I Wrote the Warning Signs for Parents. Then I Counted 11 in Myself.

Eleven of Fourteen

Seven signs your teenager might be struggling. I published them for parents. Over 400 thousand people read them, and a fair number wrote to say they'd looked at their kid differently that night.

There's an adult version. Fourteen items. I put it together separately, for a different audience, at a different time.

The first seven are the same seven.

I'm not going through all of them. Here are the ones that overlap with what I wrote for parents.

Word for word, more or less. Pulled away from what they used to love. Sleep gone sideways. Isolating. Seeming too okay. Motivation shifting. Joking about disappearing. Snapping over nothing.

Nothing on that list changes when the person is fifty-five. What changes is that nobody runs it. A fifteen-year-old who withdraws gets noticed. A man in his fifties who withdraws gets told that's what happens as you get older.

I read the adult version back last week and counted myself.

Eleven of fourteen.

They've pulled away from things they used to love.

I cycled two or three times a week. I golfed a dozen times a year.

I played nine holes a few weeks ago. First time in three years.

That's the whole story of that item. There was no decision. Nothing dramatic happened to cycling. It just stopped, and three years went by, and I'd have told you I was busy.

I wrote in the original post that when a kid stops doing the thing that lit them up, look at what replaced it. If the answer is nothing, that's the signal.

Nothing replaced it.

Their sleep is completely off.

Four or five hours, for years.

Falling asleep was never the problem. Staying asleep was. Money. A meeting three days out. A deadline I'd already prepared for. I'd wake at two and run through it again, as though the running through it were doing something.

I'm at six or seven now. That took a long time and I wouldn't call it finished.

They snap over nothing.

This one I don't check.

I say that because a list you check every box on isn't a list, it's a mood. I've done a fair bit of work on how I handle what's going on in my own head, and it shows up here. I don't come apart at people.

Which is part of the problem. If snapping had been my version of it, someone would have asked. Nobody asks the man who's calm.

They isolate.

I work alone, most of the time, by choice.

I go into the office now and then for the human contact. Then I come home and work until it's time for bed, or until I'm falling asleep at the computer, and some nights I couldn't tell you which of those two happened.

There's a ready explanation for a man in his fifties who goes quiet. You slow down. People have their own families. Everyone's busy. It's a reasonable account of what's happening and it asks nothing of you, which is exactly why it's the one I picked.

I don't think I was lying. I picked the version that let me stay where I was.

They seem "too okay."

I'm the quintessential I'm-fine guy.

I wrote in the original post that this is the sign parents miss most, because it doesn't look like a problem, it looks like a good kid. Then I went and did it for years in front of people who love me.

Very few of them know what actually goes on in my head. That isn't an accident and it isn't shyness. I decided a long time ago what I'd cost them, and I decided the number was too high.

I wrote that kids stay quiet to protect their parents. Adults do the same thing and call it not wanting to be a burden. It sounds like consideration. It works like a lock.

I'm better at this than I was. Nowhere near done.

They joke about disappearing.

I never joked about it.

In 2018 I made a plan and told nobody. Not my therapist. Not the friends who had already carried me through the worst thing that can happen to a family.

I've written about that day elsewhere and I'm not going through it again here. I'll say the part that matters for this list. Joking about it is the version people notice. Silence is the version that nearly worked.

I recognized all of this while it was happening. That's what people get wrong about recognition. I could have named every item. I could have explained the list to someone else and been useful about it.

Recognizing something and admitting it applies to you are two different animals.

Fourteen is a lot of items and I've watched people treat it as a scorecard. It isn't one. Some of those items don't need company. What mattered in my case was that all of it was a change from how I'd been, and it held for years rather than weeks.

September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day.

If someone in your life has gone quiet over the last year, you already know who they are.

FAQ

Do the warning signs for teenagers apply to adults?

The first seven items on the adult list are the same seven published for parents. Withdrawal from things someone used to enjoy, disrupted sleep, isolation, seeming unusually fine, shifts in motivation, joking about disappearing, and irritability show up the same way at fifty-five as at fifteen. What differs is that adult withdrawal has an explanation ready for it. People get busy. People slow down. Nobody runs the list.

How many signs should I be worried about?

The count is the weaker half of the question. What matters more is whether the behaviour is a change from that person's own baseline and whether it's held for months rather than a bad fortnight. Someone who has always been a poor sleeper and always worked alone isn't showing you anything. Someone who slept fine for twenty years and now doesn't is.

What if the person seems fine?

Seeming fine is on the list. Some people go quiet rather than difficult, and the ones who stay calm and pleasant get asked about far less often than the ones who become hard to be around. If someone in your life has become easier to deal with while doing less of what they used to enjoy, that combination is worth a conversation.

Why do people who recognize the signs in themselves still not act?

Recognizing something and admitting it applies to you are separate abilities. Plenty of people can describe every symptom accurately and still hold the belief that their own version doesn't count, or that raising it would cost the people around them more than carrying it alone. Not wanting to be a burden is the most common reason adults stay silent, and it sounds like consideration from the inside.

What do I do if I'm reading this about myself?

If you're in crisis, 9-8-8 is available across Canada by call or text, any hour. If you're not in crisis and something on the list is true of you, the smaller step is telling one person out loud. Not the whole list. One item, to one person who already knows you.

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