Help your teen combat depression by volunteering together. Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
One of the simplest things you can do to help your teen combat mild depression is to help them be more selfless. These days the commonly held belief is that we all need to work on ourselves; we need to take time out for ourselves; we need to focus on our own internal growth. If we would spend extra effort improving then we’d find happiness. Since happiness is the opposite of depressed, everything would get better, right?
If this is such sage advice, why hasn’t it worked yet? Why are people feeling lonely, purposeless, aimless, and easily overwhelmed?
The answer can be found by looking down and looking up. If you look at ants you will notice they are almost always working in teams. They are following one another in a line, and they live in a colony. Ants even carry their dead back to the nest. If you look all the way up the the heavens, you see that even God himself does not work alone. He has Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Nothing about the way the world works indicates that we are meant to fix ourselves. Part of the reason I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE working with teens is that they are still living in a family. While the family may come broken, piecemeal or otherwise, there are always people around the teens. The healing in my clients has come from adjustments made to their relationships far more often than adjustments to their inner selves. Even when they adjust their inner selves, they don’t seem to feel content until their relationships begin to change.
I see a great number of girls who come because they are struggling with body image. They are trying to reach perfection on the outside. A perfect body is a lonely, isolated pursuit. Even if these girls achieve their desired appearance, they are unhappy and unfulfilled. Again, we were created to be in relationship with others.
Now that you know the background, you can likely see how this will relate to your child’s depression. Stop encouraging your depressed teenager to work on him or herself. Instead, push your teenager to work on someone else or something else. Take them down to the soup kitchen on Saturday. Have them volunteer at the YMCA to play with kids after school. Take them to the library and have them volunteer in the Friends of the Library bookstore. Sign them up for the Big Brother/Big Sister program (as the big brother or sister).
The antidote to mild depression is to get into relationship and give of yourself (Please note, for more severe clinical depression the most important thing to do is seek professional help. Clinical depression is not resolved with a simple change of attitude or change of scene. It is dangerous and requires intervention).
So, when you see your teenager tonight, tell them you know how to help them perk up. Don’t make this optional. Get them involved in helping someone else and watch them begin to find a sense of joy. If you work alongside them, you’ll get to experience that joy and you’ll strengthen your relationship with your teenager!
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Being mindful mean enjoying the present moment fully. Image courtesy of Serge Bertasius Photography at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Mindfulness is choosing to exist differently. It means you are very intentional about experiencing the present moment. You also have to experience it without self-judgement. It often looks like savoring your present moment and finding things to be grateful for. When you do these things, anxiety becomes secondary.
If I am being mindful right now, I will notice things around me that I was not thinking about even 30 seconds ago. I notice the air is a very comfortable temperature. I notice the leaves on the tree outside are gently shimmering in a slight breeze. I realize I feel comfortable sitting on this couch. I see the reflection of the window behind me on the computer screen. I accept that the reflection on the screen is an annoyance to me, but I am not upset with myself for feeling annoyed (experiencing without self-judgement). In this moment I am fully immersed in my surroundings and in writing this blog-post; I am being mindful.
Let me show you the difference in how this goes for me when I’m not choosing to be mindful. I am sitting at the computer annoyed that I am writing a blog-post on such a beautiful day. I just heard my phone alert me that I received a text message and now I am wrestling with the urge to go check the message. However, I want to hurry up and finish writing this before my daughter wakes up from her nap, so I don’t think I should get up and check the text-message. I feel my anxiety building up. I feel my stomach knotting slightly, and I just realized I’ve forgotten to breathe for the last few seconds because of the anxiety. I am simultaneously wondering what I should make for dinner and what time everyone will be hungry. My to-do list is running through my mind. Ultimately, I am not enjoying my moment.
What’s so sad about this is that I only get to live through this moment once in my entire life. I spend many moments full of anxiety because I am just not present, and I am moving too fast. Over time though, I’ve been working hard at being mindful and I have noticed my overall anxiety level diminishing. I am intentional about finding something to be grateful for, and something beautiful in every situation. It really works to reduce anxiety.
Don’t get me wrong, there are still days where anxious thoughts run amok and are extremely difficult to control. The wonderful thing about mindfulness though is that when that happens, mindfulness teaches us not to judge it. So I’m anxious, so what? I just sit in it and try not to worry about the fact that I’m worrying. You know we’ve all done that before! We admonish ourselves for worrying about something that is out of our control. We try desperately to talk ourselves out of how we feel, and then we end up more frustrated, and still full of anxiety. I’ve pretty much given up on this tactic and prefer to mindfully acknowledge that I’m anxious, and just let myself feel it.
I hope this helps you and/or your teenager next time anxiety overwhelms you.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
The Bible has a lot to say about worry…namely that you shouldn’t. Here I share some words from Jesus that are truly wise when it comes to letting go of what you can’t control, and what you don’t need to try to control.
Adolescents spend a lot of time filling their mind with things that don’t necessarily edify them as a person. Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net.
Without meaning to, we’ve let our kids fill their minds with intellectual junk food. We are taught to be very careful about what we eat so that we can keep our physical bodies healthy. In our culture though, we don’t pay a lot of attention to feeding our minds with things that keep the mind healthy. Other than schoolwork, and maybe the occasional church service or bible study, our teenagers fill their minds with social media, TV and whatever they happen to search on the internet.
Adolescents are at a stage where they are heavily influenced by what they read, hear and see. As parents, it’s our responsibility to strongly encourage our teens in learning things that will truly help them in life. This ranges from what they watch on TV to what they read online. I realize that you can’t control everything entering your teenager’s mind. However, you can prohibit them from watching TV shows with nudity, sexual content, cursing, drugs, etc.- whatever goes against how you’d like them to act. Because these things are so incredibly commonplace, even on “family friendly” shows, we have become numb to them. I was watching sports last night and a Victoria’s Secret commercial came on. At some point in our culture’s not too distant past that would have been seen as pornography (a bunch of girls in bras and panties making seductive faces and poses); it would never have been allowed during a sports game that kids are probably watching with their parents. Now though, that’s commonplace. You have to think really carefully about whether you’re okay with your teenage son or daughter seeing this kind of thing.
Okay, so the logical question that follows my soapbox rant is, ‘What should I have my teen viewing/hearing?’ The answer to that question lies within the bounds of your values. In our house we follow the Christian faith, so our kids spend at least some of their internet time using apps that help them understand their faith better. In my cousin’s house, music, education and culture were highly valued so my aunt had my cousin watching movies that broadened his horizons on different cultures. These weren’t boring documentaries, just movies made in other countries that showed another view of life in the storytelling. This was intentional on the part of my aunt, and it paid off as my cousin became an adult.
There also needs to be a limit to social media. It’s up to you how you handle this. Maybe you limit the amount of time your son or daughter spends on it. Maybe you strongly encourage your son or daughter to follow their role models and interact with those people as often as their friends. That is one of the great things about social media- it’s actually possible to interact with people you could never otherwise reach.
The last thing that’s really important is for you to assess how you spend your spare time. Are you watching trashy TV? Are you always posting pictures for your friends on Facebook at the expense of reading a good book? If you look at yourself and realize you are not feeding your mind healthy intellectual food, make a few changes. This is actually really hard at first, but the example you set pays huge dividends with your kids.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Dad, do you feel irrelevant in her life? Do you feel like she’s only bonded with mom? Do you feel like your daughter doesn’t care what you think, or that she doesn’t want to spend time with you? The research says she needs you. Here’s why:
Hello, I’m Lauren! If you notice your teen struggling, you might be feeling helpless, hopeless, frustrated or concerned as a parent. Try to remember, there is hope. I want to help your adolescent feel better. My hope is for them to enjoy their life again. I want them to feel confident they can handle whatever situations arise.
