Adolescent Services

Year round hoodies? Hours on TicTok? Your best friend one minute and arch enemy the next? If you have these miniature adults living in your house, oh you know what we’re talking about. You birthed this beautiful baby, raised them with the best manners and they loved you more than anything in the world, and then with a flip of a switch you became the butt of their jokes, the person that doesn’t understand them, the enforcer of the rules that you know will keep them safe but they feel are stripping them of their independence. They always have their hand out wanting something from you but struggle to show appreciation for the things that you have provided. 

It’s hard being a parent of a teen, all the things that you try to do to keep them safe are the exact things that they have to learn on their own for it to really sink in. The ups and downs of the relationship with your teen is not only impacting you but is also causing a world of confusion within them. They love you, they really do, they look up to you in ways that you could never imagine. They know deep inside that you want the best for them, but they’re in a place in their life where they’re discovering themselves, dealing with the toxicity of teenage friendships and relationships, while trying to be more independent as they know they’re going to have to face that big bad ugly world on their own. It doesn’t feel like it, trust us we get it, but they’re still your baby and you still mean the world to them.

But you want your baby back. You want that sweet little angel that would cuddle up with you at night. You want that child that would tell you everything from the color sticker that they got in school to the contents of the toilet after funking up the bathroom. They’re still there but you have to give them space to grow. They have to be able to learn the lessons they are meant to learn without your interference. You have to move to a place of being someone that listens, ask for permission to give your opinion, and be able to respect when they don’t want it.

The thing is, this generation, more than many others, are in touch with their emotions and as much of a challenge as that creates for you as a parent it is good for them. Well it will be good for them once they are better able to regulate their emotions. 

So let’s take a deeper look at what is going on with your teen.

They Have Emotions

Having and expressing emotions is a pretty new concept to a lot of people. Many in previous generations, including your own, were taught to suppress their emotions. You don’t talk about how you feel, you don’t express feelings or you’re seen as weak. The only emotion that you probably saw a lot of is anger and that was most likely more from the men in your life than the women. The whole idea of having an array of emotions would get you quickly labeled as sensitive and emotional. But the crazy thing is, in psychology, the absence of emotion would have you meeting some of the criteria for a psychopath!! 

So, what happened is that you probably didn’t want your kid to live a life where they had to hide what they’re feeling. You wanted them to be able to express themselves, be vocal, and protect themselves. The problem is, they’re also taking those skills that you ingrained in them and using them with you. It’s frustrating, you love the person that they are growing into and know that they are going to do big things in the world but you have to work with them until they learn to better regulate themselves. 

Now emotional regulation is not about suppression of emotions, it’s about suppression of negative behaviors associated with those emotions. That probably needs to be repeated, emotional regulation is not about suppression of emotions, it’s about suppression of negative behaviors associated with those emotions. What your teen is probably struggling with right now is that they are having all of these emotions, acting on those emotions and then having to live with the consequences of those actions and that’s hard. They’re dating someone and have their first kiss, then they break up and are feeling sad, they start reaching out to this other kid over and over trying to express their feelings and then they get labeled as a stalker. Word gets around and the other kids start making fun of them which only makes things worse, the sadness intensifies and instead of just sitting with that emotion and allowing it to pass they turn to self harm. They allow the thoughts in their head to get to them and act on them making the break up worse than it would have been if they would have been able to see that the other person just wasn’t for them and move forward with their life.

One of the things that many don’t learn is the emotions don’t hurt you, it’s the thoughts and behaviors that we create based on those emotions that hurt us. We create a negative association with the emotion based on the thoughts and behaviors that follow the emotion.  You may be thinking about how when you’re sad it really hurts but the reality is, the sadness itself isn’t hurting you, it’s just like any other emotion such as happiness. But what the sadness does is allow for negative thoughts to run rampant in your head “I’m not good enough” “nobody likes me” “I’m going to be alone forever.” It is those thoughts that hurt you. If you were to just sit with the feeling of sadness, it would go away, but what happens is we behave in a way that makes it stick around a bit longer than it would have.

Now imagine this, you’re younger and constantly interacting with people that are going through their only emotional battles. You’re constantly moving in and out of a variety of emotions and those thoughts in your head are going crazy trying to understand what the hell is going on. You may be trying to stay cool but your friends are filling your head with thoughts that you had not even previously considered. You’re trying to keep your emotions in line but everything is sending mixed signals. This is what your teen is going through and you have become the punching bag for all of these emotions because you have taught them that you are their safe place. 

Congratulations you’ve done an amazing job as a parent, now you must pay the price. 

So, this is where therapy comes in. Therapy will give your teen the space to be able to explore their emotions, understand them and learn what to do with them. Therapy assist them with being able to break down the negative thoughts that they may be having or reducing the outburst of anger that they may be experiencing as all these emotions surface at the same time. Therapy will also do a deep dive to assess them fully for other things that may have gone on in your teens life and areas that they can work through. As much as we like to believe that we know all the things that our teen has gone through, there are often times when things are hidden out of fear or shame, therapy can help to uncover those things.

However, the therapist at Live Now Counseling has a strong belief in the importance of the whole family system when working with teens. It’s important for the family to be an active participant in this process as most of the time the inability to regulate their emotions was something that they learned in the home either through not having examples of what to do with emotions or being in a home where emotions weren’t properly regulated. Teens are greatly impacted by those around them and in order to have the best outcome with them we like to make sure that the family is also doing their part to heal the whole family unit. We normally will suggest family therapy to provide the parent with insight into what is going on and also to provide the teen with a safe place to be able to vent their feelings to their family. If need be, we will also suggest that the parent and/or parents engage in their own individual therapy to assist in the best outcome for everyone.

If you are ready to get your teen started with therapy we want you to first ask them. We know that you are the parent but the biggest waste of time and money comes from teens that are not ready to participate in the process yet. If they are unsure, they can always schedule a consultation to meet with one of the therapists that works with adolescents and families to see if it’s something that they are ready for. Giving your teen the autonomy to make this decision for themselves shows them that you trust them to be able to make good decisions and that you are willing to assist them any way that you can.

If the teen is ready to get started they can reach out to one of our therapists that love working with adolescents. Check out their bio and schedule a consultation today.