Personal fable and the imaginary audience

I get paid to help adolescents make music. 

They're funny critters, teenagers. Seems everybody's got an opinion about them. Even Socrates had a well-quoted whinge, back when he was teaching teens as a way to supplement his thinking career, and folks have been chucking rocks at kids ever since. 

The usual stones to throw are about how they think they know everything and live like they're the centre of the universe.

Some experts have a couple of excellent phrases to describe the adolescent mindset. They talk about the kids' belief in an "imaginary audience" and their "personal fable". The kid is certain everybody else is as obsessed with him as he is with himself, and that he is somehow unique and special. 

It's tricky being a teenager. You feel like nobody understands and that everybody is watching. Some might say this sounds like an mental condition. More on that in a minute.

The thing about imaginary audience and personal fable is that they were once thought to be part of a phase that kids go through, before they can emerge out the other end as a grey-trousered grown-up with a mortgage and an ability to engage in small talk.

But here's the fun bit.

It turns out that many grown-ups keep performing for their imaginary audience, believing they are somehow special and unique. Insert social media critique here.

So I've been working with adolescents, helping them make music, and I enjoy how zealously egocentric and delicately weird they can be.

And I thought I'd write about it for you, whoever you are...

Because it seemed interesting...

Here's a picture of my lunch.