Is It Just a Phase?

A Call for Parents...

Sometimes the hardest truth is the quiet one we keep in the back of our minds — the one we almost didn’t want to see.

For years, I watched patterns unfold that didn’t make sense. Friendships breaking down. Emotional reactions that seemed bigger than the moment. I told myself, It’s just a phase. I told myself it was personality, trauma, Gen Z attitude, something that would settle with time.

I took her to psychologists. I believed healing would come from talking, from being heard. It did briefly — and then it faded again. We all want to believe love, presence, therapy, good intention are enough. I believed it too.

Then came a moment that changed everything. A message that revealed how close it was to end one's own life. It was a call I could not ignore. Soon after, a doctor — halfway across the world — used a word I had never heard: psychosis. That word reframed everything.

I didn’t know what it meant then. I only knew it changed the questions I needed to ask.

Looking back, the earliest red flag was not any one thing. It was the repeated pattern — the emotional intensity that never quieted, the reality that seemed fluid, the narratives that felt unreal. I saw real struggles and pain, and I believed I understood them as trauma or attitude. So I explained it with the frameworks I had.

I share this not as regret, but as reflection. Not as blame, but as learning.

There is no simple cause for serious mental illness — not a missed dua, not a moment of absent parenting, not a busy schedule. These are the stories we tell ourselves to make it feel controllable. Psychiatric conditions have complex, biological foundations we are only beginning to understand. None of us want to believe our child could be wrestling with something real and unseen.

But here is what’s worth knowing:

Persistent behavioral patterns that don’t resolve — especially when they span years, not weeks — deserve attention beyond gentle hope.

When relationships become battlegrounds, when patterns repeat without stability, when reasoning doesn’t bring clarity — pause. Observe. Ask deeper questions.

Therapy is meaningful. But therapy alone is not always enough. Early psychiatric evaluation, not as a last resort but as a next step, can be life-changing.

And while illness is not evidence of spiritual failure, there is a place for spiritual reflection in healing. Faith, grounding, mindful presence, honest conversations about inner life and outer reality — these all matter. Spiritual awareness does not cause illness — but it can give compassion and resilience to the journey of understanding and care.

None of this is easy to write. None of it is easy to live.

If you are reading this as a fellow parent, let this be a gentle wake-up call:
Watch patterns over time.
Listen without dismissing.
Learn without shame.
Seek help without delay.

Not every difficult phase is rebellion.
Not every struggle is personality.
Some are lessons — for us to see, learn, and act.

And in seeing clearly, we may help a life find steadiness it would otherwise lose.