To accept life in its disjointed pieces is an adult experience of freedom, but still these pieces must lodge and embed themselves somewhere, hopefully in a place that allows them to grow and endure.

—Richard Sennett, sociologist

One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned as a psychotherapist was best stated by a clinician named Masud Khan: The most difficult thing to cure is the patient’s attempt at self-cure. Very few lives are perfect and, because young people are generally resilient, many bounce back from difficulties with their own solutions in place. They may be outdated, imperfect solutions, but they are solutions nonetheless— ones that usually resist dismantling.

A self-cure may seem harmless or subtle, such as the way Cathy soothed herself with music and men. Or it may be obviously troubling, like cutting or bingeing or getting high to numb out. Usually sometime during the twentysomething years, life changes and the old solutions seem cumbersome and out of place. The things that once helped us feel better now get in our way. It’s not OK to go to work with scars on our arms, and live-in girlfriends get tired of seeing us stoned. But we feel like we can’t stop listening to the same music or hooking up for a fleeting moment of attention. A self-cure can take on a life of its own.

Jay, Meg (2012-04-17). The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now (pp. 103-104). 

Most twentysomethings yearn for a feeling of community, and they cling to their strong ties to feel more connected. Ironically, being enmeshed with a group can actually enhance feelings of alienation, because we— and our tribe— become insular and detached. Over time, our initial feeling of being part of a group becomes a sense of disconnection with the larger world.

Jay, Meg (2012-04-17). The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now (p. 27).

Weak ties, on the other hand, force us to communicate from a place of difference, to use what is called elaborated speech. Unlike restricted speech, which presupposes similarities between the speaker and the listener, elaborated speech does not presume that the listener thinks in the same way or knows the same information. We need to be more thorough when we talk to weak ties, and this requires more organization and reflection. There are fewer tags, such as “ya know,” and sentences are less likely to trail off at the end. Whether we are talking about career ideas or our thoughts on love, we have to make our case more fully. In this way, weak ties promote, and sometimes even force, thoughtful growth and change.

Jay, Meg (2012-04-17). The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now (p. 22).

Here we get to what another sociologist, Rose Coser, called the “weakness of strong ties,” or how our close friends hold us back. Our strong ties feel comfortable and familiar but, other than support, they may have little to offer. They are usually too similar— even too similarly stuck— to provide more than sympathy. They often don’t know any more about jobs or relationships than we do.

Weak ties feel too different or, in some cases, literally too far away to be close friends. But that’s the point. Because they’re not just figures in an already ingrown cluster, weak ties give us access to something fresh. They know things and people that we don’t know. Information and opportunity spread farther and faster through weak ties than through close friends because weak ties have fewer overlapping contacts. Weak ties are like bridges you cannot see all the way across, so there is no telling where they might lead.

Jay, Meg (2012-04-17). The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now (p. 21).

“We heal emotional pain by engaging our innate ability to create value and meaning in our lives.”