Why can’t I ever do anything right!?

Everyone hates me!

My life sucks!

I don’t know why I ever thought I’d make the team.

I’m going to fail biology. I’m never getting into college.

God, I look so lame in this outfit.

Maybe your kid isn’t all negative all the time, but chances are you’ve heard a few of these types of statements come out of their mouth – and for every one you’ve heard, they’ve probably thought 100 others.  Join me today as we talk about what to do about all this negativity.

I’m Ann Coleman and you’re listening to Speaking of Teens, where we talk about the science of parenting teens and tweens. I’ve been right where you are – I had a teenage son who struggled with ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, depression, substance use, school avoidance - and I made a mess of things so I’m here to help you do better than I did.

I talk all the time about how very stressful it is to be an adolescent. The changes going on in their brain cause a lot of emotional chaos and risky behavior. They become singularly focused on fitting in and being accepted by their peers. They’re extremely self-conscious and embarrassed by almost everything.

And when you throw in social media and academic pressures or learning challenges, it can be almost too much for many kids to handle. It’s no surprise that adolescents are more likely than kids and adults to succumb to negative thinking or automatic negative thoughts. And those thoughts play a huge role in their emotions and behavior…so we need to understand what’s going on and how we can help them. So, we’re going to identify the different types of negative thought patterns our kids tend to engage in and then look at how we can guide them in changing those patterns.

Emotions are a lot more complicated than you might think. It can feel like our emotions just happen to us. And if the brain’s amygdala is triggered by a threat or perceived threat in the environment, it is automatic. And as I’ve explained before, an adolescent’s amygdala is hyperreactive and extremely prone to mistaking things as threatening – which means they go into fight or flight mode a lot for no reason (like when we tell them no or say good morning or ask them if they had a good day…) But more often than not, it’s their thoughts – how they think about and interpret a situation that determines the emotions they’ll feel. And, in turn, those emotions determine how they react to a situation. This is true for all of us. Our thoughts, emotions, and behavior all interact  - therapists call this the cognitive triangle. And if you change one of these three things and you change the other two.

For example, you have to give a presentation to 25 co-workers tomorrow and all you can think about is how much you hate public speaking because you’re always scared, you’re going to mess up and sound stupid. So, you get more and more nervous the closer to time to speak. And when you finally get up to give your presentation you are so freakin nervous that you forget half of what you were going to say and mess up (as you assumed you would), which you use as proof of your ineptitude, which makes you dread the next time even more.

But what if, before speaking next time you decided, you were going to think about it in a totally different way – you decided that you know what, who cares how I sound, I’m smarter than most of the people in that room – and they have no clue what I’m talking about anyway so even if I do mess up, they’re not going to know…so I’m going to go in there and sound like a freakin genius! You end up not being nervous and you crush it. So, the next time you give a speech, you know you’ll do great. That’s how much thoughts impact emotions and behavior.

So, what determines how someone thinks about a certain situation? For one thing, a person’s inner data – our personal history, lived experiences, how we’ve been raised, where we’ve been raised, our culture, world view, our age…all of this stuff that’s already rolling around up there in our brain, obviously plays into how we think about or interpret a situation.

Something else that plays into how we think about the situation are the current circumstances surrounding that situation - like whether we’re tired, hungry, rushed, already upset about something, what people are around, are we at work or school or at home. Our inner data combined with the current circumstances impact how we think about the situation, which then makes us feel certain emotions, which causes us to act a certain way. So, obviously, this means different people can think, feel, and react differently to the exact same situation.

But very often our brain can take this information and distort our thinking – and when our thinking is distorted it results in an emotional experience and response that are also distorted, out of proportion or mis-matched to the situation. Think about how often you’ve seen your kid react in a way that seems so irrational under the circumstances – their emotions seem off for the particular to the situation. Adolescents, as we said, are particularly vulnerable to these distorted thoughts - psychotherapists call them “cognitive distortions” – usually very negative thoughts – so some people call it negative self-talk, automatic negative thoughts, thinking traps. This negative self-talk is usually related to a person’s core beliefs about important aspects of themselves, other people, or the world around them. We all do this now and then – but we don’t do it on purpose – in fact, many times we don’t even realize we’re having a negative thought! It’s our brain misinterpreting things going on around us and turning us against ourselves. These thoughts aren’t based on actual facts or real evidence – they distort our perception of reality – they’re irrational or based on some error in reasoning – they’re cognitive distortions.

A good way to think about this is to realize that we literally have this inner voice that talks to us all day every day. It observes, narrates, instructs, corrects, analyzes and directs us constantly but we rarely even notice. Dr. Susan David, the author of a fabulous book called, Emotional Agility talks about this inner voice or “tireless chatterbox” - she compares it to what is called an unreliable narrator in the context of literature. She gives the example of Humbert Humbert, the narrator in Lolita who almost succeeds in making us sympathize with him as a pedophile in love with a 12-year-old girl. Just like this character or narrator of a book, who gives us their own biased account, that we can’t totally trust – we have this inner voice, which also cannot be trusted. Our inner voice is constantly talking to us and giving its own biased opinions about things – it’s often confused and can even engage in what Dr. David calls “willful self-justification or deception”. The problem is, we generally accept what our inner voice says, as fact. These thoughts – provided by this “inner chatterbox” - that are often very negative, distorted, full of judgement and criticism and impacted by our emotions and behaviors – they are not factual.

Aaron Beck was an American psychiatrist trained in psychoanalysis and is considered the father of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. And way back in the early 1960s he was the first to notice (or at least to write about) that patients suffering from depression were all prone to this inaccurate or distorted (and particularly negative) way of thinking about themselves – these patients tended to think about their present, future, and the outside world in such a negative and self-critical way. This is why he invented cognitive behavioral therapy. Beck along with other researchers and proponents of CBT have identified and labeled  a pretty long list of specific cognitive distortions or thinking traps…that’s what I prefer to call them when I’m talking to teens about them. We’ll talk about them in a minute.

It’s important to know that we all engage in a bit of distorted thinking now and then. But recognizing when we or our kids are chronically engaging in this negative self-talk is critical. This happens quite often in adolescents – they get stuck in a negative feedback loop - they have a negative thought, which leads to a negative emotion, which leads to a negative response or behavior, which leads to more negative thoughts and negative emotions and negative behaviors. This chronic negativity can cause a variety of anxiety disorders and depression or make current mental health issues even worse. Getting unstuck is what a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT is all about – changing the way someone thinks about situations so they can change their emotions and their behavior.

The first step, if we want to help our kids minimize their negative thoughts and keep from getting into these negative feedback loops is to help them learn to recognize they’re actually having a negative thought or falling into a thinking trap – because so these negative thoughts take them straight to the emotion and the behavior before they’ve even realized they’ve had a thought at all – they’re so automatic it feels like their emotions and actions just happen to them – they feel powerless.

Secondly, once we realize we’re having a negative thought, we then need to recognize the type of thinking trap it is – this means you’re going to need to learn about these thinking traps so you can spot them in yourself and so you can help your kid notice when they’re doing it. So, I’m going to walk you through the most common thinking traps here – but I’m also going to have all this information in a downloadable pdf for you in the show notes – so don’t worry about taking notes. But do pay attention because I’ll guarantee you, you’ll recognize a few of these from doing it yourself or seeing it in your kids.

Jumping to Conclusions – this is pretty self-explanatory – it’s when we jump to a negative conclusion without any real facts or evidence to back it up. We jump to  conclusions in a couple of specific ways – either by fortune telling or mind reading. Fortune telling is when we jump to the conclusion that something in the future is going to turn out bad. And of course, what happens when we predict something bad is going to happen – that’s right, we usually ensure that it does – it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just like the example I gave earlier about being worried about sounding stupid when giving a presentation – you then get all nervous, which causes you to mess up which confirms your fears – which pretty much assures it will happen again in the future.

The other way we jump to conclusions is by mind reading – assuming we know what the other person is thinking…which is always something bad about us. This is really prevalent in teens because what is a teen most focused on anyway? Being accepted and fitting in – it’s all younger adolescents think about. So, if a kid’s walking down the hall and their friend doesn’t speak to them, they might automatically think they’re mad at them for some reason, when maybe they just didn’t see them, or they’re worried about something and not thinking about anything else.

Catastrophizing is another common thinking trap – and it means just what you’d think it does. This is when we either expect the worst thing to happen – or we believe something is worse than it actually is. It could be a current situation or even something happening in the future. People who catastrophize are generally worriers – and they magnify things in their head – they make mountains out of a mole hills – always blowing things way out of proportion. For example, your 6^th grader trips and falls in front of their home room class the first day of school and thinks, “this is going to be the worst school year ever.” Or they don’t know the first question on the test, and they start thinking, “What if I don’t know any of the answers, I’m going to fail this test!” or they spill their drink and it’s “I can’t do anything right, ever!” Everything’s a catastrophe.

Overgeneralization is one I saw quite often in my son. It’s when we take one negative thing and turn it into a universal truth. For example, you tell your kid they can’t go to a party, and they think (and probably say) “I never get to go anywhere – you never let me do anything”. Or, they can’t find anyone to hang out with and it’s “no one every wants to do anything with me – everyone hates me” or they get in trouble at school and it’s “I can’t make a move at school without getting in trouble”. Overgeneralization is pretty easy to spot.

Then there’s labeling or mislabeling as some call it. We can do this with other people as well but when we’re talking about negative self-talk, this is when we take one negative quality about ourselves and turn it onto our label – our identity. It’s an extreme version of overgeneralization - we define ourselves with this descriptor of our one big fault. For example with a teenager, if they have ADHD or another learning difference they may define themselves as “slow” or “stupid” or if they feel they’re overweight, maybe they tell themselves they’re the “chubby friend” or if they don’t play sports, maybe they’re “unathletic”. This is a really easy thinking trap for a kid to fall into.

Some of us also fall into the “shoulds” or “should nots” thinking trap –This is when we think, “I should be able to do this” or I shouldn’t have to do that”. For example, with your teen, maybe they sleep with a nightlight, and they tell themselves, “I should be able to sleep in the dark at my age – what’s wrong with me?” or “I should not need to study for 2 hours to understand this algebra”. They’re probably doing a lot of comparing themselves to other kids.

Personalization is something else that teens tend to dabble in quite a bit – maybe it’s because teens are very egocentric. This means they tend to think things are about them even when they’re not – they blame themselves for whatever negativity is going on in their vicinity. Grandmother gets COVID – it’s because they forgot to mask up the last time they went to visit or little sister’s been sad lately, it’s because they haven’t been spending enough time with them or they’re class didn’t win the grand prize, it’s because they didn’t get out and sell to all the neighbors. So, they take something bad that happened and make it somehow their fault.

Some teens are really bad about using a mental filter – filtering through all the good stuff and focusing only on the negative. For example, maybe this week they’ve made a 98 on one test, a 95 on another, a 100 on a third but a 73 on the 4^th – all they can think about is how mortified and horrified they are over that 73. They can’t think about anything else – they’re so focused on it they totally forget the other great grades they made that week and nothing else matters.

Similar to using a mental filter is minimizing or discounting the positive. This is when we tend to minimize or “discount” anything that happens that doesn’t confirm the negative things we think about ourselves. So, if your teenager has decided they’re ugly, if someone gives them a compliment, they might think something like, “they’re just being polite” or “they have to say that, they’re my friend”. If they think they’re bad a algebra and they make an 89 on a test, they may think, “that was just a fluke”.

The last one on the list is another distortion my son was an expert in (and I’ll have to say this used to be one of my biggies too) – it’s black or white or all or nothing thinking. This is when we see things as either good or bad, great or horrible, perfect or crap. For example, you planned a day with friends for your daughter’s birthday –brunch and then a day at the spa. But after a wonderful brunch they get to the spa and have a 30-minute wait because the times were confused. At that point your daughter completely falls apart because “her birthday is completely ruined” – and it does indeed ruin the rest of her day.

Or let’s say your son scores 2 touchdowns in the first quarter then gets pummeled every time he gets the ball in the second quarter and thinks, “I just need to pack it up and go home – I’ve totally lost the game for us”. That’s all or nothing thinking.

I’m going to give you more examples of these thinking traps in the download to help you spot them. And because modeling is one of the very best ways you can help your kids, you need to learn how to notice your own negative thinking and the traps your falling into. Once you can notice them and categorize them, the next step is to challenge them. You’ll do this for yourself, in front of your kids (which helps them learn how to do it) and you can also nudge them along to help them when you see it.

So, how do we challenge our way out of the Thinking Trap?  How do we challenge our biased inner chatterbox? How do we prove to ourselves it’s full of crap? There are several different methods you can use to challenge these thoughts depending on the type of thinking trap – and some even work for all of them. I’ll briefly go over them here but again, all of this will be in your download in the show notes so you and your teen can refer to it when you need to.

The first way to challenge these negative thoughts, we’ll call fact or fake. This method is just checking the actual evidence for the negative thought. Is there evidence that you’re “stupid” or that “everyone’s going to laugh” or that your “life is ruined”? Where’s the evidence to back this up? Pretend you have to prove to a court of law, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this thing is true, what evidence would you offer? Would a jury buy it? Most of the time when you do this, you’ll come up way short, which should help you see your chatterbox is full of crap.

Our inner voice can be extremely negative and downright mean. When our inner chatterbox is saying negative things about us, we can ask ourselves if we would say this same exact thing to our best friend. Or we can flip that and ask ourselves if our best friend (or anyone who cares about us), would say this to us. If we wouldn’t speak this way to our best friend and we know our best friend wouldn’t speak to us this way, why would we choose to speak to ourselves this way (or allow our chatterbox to speak to us this way)?

Our inner chatterbox often assumes the most negative thing is happening, even when there may be a very neutral or reasonable explanation for what’s going on. We should always ask ourselves if there could be other explanations for what has happened. For example, if we see a friend from a distance in the grocery store but they didn’t speak, we should consider the fact that they may not have seen us clearly, or perhaps they were distracted, or maybe they didn’t even recognize us in that moment.

Another method, we’ll call worst thing/best thing is a tried-and-true way of challenging your negative thoughts – especially when catastrophizing. You can ask yourself a series of questions starting with, “what’s the worst thing that could possibly happen?” then, “what’s the best thing that could possibly happen?” and “what is, in reality, the mostly likely thing that will happen?”, “even if the worst happens, will it matter a week from now?” A month from now? “If the worst happens, how could I deal with it and who could I ask for help?” Walking through everything in this way – even having a plan if the worst does happen, can actually give you peace.

Another way to challenge a negative thought is to ask yourself, “does this thought help me in some way”? Will it help me achieve a goal, somehow? Will it make me feel better about myself? Will it make me happier, healthier or make me try harder to achieve something? Or does this thought just hold me back by keeping me angry, sad, hopeless, or stuck? Instead of having this thought, is there something I can do to help resolve the situation or solve the problem and move me forward?

Another method of challenging a negative thought is to check our control. Our chatterbox often makes us feel like something is all our fault when there are plenty of other reasons this thing could have happened. We can challenge these thoughts by examining the facts and circumstances surrounding them. How much control did we really have over what happened? Were there other factors involved?  Or maybe we share the blame with other people and other factors. Either way, it can’t be all our fault, right? We are not the center of the universe!

Okay, so we’ve noticed we’re having a negative thought, we’ve identified the thinking trap, we have some methods to challenge the negative thought, and now, we’re going to learn how to reframe that thought from a different perspective. This will help you model this out loud with your kids when you’re dealing with your own negative thoughts, and it will help you guide them through their own negative thoughts.

I see reframing as just an extension of challenging the negative thought. It’s a way of looking at the situation from a different point of view – through a more realistic lens or a more trustworthy narrator or chatterbox. So, it’s not necessarily about doing a 180 and being all “positive and rosy” about something – but it is about being more factual.

Now, it can take some really hard work for those of us who are stuck in negative thought patterns to stop and flip things around. And learning to think about situations and ourselves, in a different way is key. This is what therapists can help us do if we can’t it ourselves. So, if your teen is stuck and you can’t seem to help them out, it may be time to get a professional involved.

So, let’s go through an entire scenario or two and see how all of this works together, down through reframing so you can see it in action. Let’s say your son thinks “it’s my fault we lost the game – if I’d just made that last goal”. Of course, you’d have to figure out he was thinking this, which you may be able to tell from a vague emotional outburst after the game and asking curiosity questions, or he may be so angry and disappointed in himself, he actually says it out loud.

Of course, if he’s emotional, you’re going to first do some emotion coaching (empathizing, listening, acknowledging, and reflecting, helping with his emotion words, letting him calm down and then later you can talk or correct, and help him problem solve, which in this case needs to involve helping him realize the thinking trap he’s fallen into and helping him learn to challenge the thought and reframe it. You can refer back to episode 6 for more on emotion coaching.

So, if his thought “it’s my fault we lost the game – if I’d just made that last goal” – you could help him see that he’s doing some personalization here – falling into the trap of thinking everything bad that happens is his fault. Then help him challenge this thought. The first thing I would do is have him check his control – have him examine the facts and circumstances that led to the team losing the game. He says it’s all his fault they lost because he missed that last goal, but is that really what happened? How much control did he actually have over them winning or losing that game? Is there no one else to share that blame with? There’s a whole team on the field and a coach – what did they all do? And what about the other team? Maybe they just had some really good players, and they were all on their toes tonight. Help him see  he’s not the center of the universe – he can’t be the reason all good things happen, and he can’t be the reason all bad things happen either.

You could also ask him if having that thought helps him in any way – will it help him be a better player to feel shame for missing one goal? Or does it make him feel like a loser? You might also do the best friend test with him – ask if he’d say that to his best friend or if he thinks his best friend would say that to him. And as you move on into reframing, ask him what he would say to his best friend who just missed a goal and feels like it’s all his fault they lost the game – get him to actually say the words – would he say, “look, dude, it’s not your fault – we’re a team and we lost the game together as a team”?

Ask him if he can think of a different way of looking at his missing the goal and them losing the game. Is there a less negative way of looking at it? What about, “I didn’t do as well as I know I can but that’s okay. I know what I can do next time to be better.” Or, “I don’t feel like I did my best tonight but everyone has an off night now and then – I’ll practice extra hard this week and be ready for the next game” Or, it’s not a huge deal we lost tonight, that other team was amazing and we’re still 6 and 1.” Or how about, “I made 4 other goals tonight and only two other teammates made 1 goal each, so I contributed a lot.” If you can point out any of these different ways of looking at it – great. But also learn to “read the room” – you know how far you can take it in the moment – you have to be sure he’s calm enough to talk – and you wait if he’s not.

Learning how to challenge and reframe will take some work and they may get really frustrated with you is you’re constantly pointing out their negative self-talk and trying to get them to reframe, so you may have to carefully pick and choose when to bring it up and of course, if they won’t let you help or they’re not getting any better with it, it may be time to call a therapist.

Let’s quickly look at one more scenario and then I’ll give you several examples in the download. Let’s say it’s your daughter’s first week at a new school and she was invited with the rest of the class to a birthday party. When you ask if she’s excited about going, she says,” what’s the point, I don’t know anyone yet and I’m sure they’ll just all ignore me.”

First, of course, remember to empathize, listen, and acknowledge her feelings - use emotion coaching. Then you can help her see the thinking trap she’s fallen into – which in this case is jumping to conclusions – specifically, predicting the future.

Next help her challenge this negative thought – use the best friend test, Worst thing/Best thing, does this thought help me? And finally help her reframe it – ask her if she can see a less negative way of looking at this party. Maybe, “meeting new people can be scary but I’m a really likable person, and this might be a great opportunity to meet people I don’t have classes with and make some new friends.”

Just remember if your teenager is emotional about a situation to wait until they’ve calmed down and you can help them problem solve by examining their negative thought. Challenging and reframing takes patience and an open mind, and if they’re not in the mood, it could backfire. It’s very kid and situation specific. You just don’t want come off as trying to force them to be positive about something when they’re just not feeling it. It might take baby steps – or a professional who’s not mom.

Now, there are other ways of dealing with negative thoughts – ways that don’t even involve challenging and reframing. One that may be especially helpful for younger adolescents - the 10 to 13-year-old age group – is to have them give their inner negative-talking chatterbox a name. Even have them draw a picture of it if they will. Tell them to imagine what color it would be, what this thing would look like if they could see it.

This helps them to think about their inner chatterbox as a separate entity – not really them – to detach from the thoughts and see them more subjectively and “talk back” to this separate entity that’s being so negative and making them fall into these thinking traps. It helps see thoughts as just what they are – thoughts and not facts or evidence. This helps them take their power back from their chatterbox – from these negative thoughts. They can literally call the chatterbox out by name (in their head or even out loud) and say – stop it! Model this for them – when your inner “Nasty Nellie” starts telling you that you shouldn’t have cut your hair, you can tell her to shut up out loud in front of your kids and tell them what you’re doing – make this a family habit.

This detaching technique is similar to using mindfulness, which is another great way to deal with negative thoughts  - but I’ll do another episode on mindfulness at some point in the future – it’s actually enough for an entire podcast all by itself. For now, you can explore the Emotional Awareness Strategies guide for resources (I’ll link to it in the show notes) I strongly urge you to explore mindfulness meditation and get your kids involved – it can be truly life changing.

Another way to deal with negative thoughts and emotions is through journaling. And we talked about this before too in episode 8, which was all about how your emotions impact your kids’ mental health. Journaling is scientifically proven to help us sort out our thoughts and emotions – we become more aware of them, can label our emotions better, which helps us learn to regulate or manage them (we can’t regulate what we’re not aware of and can’t label or describe in detail, right?)

Now, I can tell you that if I had mentioned journaling to my son, he would have laughed in my face. With his ADHD and dyslexia and dysgraphia, writing in a journal was never going to happen. But, if your kid doesn’t mind writing or even typing or talking into a voice app, then journaling is such an excellent way for them to understand themselves better – to reach a higher level of self-awareness and emotional awareness. All they have to do is start. Tell them they can hide it or get them a lockbox to put it in – let it be their safe space to articulate everything they’re feeling without judgement. Explain the whole concept is to simply write whatever comes into their mind – it doesn’t need to be spelled correctly, they don’t have to worry about grammar or sounding good or writing clearly enough for anyone else to read, this is just for them.

Tell them that a great time to write is when they’ve experienced a strong emotion, had a bad day, gotten really angry, sad, or nervous about something, had an argument with someone – tell them just start writing everything they can about the situation – what did they think and feel and how did they react?

Tell them to try and pinpoint any negative thinking that might have been involved – they can choose to look at the thinking traps and try to decide which one they fell into, they could even write about how they could challenge the thoughts and reframe them – but they don’t have to – it can just be writing and figuring things out for themselves as they go along. Pretty soon they’ll start to see patterns emerge. Certain situations that trigger anger or nervousness, they’ll see that they have the same particular thoughts over and over again or the same behavior attached to a particular thought or emotion. And they’ll begin to notice these things in the moment as they’re thinking and feeling and acting. So, if you can get this ball rolling, good for you and for them!

Another method of combatting negative thoughts – perhaps more indirectly – is practicing gratitude. Studies have shown that keeping a “gratitude journal” or just writing notes and letters of gratitude to others, makes people happier and more positive in general. Gratitude has even been shown to increase physical wellness, to decrease depression, to increase resilience and help develop other virtuous character traits like wisdom, humility, and patience. Studies have shown relationships between gratitude and positive well-being in everyone from early adolescents to older adults. And research also shows that the more grateful a person is, the greater positive emotions and the fewer negative emotions they experience.

It appears however that these gratitude interventions (like keeping a gratitude journal) likely make a bigger difference adolescents who are low in positivity – which makes total sense really. And other studies suggest that such an intervention probably loses its efficacy if repeated too frequently – after all you can only think of a certain number of things to be grateful for – it’s not infinite. So, an intervention like writing down 5 things a day that you’re grateful for will, after a couple of weeks, stop being effective. So, perhaps writing down one thing a day or writing one day a week about what you’ve been grateful for in the week, will work better in the long run. I’ll link to a white paper by the Greater Good Science Center of UC Berkeley called The Science of Gratitude – it’s a really interesting read. There’s also a fascinating study on gratitude interventions for children and adolescents I’ll link to as well

Another powerful intervention for adolescents with negative self-views or self-judgment is learning self-compassion. This is not the same as trying to enhance their self-esteem (which has actually been shown not to be such a necessarily desired trait in adolescents) but self-compassion promotes resilience in teens, tweens and young adults. Kristin Neff, an associate professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas, at Austin is an expert and pioneer in the field of self-compassion research. I’ll link to her and where you can find her books, papers, and programs in the show notes.

Anyway, self-compassion, as Dr. Neff describes it, is “compassion turned inward”. She says it is the “ability to hold one’s feelings of suffering with a sense of warmth, connection, and concern.” She’s proposed three major components of self-compassion:  The first is self-kindness, meaning “to treat oneself with care and understanding rather than harsh self-judgment” Then second is “recognizing that imperfection is a shared aspect of the human experience rather than feeling isolated by one’s failures.” And third is mindfulness, which involves holding one’s present-moment experience in balanced perspective rather than exaggerating the dramatic storyline of one’s suffering.”

She says these three components (self-kindness, recognizing we’re all imperfect and mindfulness) “combine and mutually interact to create a self-compassionate frame of mind”. And it’s this self-compassion that has been scientifically linked to greater happiness and psychological wellbeing, more optimism, decreased anxiety and depression and more.

Dr. Neff and her research partner, Dr. Chris Germer, designed a program called Mindful Self-Compassion or MSC and they teach courses to the public and to educators and mental health professionals. Their program has been adapted for teens by Dr. Karen Bluth of the University of North Carolina and Dominique Sullivan of Canada. I’ll provide all the links in the show notes. Normally they have online courses listed there but currently as of the time of this recording in November of 2022, I don’t see anything listed. However, there are all sorts of other resources and ways to reach out to them so be sure and check that out as well the link to Dr. Bluth’s book on self-compassion for teens.

I know this has been a lot and you don’t have to throw all of this at your teen – I just wanted you to know about all the different ways of approaching and hopefully resolving negative thinking. So, maybe if one thing doesn’t work, another will. Or maybe a combination of things will work best – I would definitely throw mindfulness in there if at all possible.

One of the most important things I want you to get from this is that you need to start calling out your own negative thoughts in front of your kids. You need challenge and reframe them, or journal, or practice mindfulness. You have options for how to approach it and the option of involving your kids in tackling negative self-talk. What a gift you could give them! Help them break their negative self-talk habit before they get stuck. Create new family habits – practice gratitude at the dinner table, learn mindfulness meditation as a family, learn how to practice mindful self-compassion. All of this will lead to a healthier mind, a more positive outlook, and a happier life.

So, when you finish listening today, go over to the show notes at neurogility.com/27 – I’ll have links to all the resources and even a few I didn’t mention…and you can download the bonus guide I’ll have for you there – I don’t even know what I’ll call it yet because I still have to put it all together. As a matter of fact, if it takes me another day to get it together, I’ll let you know right there on the show notes page, and I’ll have a link where you can just send me an email and I’ll email you the pdf or the link to the pdf as soon as it’s ready. This week’s been a little crazy too – my son and his sweet girlfriend came in to visit from Colorado and I didn’t really want to sit at the computer and work while they were in the other room, so I’m a few days behind getting everything done for this episode.

And a final reminder - If you have a child that is particularly focused on negative thoughts to the point where it’s causing them emotional distress and interfering with their daily life – they’re anxious or depressed - then do jump in there to help them but also please consider getting them to a therapist or a teen coach who can work with them to try to get them unstuck.

Speaking of Teens is the official podcast of neurogility.com, an organization I started to educate other moms and adolescents about emotional intelligence.

Go to neurogility.com/herewego to find all our free parenting guides and e-books to help you learn more about your teen and how to parent them in a way that increases their emotional well-being and keeps them safe.

Again, you can go to neurogility.com/27 for this episode’s show notes, free guide and transcript.

Thank you for listening – I hope you got something helpful from it – and if you did, please consider sharing it with a friend or two or on social media. I’d like to reach as many moms as possible.

And I love hearing from you – you can email me at acoleman@neurogility.com – or follow me on Instagram @neurogility and DM me.

Until next Tuesday – hang in there mama!