I found it to be very relavent and well written, and even if you can't get your teenager to read it. I highly recommend it for any parent of a teenager. When No One Understands is as close to a user manual for parenting teenagers that I have found.

A welcome addition

Brad Sachs is a prominent child and family psychologist who brings a very special expertise to "When No One Understands: Letters To A Teenager On Life, Loss, And The Hard Road To Adulthood". This 144-page compendium of experienced based commentary and advice surveys and addresses commonly held concerns shared by teenagers and includes such topics as relationships, breakups, drugs and alcohol, parents, family dynamics, coping with loss, dealing with depression, and the necessity to put life events into a workable perspective. A gifted public speaker and workshop presenter, Sachs is also a talented writer who, as a psychologist and an author, is able to communicate with equal fluency to both teens and their parents, making "When No One Understands" highly recommended and thoroughly 'user friendly' reading and a welcome addition to community library collections and personal self-help reading lists.

Sensitive, wise and helpful to any parent

Brad Sachs care of a 16 year old girl who attempts suicide, using letters instead of awkward and embarrassing face to face interviews, is moving and impressive, but more than this, it sets down a road map for the key thing adolescents need - to be respected, understood, and attended to without trying to change or shape them to our needs. While sensitive to her parents fears, he slowly supports "Amanda" while she finds her own feet and clarifies her own understanding of her life and her family. Its the simple act of caring, caring enough to not mould or pressure or burden this girl, that begins slowly to set her free. Any parent of an adolescent would benefit from reading this lucid and well written set of letters. We all need to give teenagers more support, more understanding, which is not the same as passive toleration, but rather a real wish to know them, and yet give them their right to be separate people. His view that adolescence is often a period of intense LOSS, rather than the glowing idea we paint on it of freedom and independence, is a revelation, and goes far in explaining why it is so difficult and painful. Though its always tempting for a therapist to boast in writing about a successful "case", and perhaps there is some element of this in even publishing such a book, the benefits for the reader, or for the more hide-bound traditionalists in counselling work, are great. I think this book deserves a very wide audience, and "Amanda" and teenagers everywhere deserve our admiration for their brave journey to selfhood. Steve Biddulph (Launceston Australia - father, psychologist and author of Raising Boys, and The Secret Life of Men.