by Lauren Goodman | Nov 27, 2017 | Depression Therapy for Teens
There is a correlation between a teen’s social media use and lower moods.
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An article was just published in The Economist summarizing a very large scale study correlating teen social media use with “malaise,” depressed moods and hopelessness. The study was conducted on about 500,000 American teens. It showed a strong relationship between teens who regularly view social media and those who feel low about life. This was not true for those who use social media to engage with friends, such as using it to text. This was the most true for those who use it to passively browse others’ posts.
There is an inevitable comparing of lives that happens when looking at what other people post. What your teen doesn’t see is all the moments that a person doesn’t put on social media. There is no picture posted of your teen’s friend looking bored in math class. There is no picture posted of blurred eye make-up after sobbing because of a break-up. There is no post unveiling discord in the home. There is no post detailing the misery other teens feel when they have shameful secrets like addiction to pornography. Social media is a very, very brief snapshot of a moment in time that is doctored by premeditated attempts to make that moment sound or appear a certain way. What I mean by this is that before you take a picture, you smile. Were you actually in a smiley mood? Who knows? Before you click “post” you thought out the words you wanted to share with the world. What happened to all the other simultaneous thoughts you filtered out and didn’t write? These can range from the innocuous, ‘I feel a little hungry,’ to the embarrassing to the downright shameful. Those are rarely posted.
So what happens to your teen? After hours of counseling teens, my theory is your son or daughter is left wondering at all the ways he or she is inadequate. Your son or daughter is also spending hours reading things that are counter to the values you have taught since the day your child was born. Your child is consistently hit with a message that if his values aren’t changed to reflect what modern relativistic culture calls for, he is a racist, misogynist, anti-progressive, homophobic, xenophobic horror of a human being. It is highly conflicting for an adolescent mind. Your adolescent hasn’t yet developed the reasoning power to adequately research paradigms and come to her own conclusions. She is still extremely impressionable. She easily absorbs the unconscious psychological message that she needs to conform to the non-conformists if she is to be anything less than a complete wretch.
On the other hand, teens who spend face to face time with their friends and family appear to be happier. These same teens who work a job, play sports, and engage in “real life” are often filled with a lot more hope. This doesn’t mean every day is a happy day. However, it does mean you as a parent have a responsibility to strongly consider what technology does and doesn’t do for your burgeoning adult. It means you have to know the science behind what is happening to this generation, and teach your child to balance virtual life with real life.
Click here if you wish to read the original article from The Economist.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS, MFT
by Lauren Goodman | Oct 26, 2017 | Depression Therapy for Teens
Self-injury is a very loud cry for help.
Photo courtesy of Marin from Freedigitalphotos.net
Janelle sat on her bed. She was crying because her best friend told some girls that she thought Janelle was annoying. She also told the girls she thinks Janelle is “all drama all the time.”
At first Janelle was in shock. She couldn’t believe Sara would say those things about her. Hadn’t she been there for Sara all last year when Sara was fighting with her mom? Then Janelle turned inward. Negative thoughts started running through Janelle’s head. She began to think, ‘Nobody likes me,’ and ‘All my friends are fake.’ She also started thinking things like, ‘My own parents don’t even care that I’m hurting.’ With these negative thoughts came an even deeper surge of anxiety and hopelessness. Janelle turned to the only coping skill she knew could make her feel numb. She went into her desk drawer and took out a razor blade she had set aside specifically for this purpose. She began to cut shallow lines across her left forearm until a little bit of blood showed.
I know this is awful to read. I know it’s even worse if you are concerned your teenager is cutting. While this story is made up, it’s based off the many, many teenagers I’ve sat across from in therapy who self-harm to cope with emotional pain.
Generally parents find self-injury really difficult to understand. It’s hard to imagine how inducing physical pain can relieve emotional pain.
There are usually two reasons teenagers cut themselves. The first is a cry for attention. These teenagers are hurting inside, don’t know how to effectively express it, and so try cutting themselves for someone else to notice. If they cut on their arm they might continue to wear short sleeves. They wait and see how long it takes Mom or Dad to make a comment. This is to be taken seriously and requires help from a professional counselor and/or a psychiatrist because it means the teenager isn’t able to communicate their emotions in a healthy and productive manner.
The second reason an adolescent might self-harm is to control their pain. If they are a teenager who becomes flooded with emotional distress, then their pain feels unmanageable. At least if they are cutting they control when they hurt, how deeply, where, how long, how much blood, whether or not the pain shows, and how much the wound scars. These are teenagers who feels as though emotional pain happens to them at random and no matter what they try to do, they are helpless to stop it. These teens are desperate to have control over something. This second group doesn’t usually want their wounds to be noticed. They do not want to be stopped from cutting because it’s their primary method of coping and they don’t trust anyone to love them through their hurt. They will often cut in locations on their body that are difficult to see such as hips, stomach, inner thigh, or arms if they always wear sleeves. In these situations professional help is a must.
If you have worried that your teenager is self-harming, please get them help right away. This is a cry for help that is loud and clear. It is also quite possibly beyond your ability to stop your child from this behavior without some guidance. It is very dangerous to just hope your teenager stops this behavior. I worked with one teenager who accidentally cut his wrist too deeply and he nearly severed an artery in his wrist, which could have killed him. He wasn’t trying to commit suicide, but he almost did so by mistake. Another problem with leaving the teenager to resolve this on their own is the risk of infection. If they don’t treat the wounds properly and/or use unsanitary objects to self-harm it could cause them to become ill. Finally, it is important to address self-injurious behavior because your child is in deep emotional pain and they are navigating it in an unhealthy manner. They need your love and support, but not your tolerance of their self-harm.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS, MFT
by Lauren Goodman | Oct 9, 2017 | Depression Therapy for Teens
Mental illness looks like you and me.
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I just finished reading Resilience, by Jessie Close. She is completely raw in her description of a lifelong battle with severe Bipolar Disorder. As she takes you on her journey through years of unchecked, undiagnosed mayhem caused by her mental illness and alcoholism, you will cringe and cry.
The fact is though, mental illness without help is like a prison sentence. It condemns its sufferer to broken relationships, broken dreams, continuous disruption, and continuous discomfort. I still feel I’m phrasing it lightly.
She has many objectives in writing the story of her life. Aside from the likely cathartic effects of viewing her life through a medicated, stable lens, she has things she wants from us as the readers. She wants us to understand that the stigma associated with mental illness is excruciating. She wants us to know she is not a leper. She wants us to know she still needs compassion, love and friendship. It’s our cultural norm to ignore and avoid “odd” people. She wants us to realize someone with a mental illness is still a someone. She wants us to know that that someone has a family, a history, hopes and trials just as you and I do.
During my interning years I worked at College Hospital in Costa Mesa. It is a locked psychiatric facility. During the first months I was afraid. I didn’t understand how to interact with people who were not responding to normal social cues. I didn’t know how to anticipate the next move of someone suffering from psychosis. Eventually though I came to love that job. The staff had a sincere affection for the patients that was contagious. Once I settled down, I realized these are people who are scared and overwhelmed. All they need is someone who can sit with them and treat them like they’re human.
The irony was never lost on me that the staff inside a locked mental hospital were more capable of treating the mentally ill like humans than was the outside world. I suppose it’s just like Jessie Close writes in her book where she tells us how exposure and time spent with the mentally ill breaks down our incorrect suppositions. Like any misguided prejudice we have (and like it or not, we all have some), they are stripped away when we spend time with the people we incorrectly judge.
In the outpatient counseling practice I now run, we have found we are often the first stopping point for a teenager trying to understand what is going on with him or her. There have been countless cases where a parent has called because his son or daughter is acting differently, engaging in risky behaviors, or “just doesn’t feel right.” It can be an enormous challenge to pinpoint a diagnosis quickly because as Jessie Close explains, mental illness is “like a stew.” This means many symptoms and disorders overlap.
Recognizing an underlying mental illness for misguided behavior and thoughts is one of the most important things towards healing. You almost always need a professional to help with this process. Even for the professional it can be difficult since there are no clear medical tests to diagnose.
If you suspect your teen might be facing a burgeoning mental illness, don’t wait to seek help.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS, MFT
by Lauren Goodman | Sep 25, 2017 | Depression Therapy for Teens
Hard work gives self-worth to adolescent boys.
Photo Credit: Stuart Miles/freedigitalphotos.net
What gives a boy good self-esteem? The answer is simple. It’s work. W-O-R-K. Those four little letters strung together add up to big benefits for teen boys.
For the first eight years I practiced therapy, I believed all the books I’d read. I thought teen boys needed a great home life. I thought they needed to believe they were good enough on the inside and the outside. I believed they had to be accepted by their peers. While these things are certainly helpful, where does it leave the boys who don’t have this?
Two years ago I had an eighteen year old boy come in for therapy. This kid had it all in terms of what we think should create high self-esteem in an adolescent. He was a good-looking, popular kid. He had a great family, was talented at sports, and really did believe he was good enough to win anyone’s approval. Why was he unhappy then? It was absolutely baffling to me. We worked and worked. Finally I told this kid he wouldn’t have a good self-esteem, or feel happier until he started taking responsibility for the things in his life. I didn’t mean the emotional things. I meant the really simple things. I told him to start keeping his car clean, pay his cell bill, and buy his own gas. He gave me a sideways look, but then decided he’d try it. He quickly ran out of money though. That’s when everything got better. He got a little part-time job and began to pay his own way. The more of his own things he paid for, the happier he felt. His self-worth began to improve. Then he found a full-time job and began to pay for all his own stuff.
The boy’s parents couldn’t figure out why he was doing this since they were willing to pay for everything. He explained to them that when he paid his own way he felt like a man. He said he felt he could look anyone in the eye and have dignity.
That’s when it dawned on me: Many teen boys today don’t have dignity. For an adolescent male, being able to get up and go to work is defining. It allows them to psychologically transition from a dependent boy to an independent man. Manhood and independence are synonymous. If you are trying to prevent your son from working so that he’ll have more time to focus on school, it’s an admirable thing to do. However, though your intentions are really good, I think it might be a misguided way to help your son.
Your responsibility as a parent is to help your son become a man. You and I agree wholeheartedly that education opens more doors for your son as he becomes an adult. Don’t forget though, your son also needs to have his character shaped. He craves hard work and the associated reward (a paycheck and the dignity of earning his own way). Don’t stand in his way. Even if this slightly slows his educational process down, by the time he graduates college he’ll be far better prepared for the working world. He’ll be more likely to succeed if he’s had just a little bit of time in the trenches. He’ll be more appreciative of his paycheck. He’ll be less entitled out of college, and therefore more able to handle his money. He’ll have a greatly improved understanding of how to get along with people of all stripes. I could list many more benefits than this.
Ever since that epiphany two years ago, this has become a consistent recommendation I make to the parents of the teen boys I see in my counseling office. So, all this to say, if you find your teenage son has low self-worth, consider having him work. I believe it makes a big difference.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS, MFT
by Lauren Goodman | Jul 11, 2017 | Depression Therapy for Teens
Changing your teen’s outlook from discouraged to hopeful is hard, but rewarding.
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Don’t you hate the feeling that comes with trying as hard as you can to improve a situation, but you just feel like you’re running in place? No matter what you do, it doesn’t seem like you can make it better. It’s completely disheartening and frustrating. Sometimes it shakes you to the core. Oftentimes it bleeds into other areas of your life despite your best intentions. This is called discouragement.
Teenagers get this feeling pretty frequently, and usually don’t quite have the maturity to know how to handle it. Mom or Dad, you might notice your son or daughter becoming withdrawn and irritable. You might observe them making negative comments and giving up much more easily than they used to. They may resist activities they used to do in a heartbeat. You’re left feeling perplexed as you wonder what has your teen feeling so down.
When adolescents don’t know how to lift themselves above a situation, it’s up to your parental instincts to help. This can be tricky because your child may not necessarily share what has them feeling frustrated. If it’s a certain class, they might fear telling you because they don’t want you to get upset with them. If it’s that they can’t find a job, they may interpret your suggestions as criticisms. If your teen is discouraged about making friends, they may find it impossible to implement things that are supposed to help.
My whole job consists of motivating discouraged teens and parents to make changes. A lot of times the discouragement is about the parent/teen relationship, but it’s often about other things as well. These things have ranged from addiction to anxiety to depression to trauma (rape, abuse, etc.) to other issues specific to each individual client. One thing consistent across the board in helping a discouraged adolescent begin to make things better is to instill hope.
When you instill hope into your child it cannot be based on false premises. You cannot tell your child they will become valedictorian of their high school if they failed during freshman year; that is literally not possible. You CAN tell them they can still make it to a college they will truly enjoy and feel proud of if they decide to. You cannot tell your daughter who has never done gymnastics, dance or anything else requiring grace and flexibility that she will make captain of the cheer team this year. However, you CAN help her believe she is capable of participating in a sport, having camaraderie, getting into shape and feeling proud of it (especially no-cut sports like cross country). It’s extremely important to help your teen set realistic expectations for him or herself, and be open to changing the picture of what they want just a little bit. Help your teen realize it’s okay if they can’t be the most popular student in their middle school, and that having a solid group of friends makes lifelong joyful memories.
Fighting through discouragement with your adolescent is a challenge. This is especially true when you feel as discouraged as they do. I’ve sat with a lot of parents who have had to change their own expectations before they were able to help their teen instead of harp on their teen. It’s not easy, but the rewards last a lifetime. We’re all built a certain way, which means we have an individual purpose- starting to discover that purpose provides hope, which is the opposite of discouragement.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS, MFT
by Lauren Goodman | May 31, 2017 | Depression Therapy for Teens
Bipolar Disorder can make things chaotic and overwhelming.
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There are a few types of Bipolar Disorder. They are labeled differently depending on their severity. This post is about Bipolar I, the most intense form or Bipolar Disorder.
Bipolar Disorder (previous known as manic-depression) is a serious mental illness. It is defined by the presence of a manic episode. Mania isn’t just feeling happy. Mania is a very intense, sometimes euphoric, chemical imbalance causing unusual psychological phenomena. A manic episode means a greatly reduced need for sleep (about 0-2 hours per night). It means coming up with grandiose ideas. An example of a grandiose idea would be deciding, without research, to move to Alaska and drill for oil. In some cases, mania means following through on those ideas. The follow-through is done without forethought or planning. It is done in a disorganized fashion. Mania can include extreme behavior. I once read of a man in the news who spent $50,000 at Walmart in a single afternoon; he was in the middle of a manic episode. Someone in a manic episode might engage in dangerous behavior such as trying drugs, having sex, stealing a car, etc. I’ve also sat with people in manic episodes who have flight of ideas and pressured speech (very rapid, ongoing speech with ideas that go from one to the next without a breath). Not as commonly, people suffering from a manic episode can be psychotic. Sometimes they are not sure what is real and their five senses can become confused.
The other piece of Bipolar Disorder is depressive episodes. You only need a manic episode to receive a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, but usually depression is part of the picture as well. This isn’t just your typical, ‘I feel sad because my friend is upset with me,’ kind of day. This is can’t crawl out of bed, overwhelming anxiety, self-hating depression. This is a major depressive episode. It’s feeling like you can’t eat, or can’t stop eating, wish for death, nobody cares for me depression. It’s extremely painful. This is the place where some with bipolar feel suicidal. Oftentimes their energy level is so greatly restricted by the depression that even if they are suicidal, they don’t have the energy to try it. It’s a dark, terrifying place.
People living with bipolar didn’t choose it. They aren’t just making “wrong choices.” A lot of the times we lack compassion for people with mental illness. They look fine on the outside, so we think, “Why don’t they just try harder in school?” or “Why don’t they pick better friends?” or “If they would just get organized, then they could do so much better.” We’re so quick to judge. We completely misunderstand how impairing mental illness can be. If our brain isn’t functioning at capacity, things become immediately much more difficult.
Do you remember the last time you were really sleep-deprived? Maybe you pulled an all-nighter with friends, or maybe you were a new parent with a 2-day old infant who needed to be fed every 2-3 hours. A couple days of no sleep and you were no longer at your best. Your memory became foggy, your processing speed slowed down, your energy level diminished, and your ability to be productive was gone. This is all because your brain wasn’t at capacity. While I’ve never heard someone with bipolar describe the struggles they face as being similar to sleep-deprivation, you can at least understand that mental illness isn’t something to just “get over.”
The families of people with bipolar disorder suffer greatly too. A good place to read about what it’s like is ridingthebipolarcoaster.blogspot.com. This blog is written by a mom who has watched a child go through bipolar disorder. It’s scary and it causes feelings of helplessness; It’s unpredictable.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS, MFT
