When isolation is used as punishment, what problem are we really trying to solve?

Young people tell us how hard school can feel, and get told “It’s fine, you’ll be ok” and we know it doesn’t feel fine at all. Isolation is usually intended to help, a way for a young person to calm down or have time to reflect. But for young people who are already overwhelmed and disconnected, it often has the opposite effect. Instead of helping, it can leave them feeling even more alone than they did to begin with.

We recently worked with a young person who regularly finds herself isolated at school for what’s described as defiance or refusal. She isn’t choosing to be difficult – she’s anxious, overwhelmed, and running out of ways to cope in an environment that already feels unsafe.

Before she even steps through the school gates, there’s already so much going on in her head: scanning for what might go wrong, worrying whether teachers will remember the adjustments they agreed to, wondering if she’ll get into trouble for coping in difference ways to other students, if she’ll be allowed to leave class before things spiral and whether anyone will notice how much effort it takes just to get through the day.

 

By the time anything is labelled as “defiance,” she’s often been on high alert for hours, her whole-body tense and on edge. Sending her to isolation in that state doesn’t help. It rarely calms things down and often confirms what she’s felt for a long time- that she’s on the outside, and that she’s the problem.

In a recent mentoring session, she was given some visual cards to help explain how school feels. The words she chose were familiar: anger, anxiety, not being listened to, too many thoughts, feeling criticised. See the image attached to this article for her own words.

Just using the cards and having a mentor who had lived experience of similar feelings, gave her a way to start untangling something that had previously felt completely impossible. She wasn’t being corrected or told off; she was just being listened to. For the first time, she could begin to see that she wasn’t broken or failing, just overwhelmed, and that the way she reacted actually made sense when someone understood her perspective.

We help young people who need someone to listen and to make sense of what they’re going through – not by diagnosing or fixing, but by helping them feel seen, supported and finding ways to say what they’re going through when words are hard.

If a young person you know could benefit from support, get in touch with us to find out how we might be able to help.

Contact us