Philly teens can feel like ‘soldiers in a war zone.’ Here’s how some adults help them process grief.

The phrase post traumatic stress disorder suggests that the traumatic event is over. But Edie R. King, a licensed professional counselor, says that many of Philadelphia’s youth are stuck in a persistent cycle of stress and grief because of the city’s constant gun violence.

“There is no ‘post.’ This is constantly happening,” she said.

King leads a youth gun violence group therapy program with Black Men Heal, a nonprofit organization offering free counseling services primarily for Black men and for teenage boys and girls in the city. Even though Philadelphia’s shootings and homicides declined in 2023 alongside the rest of the country’s and are so far on a similar trajectory in 2024, gun violence remains a crisis.

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That is especially true for the city’s youngest people, whose friends and family are often victims of gun violence, and who don’t typically have the coping skills or resources to grieve what they experience so regularly.

“There isn’t really a sense of relief from this constant stress and trauma. So it makes it difficult to [say], ‘let’s work on [processing] this’” she said.

When a young person is shot in Philadelphia, there’s a good chance that the person is known to Pastor Aaron Campbell, or one of the thousand teenagers who come to his Level Up after-school program.

“In the last 13 months, I believe it’s been eight kids from my program who have been murdered somewhere in the city from gun violence,” he said.

Most recently, it was 16-year-old Tyshaun Wells. He was shot on Jan. 11 while waiting for a train after an evening spent at Level Up. Campbell said that even though gun violence is familiar to the kids in his program, the grief they feel from it can be overwhelming.

“I was sitting with the girl who was right there when the gun blast went off, and she cannot escape the red blast of the gun. She cannot get that image out of her head. And she literally had to jump over Tyshaun’s body and just missed the bullets,” Campbell said.

The impact of such violence isn’t limited to those who were physically present, or have close connections to those involved, either.

“I was sitting with the girl who was right there when the gun blast went off, and she cannot escape the red blast of the gun.”

At the balloon release that Campbell organized for Wells, an older Level Up boy suddenly came up to Campbell and began crying into his chest. The boy then went to hug Wells’ mother, and Campbell assumed that the boy must have been friends with Wells to have been so emotional.

“He told me at the end of the night [that] he did not even know Tyshaun. He just said, ‘it’s not fair.’ He just kept saying, ‘it’s not fair.’”

When Atlas X, the program director of the Kensington gun violence prevention organization PAZ, goes to schools to talk with students about gun violence, it’s clear that many students don’t know how to sort through their feelings.

“I ask students, ‘hey, how many of you have a friend or relative who’s been shot?’ and multiple hands [will] go up ... some of them [say], ‘my mom or dad doesn’t say much.’ Or one young lady said, ‘I really miss my friend,’” X said.

You’ll hear kids in Philadelphia speak to one another the way soldiers in a war zone speak to each other

King explained that young people are particularly vulnerable to the effects of trauma and grief, largely because their brains are still growing and changing.

“Most of our brains aren’t fully developed until we’re at about age 25,” she said. “And trauma changes [its] functionality. It changes your brain chemistry. ... You’re constantly on guard. There’s no real opportunity to rest. There’s no real opportunity for your nervous system to be in a state of balance or homeostasis.”

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Campbell notices this constant awareness of threats in the way his Level Up kids talk to each other.

“You’ll hear kids in Philadelphia speak to one another the way soldiers in a war zone speak to each other. It’s ‘be safe out there,’ ‘watch your head,’” he said.

“That’s the way our kids say bye to each other. And the sad part is, that’s normal. ... You have kids who wouldn’t even claim to be religious, but they will tell you that they pray for their friends’ safety.”

Even though grief is a notoriously difficult and confusing emotional process, both Campbell and King stressed how important it is for adults to take notice of the youth in their lives who are struggling.

“The biggest thing is compassion and empathy,” King said, explaining that adults ought not blame victims of violence, and think deeply about how that violence affects the youth close to it.

“Oftentimes, there is this sense [of], ‘they got themselves into that.’ ... In many cases, they are just managing as best as they can based on what life and what their environment has handed to them.”

King also advised against minimizing the trauma that youth may experience by using such phrases as “It’s not a big deal” or “They’re in heaven now.”

She encourages youth who have experienced trauma to seek counseling, therapy, or other professional mental health services. If that is not possible, King suggests writing or journaling as an alternative way for youth to begin processing what they have gone through.

“[Allow] them to lead in terms of what support looks like and [ask] that open-ended question of ‘How can I support you?’ as opposed to assum[ing] that they need you to do what you [would] want done if you were grieving,” she said.

When grieving youth come to Campbell, he’s not afraid to cry with them. He admitted that in all of his years working with youth, 2023 was his hardest yet. After Wells was killed in January, Campbell decided he needed to get away from Philadelphia and spend a few days with his feet in the sand in the Dominican Republic, processing.

“It’s important for me to actually be honest about that and to tend to that and let my own community also come around me,” he said.

Most would expect a church leader and father figure for so many young people to project stoicism and unflappability in the middle of a crisis of violence and death, but Campbell said that sometimes his tears are the best way to guide his kids.

“I have seen the toughest young men cry because they saw me cry at a balloon release, because they saw me cry at the funeral,” he said.

“When we’re seeking to be their role models, it’s not just telling them right from wrong. We have to even lead them in how to feel, how to weep. How to release and not bury it.”