by Lauren Goodman | Jun 16, 2017 | Christian Counseling
Surrounding yourself with supportive community reduces anxiety.
Image courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Anxiety is a huge challenge for many people. It is an obstacle that keeps them from moving forward with goals, keeps them from being close in relationships, and imprisons them. The intense fear that something bad is going to happen feels overwhelming and upsetting. Often, the things we worry about don’t even make sense to anyone else. Someone might worry about something going wrong on a vacation to the point where the vacation isn’t even relaxing. Another person might worry about being a failure in life, when she has earned A’s and B’s in school all along. Some worry that nobody will like them, even when they have a lot of friends. Anxiety is typically illogical, but still can be hard to control.
One of the best ways to help with anxiety is to rely on your faith. Most major religions teach not to worry. Some even call it a sin to worry. They all want you to focus on something bigger than that thing you are concerned with right now.
Even if you do not have a faith in a god, there are really good lessons to learn from religion on how to deal with anxiety. While you might not know to whom you are praying, pouring out your fears and believing something is out there that cares about you still is immensely helpful. Getting yourself into a community of people who care about you and the struggles you are facing will strengthen you. You might try a support group for starters. I know there are beliefs and prejudices some of you have towards support groups; there is a stigma about people who go to support groups. Those beliefs are generally wrong. You will find some of the nicest, most normal people in these groups. Going to a support group also gives you the opportunity to encourage someone else, which reduces anxiety as well.
Coming from a Christian perspective, God wants you to remember that he will shoulder your burdens. Jesus already took on all the punishment you deserved for every wrongdoing you committed, so there is nothing to be afraid of. You aren’t alone when you go through painful things because God doesn’t abandon you. Remembering that helps you hold on to a sense of peace and joy even in your darkest of days. Christianity also teaches us to go through things in community. If we are suffering, we are to share the weight of our sorrows and fears with others. When you have people supporting you and praying for you it makes a world of difference. Things are a lot less scary when others walk through them with you.
Psalm 28:8-9 says: “God is all strength for his people, ample refuge for his chosen leader; Save your people and bless your heritage. Care for them; carry them like a good shepherd,” (The Message Translation).
Facing your worries and then moving beyond them is definitely difficult. It is made even more difficult because we tend to walk through our anxieties by ourselves. Going through your pain in community, and in prayer, relieves some of the stress anxiety causes. Relying on God to guide you gives you strength and hope.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS
by Lauren Goodman | Mar 20, 2017 | Christian Counseling
Family is what creates a safe place for teens to grow into mature adults.
Credit: freedigitalphotos.net/photostock
Family doesn’t always seem like a top priority to teenagers. They certainly spend more time with their friends. They are more concerned with what friends are up to on social media than what their mom posts (unless mom posts something a teenager’s friends might see). It’s hard to go from having small kids who want nothing more than attention from a parent, to having older kids who want nothing less than attention from a parent.
Actually though, family is still the most important thing in a teenager’s life. I know this is true because I listen to teen’s talk about what is in their hearts for hours each week. For the most part teens want to talk about their family situation. They bring up other topics too, but this is often at the top of their list.
By keeping the family situation as stable as possible, you are creating safety for your teen. Your adolescent son or daughter wants to go out and explore the world. However, knowing there is a safety net makes this process much easier. It’s part of their developmental process. Within the next few years they will internalize the safety you’ve always provided. This enables your son or daughter to branch out as they leave the house. For now though, they really want to feel independent without actually being independent.
The need to feel independent often puts you in a bind as a parent. I usually encourage parents to allow their teens to do as much as the teenager can safely handle. One teen I worked with drank every chance he got. The result was that his parents had to keep him on a short leash because he couldn’t maturely deal with much freedom. Another teenager I worked with was self-motivated with her homework and didn’t go where she wasn’t supposed to go. Her parents didn’t even need to give her a curfew. In both of these cases though, family played a very important role.
With the boy who was drinking too much alcohol, the love and structure of his family is what got him back on track. With the girl who pretty much always made good choices, her family’s constant cheerleading meant everything to her.
Your child’s brothers and sisters will be lifelong relationships; their peers probably will not. This doesn’t mean you need to artificially create closeness between them, but it does mean sometimes you need to not allow friends along on family outings (this includes boyfriends and girlfriends). It’s okay for there to be a few hours a week that are only for your family. It might be met with complaints, but it’s part of that secure base every teen needs in life.
Family is frequently pushed to the back-burner by a teenager. As a parent you can’t allow this to happen. It’s your job to help your child balance family with their social life, academic pressures, athletics, and whatever other obligations your teenager has. Time with family will be their place of rest and refuge if you work to create a place of safety and love.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS, MFT
by Lauren Goodman | Jan 10, 2017 | Christian Counseling
Teens with a faith often have very strong character development.
Credit: graur razvan ionut/freedigitalphotos.net
I counsel adolescents. My clients range in age from 12 to 24. Over the past 8.5 years of doing this, I have noticed some things about this age range:
- They search for an identity.
- They have a hard time realizing anything is more important than the self. This doesn’t mean they are selfish, it just means they struggle to put great effort into causes beyond themselves.
- Peers seem to hold the most sway.
- Roots are put down in their character development that remain for the rest of their lives.
- You can tell A LOT about their ambition and dreams based on who surrounds them. Show me a 15 year old’s friends, and I will make a fairly reliable prediction of their future trajectory.
For the reasons listed above, having your adolescent involved in a faith community is of immense importance. So many of us want to say we’ll be open-minded and let our children choose their own path as adults. That is really nice in theory, but the reality of such a choice doesn’t pan out as well as we might hope. Our adolescents are greatly influenced by who is around them. Let’s address this point by point.
- They search for an identity: An identity given by other teenagers is likely to include things we don’t really hope for our kids. They might get into drugs, partying, sex, or on the opposite end they might think the college they attend is the end-all be-all. They might be like I was and think how fit and thin I looked was everything.
On the other hand, if God is creating your child’s identity, what could be better than that? God loves us, gives us purpose, requires us to think beyond ourselves, and causes us to look at the big picture. Adolescents who have a God-given self-identity seem to look past Friday night.
- They have a hard time realizing anything is more important than the self: When your teenager is consistently in youth group and small groups, they are reminded regularly that they are not the center of the world. Every single week they are asked to come up with ways they can care for others who are less fortunate. Faith communities are rarely self-focused.
- Peers seem to hold the most sway: Do you prefer your teenager’s primary influence be their friends who use drugs and have sex, or do you prefer they be church-type kids? I am not so naive to assume these two are mutually exclusive, but you do find more morally minded teens in faith-based functions than at parties.
- Roots are put down in their character development that remain for the rest of their lives: When teens self-direct their free time, they tend to sneak, lie and push the limits. It’s not because they are trying to be evil, but because they don’t want their parents curtailing their fun. These habits plant seeds that remain long past adolescence. When teenagers are involved in upstanding activities, they are proud to tell you the truth. They are encouraged to be honest and humble. These qualities continue long into adulthood.
- You can tell A LOT about their ambitions and dreams based on who surrounds them: Adolescents drift one direction or another. If their teenage friends are all smoking pot and will attend junior college, your teenager probably aims about that high as well. If all their friends are thinking of how to serve the community, and how to go to university, your teenager is aiming there too. A lot of the high aiming kids are also involved in their faith community.
Even though you don’t feel like it, taking the time to involve the family in church, synagogue, etc. is well worthwhile. You will create lasting habits of discipline, humility, morality, and selflessness. These qualities stave off self-imposed troubles in life that stem from greed, lust, immediate gratification, entitlement and a me-first mentality. Parents, plant a seed; get your family into your faith in God.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS, MFT
by Lauren Goodman | Nov 10, 2016 | Christian Counseling
It’s easy to overindulge our teens.
Photo Credit: Pixomar and freedigitalphotos.net
In Orange County, CA there is a lot of wealth. Many parents have the ability to provide their teenagers with things they as parents struggled to obtain. It is very common for me to counsel teens in my office and hear them talk about what kind of car they want for their 16th birthday. It is also normal for me to hear about how unfair it is that they don’t have the latest version of the iPhone. While some have jobs, very few seem to be required to pay for any of their own extras.
I think I understand where this type of thinking originates. It is easy to see how you could have gotten ahead more quickly if your parents had been able to give you an easy start. It is tempting to buy into the discussions about status that are constantly around you. You will really start to notice it when your teenager applies to college. Most of their friends apply to any private school or out of state school of their choosing. If they are accepted, then their parents will do whatever it takes to pay for it.
You have to ask yourself though, how much is too much? There is a very, very fine line between giving your children a head start, and creating entitlement. An entitled attitude actually leads to being farther behind in the long run because these kids don’t know how to work. Most of the time the consequences of entitlement don’t rear their ugly head until your child is an adult. By then it can be extremely difficult to change.
Don’t be afraid to tell your kids no. It is very beneficial for them to learn how to really contemplate whether what they want is worth working towards. When I was fifteen I showed some promise in a sport called field hockey. I told my parents I really thought I ought to have group private lessons like the other girls on my team. They told me I was welcome to do so…if I paid for it. When you’re making $5 per hour babysitting, suddenly $500 for 10 lessons doesn’t sound so good. Instead I took orange cones down to the park with another girl on the team and we practiced drills for a couple hours on Saturdays. There was a work-around to my situation; I improved at field hockey just as much as the girls who did the lessons. I also learned that things cost money, and that money costs time (a much more valuable lesson than becoming a better field hockey player). In my case it would have cost me 100 hours of babysitting, which was something I simply wasn’t willing to do. I’m sure it was hard for my parents to say no, but now I am so thankful they did (By the way, I didn’t stick with field hockey all that long anyhow).
The moral of this blog is that you have to be careful not to overindulge your kids. Overindulgence seems to be the thing to do around here, so you’re going to be weird if you say no. However, raising kids who have been given the opportunity to have the dignity of earning their own extras is better for them in the long run because they become self-sufficient, proud of themselves, and have reasonable expectations in life.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS, MFT
by Lauren Goodman | Nov 7, 2016 | Christian Counseling
Teens who are concerned with others have more friends.
Image courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
When asked what the greatest commandment for conduct was, Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength.” Then he said, “Another is equally important. Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Loving your neighbor as yourself was a revolutionary concept at the time. It really outlined the care, concern and thought we are to give to all people. It said that you are important no matter what you look like or how much stuff you have. Given that Jesus lived in a culture of intense racism and classism, this was a shocking statement.
While racism and classism aren’t as overt today, they still exist. If you walk onto a middle school or high school campus you will see it to some extent. Class isn’t necessarily determined by monetary wealth, but by activity. Cheerleaders are in the highest class, and it filters down from there. A lot of students have friends of other races, but you still see people segregating. My clients regularly tell me there is a “Mexican group” on campus, and an “Asian group,” etc.
Teaching your teenagers to rise above this is one of your most important jobs as a parent.
One thing that very recently crossed my mind after reading the excellent book, Blue Like Jazz, by D. Miller, is what happens when you reverse the love your neighbor statement. Love yourself as your neighbor. I know this isn’t exactly what Jesus was getting at, but it is something very important for all of us to think about. We are often self-focused and self-centered in our thoughts and concerns. We are also self-deprecating and self-critical in our evaluations. In other words, we’d NEVER, EVER talk to our neighbor the way we talk to ourselves.
If your teenager is struggling to make and keep friends, then she has to successfully change her outlook on things. Firstly, she has to love their peers as she loves herself. Secondly, she has to love herself as she loves her peers. She has to spend a lot more time noticing and thinking about the concerns of others. She has to reach out in kindness to all the different groups of people on campus. She has to be very aware not to treat those of a “lower social class” any differently than the popular kids.
Your teen also has to work very, very hard on being kinder to himself. One question I often ask my adolescent clients is whether they’d talk to a friend the way they’d talk to themselves. Perhaps one of them has told me he thinks he really needs to lose weight, and looks awful in all his clothes. I ask what he’d say to a friend and he can easily say something affirming and kind. I then point out that if he can say those same kind words to himself, other people will like being around him more.
So, if your teen wants to make and keep more friends, your teenager needs to love others as himself, and love himself as he loves others. I know this all sounds very pie in the sky, but start to plant these seeds. Your teenager will need it for years. Even you need to work on this. We all do (me included)!
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS, MFT
