Hypervigilance is a common symptom after a trumatic event. Credit: freedigitalphotos.net/Graphics Mouse
I’ve been a therapist for a decade now. I’ve worked with teens in private practice for that entire duration. I’ve heard a lot of different stories, many of which involve trauma. I’ve noticed with trauma there is a natural tendency to incorrectly predict its effects on teens. Some parents overreact, and others are so overwhelmed that they downplay the significance of the traumatic event. For parents it’s a very helpless feeling when something horrific has happened to your child.
In 1926 a sweet baby girl was born to a young mother who was divorced with very few financial prospects in life. While this girl’s early life was pleasant and full of love from her mother, eventually things began to unravel. Her mother did not have enough money to care for her and she was placed into foster care. Finally her mother was able to get her back, but when the young girl was 7.5 years old, her mother had a psychotic break from reality. Her mother ended up diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. What was a young girl with no father and now no mother to do in the 1930’s? She was moved through foster cares and orphanages where she either felt alone and abandoned, or was sexually abused. Eventually she married the first guy she could find simply to put some stability in her life. Do you know whose story this is? It’s Marilyn Monroe. We all know the tragic ending her life took after three divorces and drug abuse struggles. By the age of 36 she had overdosed, and it was called a likely suicide.
This isn’t to say that if you’re child has experienced a trauma they will end up like Marilyn Monroe. What I am hoping to point out from her really sad story is that recurring trauma absolutely wears a person down. We all have some amount of resilience build into us, but if we come to the point that we expect to be battered by life again and again, we will look to whatever escape we can find. The tragic irony of this is that many of those escapes ultimately cause further trauma. An example of this is using drugs to escape the deep anxiety, sadness, shame and hopelessness caused by trauma. Over time though, being around people who use drugs means being exposed to people who resort to all means to obtain more drugs. Now there is increased risk for more traumatic exposure.
To heal from deep trauma there are many components. I will talk about only a couple of them here. One is having something reliable and unchanging. People die and places change, but God never changes. A deep, meaningful faith is really helpful to healing from trauma. Knowing there is still hope, still love, and still something to lean on is important. But, this is complicated because a lot of trauma survivors feels abandoned by God as they question how He could have let something awful occur in the first place. While there are good answers to these very important questions, it’s outside a therapist’s purview to answer them. I strongly encourage you to have this discussion with your own religious leaders as you try to seek answers.
Another extremely important element to healing from trauma is addressing and uncovering shame. Shame says, “I am bad,” for whatever happened. This is different from regret or some other similar emotion which says, “That event was bad.” Many trauma survivors feel the event was somehow their own fault. It takes some deep work to change this belief.
Overcoming trauma is extremely important. During a lifetime each and every one of us will experience deeply disturbing and upsetting circumstances. Some of us will be unlucky enough to witness death, have our own lives threatened, or see our own children hurt in unimaginable ways. Resilience is built into our psyches and our hearts, but it can be really hard to find it sometimes. If you worry about your teen’s reaction to trauma, please seek a professional opinion. Sometimes just one event can continue to traumatize its victim over and over again. At Teen Therapy OC we desperately want your adolescent to have a joy-filled life, not one full of fear, anxiety, shame and hypervigilance.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Sometimes our efforts to help our teenagers accidentally make their addiction worse.
People get confused by the term codependent, or coaddict. I thought today I’d address codependence/coaddiction to see if it clears it up. If someone you love is engaging in an unhealthy behavior such as drug abuse, gambling, excessive shopping, etc., it is very noble to want to help. As relational beings we are called to help others when they are struggling. Coaddiction occurs when the attempts to help are misguided.
Let’s say Jane has a gambling addiction. Her brother, John, decides he wants to help her stop. At first he has a good conversation with her, and she agrees she should quit. However, Jane is unable to quit. John then threatens to stop talking to her if she does not stop gambling. She quits for a week and then goes back to it. He doesn’t stop talking to her. John consistently sets boundaries he does not keep. Jane comes to John and says she cannot afford her rent this month. He gives her $500 to cover the rent with the stipulation that she does not gamble that month. She gambles anyhow, and the next month tells him she again can’t cover her rent. She apologizes for gambling and promises never to do it again. John believes she is sincere. John continues to give Jane money for her necessities like food, clothing and shelter. Meanwhile, John’s wife is becoming very upset and wants to stop giving Jane money. John tells his wife, “If I don’t give her money then she can’t buy food for her kids.” John’s whole existence and self-worth becomes tied up in keeping his sister above water. John rationalizes this by telling himself that he is not giving her money with which to gamble.
John has become codependent. His self-value has become entrenched with helping Jane. If he is helping her then he can assume he is a good, loving brother. He is allowing his own marriage and financial security to suffer in order to take care of someone else who is not truly trying to get better. On top of that, John is really hindering his sister’s ability to beat her gambling addiction, albeit unintentionally. He pays her rent and buys her food, which frees up money for her to use at the casino. He fears she would use it at the casino and then not be able to pay her rent. That usually is not what happens, but if it does, she will finally feel the consequences of her addiction, and seek to get better.
If your teen is using drugs, or has some other unhealthy behavior, think carefully about the ways you are unintentionally enabling the behavior. If you recognize your enabling behavior, but are afraid to stop, then you have developed codependence. A great website to check out is coda.org (Codependents Anonymous). Therapy is also a good tool for overcoming codependence/coaddiction.
It is scary to stop “helping” your own child work through an addiction or struggle. However, we’ve all heard the old adage about how someone might not get better until they reach rock bottom. After doing therapy with addicts for a number of years, I believe there is truth to that statement. If you are trying to help your teenager avoid harsh consequences for their behaviors, you are prolonging when they hit rock bottom. Let your child experience natural consequences for their choices; the sooner you do so, the sooner they can realize they need help.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Vaping is becoming an extremely common means of substance use among tweens and teens. Many of my later teen clients are completely addicted to nicotine. It all started innocently enough, and usually in middle school. Please watch the following video on a few basics about vaping you need to know so that you can have a good conversation with your tween or teen. It is really important you weigh in on this topic because otherwise they only learn misinformation from their peers.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Getting your teen to do housework is possible! Image courtesy of artur84 via freedigitalphotos.net.
You work full-time and your teenager is home after school. It feels very frustrating that they stay home a good part of the day, or are out having fun with friends while the house needs a lot of attention. Maybe you don’t even care about the chores around the house if they’d just keep their room clean, bathroom picked up, and put away their dishes. How do you deal with this?
1. Let them know how you feel. This is not to be said in anger or with hostility. That is the quickest way to ensure a teenager isn’t listening to you. On the other hand, if you gently tell them it’s frustrating for you, or that you feel taken advantage of, or that you are overwhelmed and stressed, they will often listen. This isn’t true for every teen but if you don’t get a kind reaction when you’re truly being kind, there are likely other problems in your relationship that need addressing.
2. Make sure you ask. As obvious as this sounds, a lot of parents lament they don’t get any help around the house, but they don’t specifically ask for what they need. You might have hoped your adolescent would take the initiative, look around, and just see what needs doing. This is great in theory but pretty much will never happen. Try writing them a reasonable list each day before you leave to work, asking things be done before you get home (Reasonable for a teen who has no history of cleaning is probably a 30 minute task).
3. Attach monetary value to certain tasks. This works for the highly social child. If you have a teenager who loves to be out with friends, this will be effective. Here’s the caveat, if you plan to make them earn their going out money by doing tasks around the house, you can’t give money otherwise. It’s fine to pay for their sports or things they need for school. However, if they want to meet a friend for lunch, absolutely no money! You can gently remind them they will get a few dollars when the house has been vacuumed, which is a great way they can pay for their own lunch. Something else you’ll notice happening, when they have to earn their spending money they are more careful with it.
4. Require it. There are certain minimum tasks that each household should require of every member. If you want to require everyone to keep their bathrooms and bedrooms picked up, make sure yours is too. There’s nothing an adolescent resents more than a hypocritical parent. It’s fine to attach privileges to the completion of these minimum tasks. One family I worked with had success when they told their teen daughter the bathroom and bedroom had to be picked up each night by 8pm. If it was, she got the privilege of using her cell phone the next day. If not, they would keep it and she could try again to have everything picked up by the following evening. They were very careful not to bend on this, and she fell into line within a week. If she finished at 8:05pm, they thanked her for cleaning up, but still did not give the phone the next day. Boundaries around these types of limits must be strict and unemotional.
It is possible to get your teen to help you around the house. It’s all in how you ask, and how consistent you are with whatever rules you set up. Once you are able to get their help, it’s great for your relationship because you’re nagging less often, and they feel a sense of pride.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
If you’re a parent who wishes to connect better with your teen, you’ll have to have elements of friendship in your relationship. The parents who know how to listen well and care about what their kids care about seem to also have authority. The parents I see in therapy who just try and control behavior with discipline have either a rebellious teen, or one who doesn’t share much with them. If you really want to influence how your teen thinks, their moral compass, and their ability to make decisions later in life without you, you have to be in their hearts. They need to learn to think and feel through hard things, and that’s impossible if you use your emotional muscle to prevent them from making mistakes.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
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.
