Today’s episode is Day 5 in my foundational series on parenting teens. I’m taking you through all the basics of parenting teens that will help you decrease conflict, strengthen your connection, while also changing their behavior.

If you’ve not listened to Days 1 – 4, go back to episode 130 and start there. In these first 4 episodes I’ve given you a glimpse into what it’s like to be a teenager, to have their brain, to be in their head and feel what they feel, think what they think.

And this is key to parenting teens and tweens because it’s really very easy to misinterpret  much of your teen’s behavior. What you see – the emotions and the outward behavior - is not the full picture of what’s going on. You can easily fall into a negative mindset about your teen when you think they’re being lazy, entitled, bratty, irresponsible, irrational, non-sensical…but when you understand the neurobiological underpinnings of that behavior, I hope it will allow you to temper your own emotional response a bit better.

And today that’s what we’re talking about; your emotions and how very much they impact your parenting and ultimately, your teen’s behavior.

What do you do when you don’t feel in control of  your emotions? How do you change old patterns? Stay put to understand more about your emotional world and where to begin making the changes you need to make.

This is Speaking of Teens, the podcast that that teaches you the science of parenting adolescents so you can be less stressed and more excited about having a teenager. I’m Ann Coleman, I’m an attorney turned parent educator and I’ve spent years studying the science of teen behavior and I want to help you learn how to parent your teens for the best possible outcome.

One of my best friends growing up – Michelle – I used to love going to her house because her parents were always so calm and chill and no one seemed to ever get angry or yell. We met in 6^th grade when 3 elementary schools came together in one middle school. I invited her to come over to my house and play.

And Michelle had this gorgeous long blond hair and basically looked like a life-sized Barbie, and I loved cutting my Barbie’s hair. So…she let me take a few little snips here and there of her hair – I don’t really recall how much.

But the following week when I was invited to her house…and I will never forget this…her mom, Julia, met us at the door of the living room, introduced herself to me and said, in the sweetest way you can imagine,  “Now I only have two rules, here. We don’t touch the sculptures and we don’t cut Michelle’s hair.” I remember being a bit “oh my gosh, am I in trouble?” but that’s all she said, and I never heard her raise her voice ever, as long as I knew her. The same for Michelle, I never heard her yell at her parents or get upset with them.

Quite the opposite from my house where there was plenty of yelling and frustration and anger and anxiety to go around.

Calm is contagious and so is frustration and anger. And this is especially true between parents and kids.

The way you manage your emotions is likely the way your kids will learn to manage theirs. Whether you bottle up how you feel, just go with the flow and never speak up, or lose it over the least little thing. We all learn how to deal with our emotions primarily from our parents.

And you know what? Most of us aren’t that great at emotions because our parents weren’t either – because their parents sucked at it.

But the cycle of mismanaged emotions can stop with you. How do you do it? How do you just stop being so easily upset by your kids? How do you learn to stay calm when you’ve never been able to before?

Well, I’m not going to tell you it’s easy, but it is definitely doable for all of us. Even the most anxious or angry among us.

So, the first thing I want you to recognize and acknowledge is that your negative or unpleasant emotional reactions can have a major impact on your kids whether you yell and scream, you’re more passive aggressive, sarcastic, demanding or give them the silent treatment.

If you find yourself unable to control your emotions with your teen much of the time, then there’s no doubt this is impacting your parenting, your relationship with them, and likely, their mental health, the relationship with your spouse and your everyday life.

If this sounds like you, the first thing I would recommend is seeing a therapist. A therapist can help you address any underlying issues, maybe refer you to a psychiatrist and together they can hopefully help you have greater emotional regulation. There is simply no reason to be miserable. Get the help you need.

Now if you don’t feel a therapist is necessary, and you want to do this on your own, where do you start?

You have to start with awareness. Learning to identify that you are experiencing an emotion and being able to articulate the exact emotions your feeling. Most of us go about our day-to-day life without putting much thought into our emotions. We’re busy – we just do things and move to the next thing and the next thing without much contemplation about what’s going on in our brain or body.

Often even when we do feel ourselves not being quite so happy or content or when we feel downright yucky and unhappy, we might not take the time to actually define that feeling or think about where it came from.

But emotions do come from somewhere and they can all be defined quite specifically if you have the words for them. So learn emotion words, learn the various intensities of anger or fear – being able to articulate your specific unpleasant emotion has be scientifically shown to help you deal with those emotions better.

So where do they come from? Well, they certainly don’t just pop up out of nowhere, despite how it can feel sometimes. There’s always a stimulus for the emotion – something that prompts how we feel. And this stimulus can be anything effecting the 5 senses; you see something, hear or smell something, touch something or taste something. Anything that’s going on in the world around you. Seeing a car crash can frighten you, maybe make you sad. Hearing an old song can make you feel nostalgic, tasting something horrible can make you feel disgust, see a picture of your teenager when they were a baby can make you feel joy and wistfulness.

And as we discussed in Day 2 of this series, the brain’s amygdala can automatically cause the fight or flight response (fear or anger) if it senses a threat in the environment – a threatening stimulus or something it mistakes as threatening, like a hand on your shoulder when you thought you were alone or a loud noise right next to you.

You can also behave a certain way and trigger an emotion. For example, science has shown if you smile, you feel happier and if you frown, you’ll feel unhappy.

Or you could simply think about something, and it could cause an emotion.

I’ve talked about this before – the cognitive triangle: thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Each one impacts the other – change one and you change the other two.

 

Now, like I said a minute ago, “there’s always a stimulus for the emotion – something that prompts how we feel.” But the stimulus alone does not cause an emotion.

You remember how we’ve talked about the amygdala – the brain’s threat detector. How it often mistakes a stimulus as a threat, which triggers the brain and body’s automatic fight or flight response – anger or fear. And remember we said that teens have a hard time calming this response because they can’t always engage their prefrontal cortex – the thinking part of their brain.

But that’s not the case for adults. We have a fully formed prefrontal cortex. And if our brain makes a mistake and perceives a threat where there’s not one, we have the ability to utilize our prefrontal cortex and think and analyze the situation, realize is not a real threat and make a rational decision about our emotions and action. We can learn to control that accidental fight or flight response.

It’s easier if our amygdala’s not triggered. When there’s just a stimulus – something happens – a situation - we have even more space and time between that stimulus and our response – we have an even better ability to think.

And it is the thought that counts. How you think about the stimulus - what has just happened – that’s what determines your emotions and your behavior. Thoughts, emotions, behavior.

For example, your teenager saying “f-off” – that doesn’t by itself cause anger in you. That stimulus – what they said, maybe their tone of voice, their facial expression, a gesture – all alone, that doesn’t make you feel anything.

If a teenager saying “f-off” to a parent causes anger (period – no question) then every parent of every teenager everywhere who ever a teenager had tell them to “f-off” would have gotten angry. And I can guarantee you that there are parents who wouldn’t get angry. I’ve heard tell (I think that’s a Southern expression).

So, emotions aren’t associated with the stimulus. Different people are going to interpret a stimulus from their own personal point of view. And based on that interpretation, a person will then feel an emotion.

Maybe if your teenager was intoxicated when they did this, you’d feel more disappointment or pity than anger.

We feel emotions based on the situation at hand and how we interpret it – how we think about it. And our interpretations (the way we think about things) are the culmination of lots of different factors: our personal experience, previous events, how we were raised, what we know and don’t know, who we’re with at the time, if we’re tired or hungry or already upset about something.

Our emotions don’t happen to us – we are responsible for them ourselves.

I know…let that sink in a minute.

All those times you’ve said, “you make me so frustrated” or “if would just do what I say I wouldn’t get so angry” or “how do you expect me not to be upset about this?” – yep, all those times we blame someone else, or the situation, the   way someone said something or the thing they didn’t do – all those times, we were actually responsible for our own emotional reaction.

Did that stimuli – that thing someone said or did or the situation, trigger an emotion in you? Sure, it did. Did it feel like they did it TO you? I’m sure. But, that’s just not how it works. You actually have a choice.

There are two different ways we can choose to regulate our emotions: either before we actually experience it or after we begin experiencing it.

For example, you can choose to interpret the situation differently before you even experience an emotion – it’s called reappraisal.

For example, let’s say you notice your teenager forgot to wish you a happy birthday before they left for school this morning, which for many of us would make us feel  disappointed or sad. But you choose to find a reason for their forgetfulness, like they’ve got a lot going on right now, and they’re just a kid…so you don’t feel sad or disappointed.

But once you’ve started experiencing an emotion that you don’t want to display, you can suppress the behavior – the outward emotional experience. For example, you can bite your tongue and look somewhat calm even when you’re extremely angry at your teenager.

Now, which do you think is actually better for you – reappraisal or suppression? That’s right – reappraising is associated with less anxiety and depression and better overall wellbeing while suppression is just the opposite.

And I’ll bet you can guess whether men or women use suppression more? Yes, that would be men. However, men and women both use reappraisal equally as much.

And luckily, over time, we learn to use our reappraisal skills more and more, beginning in our 20s when our prefrontal cortex is finally coming together, and we use suppression less and less as we get older. So, we learn as we grow like everything else.

Now that you understand how your teen’s brain makes it so very difficult for them to regulate their own emotions and behavior, that should allow you to be more empathetic and therefore look at their behavior in a different light, reappraise difficult situations with your teen. “They’re doing the best they can right now, I can choose to see this as a simple temper tantrum and not get angry with them” yes?

That’s why understanding the “why” behind their thoughts, feelings and actions is so dang important. That understanding will hopefully allow you to look at that “f-you” a bit differently, not take things so personally, choose to see their smart-ass comment as a product of their brain – as I call it, a little emotional vomit - that will not enrage you.

Something that makes reappraisal even more challenging is when your thoughts about the situation are really way off base.

I’ve talked about this in episodes 8, 30 and 127. You must be willing to objectively examine your own thoughts and feelings, and try to figure out why you think or feel a certain way about something.

Are you seeing things clearly? Or is something from your past cropping up to influence you? Maybe your view of certain things is just not factual. Maybe you’re taking some mental shortcuts, or you have certain built-in biases, you’re jumping to conclusions or making incorrect assumptions. Be willing to admit you may not be right in your thinking all the time. This is one of the most important things you can do to help you regulate your emotions.

You also be mindful of your thoughts and emotions; in other words you have to separate yourself from them, understanding that thoughts and emotions are just thoughts and just emotions – they’re not really part of you, they’re just separate elements that simply take place in our brain. It doesn’t mean the thoughts are factual and therefore, it doesn’t mean the emotions you’re feelings are appropriate in that moment (although valid to feel).

Journaling about your emotions are one of the best ways to get a handle on all this. It’s scientifically proven to improve emotional awareness and regulation. Get a notebook or use an app or talk into your phone or computer. It doesn’t matter how you do it, but do it regularly.

And learn about mindfulness meditation. Start small and do it a minute or two minutes a day and try to build up another minute a week. Study mindfulness, listen to guided mediations, read about the science behind it – it can change you mind, body and spirit.

I’ll give you several fabulous resources in the show notes. Do this for yourself. Do this for your family, for your kids. You deserve to feel centered and grounded and capable and in control. If you’re having a hard time, what are you doing to change it? Are you trying to change, or would you rather just be miserable? Because I do know some folks that would rather just complain and vent and never make a move to improve themselves. Don’t do that. You’ll wake up one day and realize how much joy and peace you allowed to just pass you by.

Okay, that’s it for Speaking of Teens today, I hope I made you think about your thinking a little bit and I hope you’ll consider taking that first step towards change. You can actually download my free parenting guide, Emotional Awareness Strategies today and get started. You’ll find the link in the episode description right where you’re listening. And just click the link for the Show Notes to find the rest of the resources.

Thank you so very much for being here today, I hope you’ll consider joining us in the Facebook Group where you can ask questions and discuss your challenges with other parents in the same boat with you, parenting teens and tweens. And if you need more help, you can always join our Parent Camp community where you get weekly time with me and other experts, The Field Guide to Teens and more. The links for both are at the bottom of the episode description where you’re listening.

Deep breaths…and until next time, remember, a little change goes a long way.