Talking to teenagers

Unhealthy control is insidious, it’s under the radar. The feeling it creates is that you are on the back foot, you are either unaware of the nature of it or you just desperately want to make the situation right. It confuses you and makes you angry, sad and sorry all in one go. It does the above things in adult life, but when we are children and we have no separate sense of self, that is where the blue print is created. One element of control in parenting is a parent who restricts their child emotionally, the child ultimately feels smothered. You may now as an adult look back and realise that what you felt as a child was scrutinized and inspected.   As an adult it is confusing, because parents who do this seem incredibly caring and bracket themselves into the ‘worry and fuss too much parents’. Parents who control by any different means do not trust and experience high anxiety themselves. When you have experienced this type of control as a child you may still feel a...

“I want to be unhappy, I want to be controlled to the point of exhaustion. I want to give up on doing things that fulfil me. I want to remain constantly confused, I want to have to check out every decision with my parents or partner. I want to be diminished to the point of hopelessness. I want to feel deeply sad for me and also deeply sad and sorry for the other person. I want to hope every day that this is going to change through me having courage or my parents, partner, boss, friend gaining awareness through some incident or event that forces the realisation on them.” NOBODY sets out in life to feel like this! Why a blog series on control and boundaries? Probably because boundaries are the single most important change you can make today to improve your family relationships, your friendships, your working life and your parenting. You could work on boundaries without learning about controlling behaviour, but people that have been controlled in childhood and adulthoo...

Photo by Oscar Keys on Unsplash Teenagers toxic love…Parents can feel distressed and frustrated at the addictive nature of their teens relationship. What's the best way to manage it? Every teenage relationship has an element of infatuation, they can be on the phone for hours on end, spending every free minute together at school, walking home together etc. This is how all the relationships start off, some remain healthy and happy but some become unhealthy in a short time. Boundaries become blurred, identities become enmeshed and the teenager can quickly lose a sense of self. This can become a huge breeding ground for jealousy. Jealousy is toxic in a relationship that has lost all perspective and the young person has no reference point to hold onto. It starts with probing questions that cause a little unsettling disagreement and progresses to checking phones and logging into each other’s social media. Both boys and girls talk about being ‘located’ on snapchat by th...

Sometimes the theme of my sessions with teenagers, is about the overreaction from parents. My clients feel that by parents doing this over most things that their position becomes weakened and ineffectual. It’s like the parents lose a bit of their sway by losing the teenagers respect. How many times have you heard yourself say... “for goodness sake, just stop arguing, why do you always argue? The simple answer to this rhetorical question is that the teenager needs to be heard, why? because they just do, it’s a thing that they can’t help. So, with that in mind you can consider that arguing with your teenager makes them better at arguing (something which you will suffer for later) So which things are not worth the hassle of arguing? 1)       Eye rolling…irritating yes, just ignore, it is not a reason to shout and totally lose it. 2)       Slamming doors…you just have to say that if the door frame collapses they wil...

Social media…what is your teenager using it for...read this, keep a healthy eye on it and then stop worrying. Yesterday the news was that 89% of teenagers worry about online privacy and data, of course they do they have just got wind of the Facebook privacy scandal and are convinced the police are coming knocking for the underage purchase of cider they posted on Facebook last weekend. I’m joking of course, but the truth is that teenagers worry about privacy generally, all the time in every aspect of their lives, not just the life online. That is why they blow their top when they find out you have shared with aunty, grandma, best friends mum about their poor judgement and risky behaviour. That is why they are generally tetchy and cynical about the meeting your having with school re performance. That is why they can’t relax while you’re in their bedroom as its an intrusion on their private space. So, what is going on when they use social media? Some parents say that the...

Notice that the experience below brings Loneliness, being alone, embarrassment, shame, self- blame, shock, anxiety and uncertainty. It also brings a need to take something positive out of very painful experience.  "When Sarah left school, I felt alone because we had left a group and I didn’t feel right to go back. Throughout the days at school, my thoughts were to get through the day as soon as possible, but always felt that people knew I was a loner and would judge me. To make myself not feel judged I would try and make myself look busy by either going to the library, ICT, learning support and the art room. It was mainly the library and ICT that I went to because I was in a year where grades were not important. I hated it when the library and ICT were closed because I didn’t know where to go, so I wondered around the school hoping no one would see me; sometimes I would find a place where no one is around and stay there for a while until someone was near. Sall...

Social pain is experienced when a person is excluded from social connections, experiences rejection or bullying, it can be experienced when a friend moves schools due to family circumstances. Neuroscientists have discovered that when social pain is experienced it activates the same brain regions as physical pain. Our biggest emotional drive is to connect, its not about that others see us to be alone, but that social connection brings rewards. Relationships bring validation, understanding, feeling ‘got’. Relationships allow us to internally reflect on our differences and allow these to be accepted without judgement. Research suggests that non-inclusion is painful in a similar way as active rejection. The individual’s self-esteem and self-concept are tied up in the acceptance from ‘the other’ So, what happens when adolescent developmental tasks come alongside social pain? Nearly all of the teenage clients I see that experience acute social anxiety have had a distress...