by Lauren Goodman | Aug 15, 2016 | Teen Anxiety Therapy
OCD is extremely frustrating for teens.
Credit: Jeanne Claire Maarbes via freedigitalphotos.net
- What is OCD?OCD stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It causes someone to feel a lot of anxiety. Usually the cause of anxiety is over something improbable. The anxious feeling is so strong that someone has ritualistic behavior to get rid of the anxiety. The problem is, the anxiety returns over and over again, so the person spends lots of time doing rituals to manage the anxiety.
- Can you give an examples of OCD?The form of OCD you are probably most familiar with is “contamination OCD.” This is where someone feels an icky feeling on their skin when they are exposed to a perceived contaminant. If someone feels contaminated by germs then they might feel disgusting after touching a bathroom door handle. The feeling will be so unbearable that it can only be relieved by hand-washing. Other forms of contaminants I’ve seen in my therapy office have been sweat, chemical cleaning products, raw foods, dirt, and dirty laundry. The associated compulsions have been taking a shower multiple times per day, excessive wiping of counters and surfaces, hand washing until hands are cracked and dry, or scrubbing vigorously with a shower scrubby until the skin bleeds and rashes.OCD can take the form of needing perfect symmetry. I have worked with adolescents who felt a shudder of anxiety when things are not in their proper symmetrical order. If someone touches them on their right shoulder their compulsion is to immediately touch their own left shoulder. The problem is, sometimes they don’t get it just right, and have to repeat the touching on both shoulders until it feels perfectly symmetrical. One girl struggled with the symmetry of writing on her papers for school. If the paper didn’t seem to be very well balanced with how the words looked on the page she would throw it away and start again.
OCD can take many different forms. The most important thing a therapist is looking for is to see whether there are obsessive thoughts followed by ritualistic compulsions to control those thoughts. Sometimes the obsessive thought is an intrusive thought. One example would be a repeated image of the house burning down. The compulsion might be to meticulously and repeatedly inspect all the places where gas can be turned on (i.e. the stoves, barbecue, water heater, etc.).
- How do you deal with OCD?Research has shown two therapies to be most effective for OCD. Either can help on its own, but research shows it is most effective when they are done together. The first form of treatment shown to be effective is called Exposure and Response Prevention. This is what we do at Teen Therapy OC. It means we help your teenager make a list of obsessions and related compulsions. Starting from least frightening and working our way up from there, we help your teen face the things that make them uncomfortable. If your teenager is anxious about things being out of place we might hang a picture crooked and have them stare at it until the anxiety goes away. At first that will take some time, but after repeated exposures it becomes easier.The second is getting medication from a psychiatrist. Some parents don’t like the idea of medication for their teens, and many of my clients choose to try treatment without it before seeing a psychiatrist. Every case is different and recommendations and whether medication should be part of treatment are easier to make after the initial evaluation.
Living with OCD is miserable and very time consuming. For adolescents who struggle with this it can be hard to keep friends, and hard to keep up with homework. It is overwhelming and frustrating. It feels like a trap. Let us help your child get their life back. Call us to talk about how we can help you help your teen get better.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS, MFT
by Lauren Goodman | Aug 4, 2016 | Teen Anxiety Therapy
Extreme anxiety is a miserable experience.
Feeling anxious is horrible. It is a sense of dread that is extremely unpleasant. Some people get headaches, tight muscles or stomach aches along with it. It’s that feeling before a big test, or a speech. Some people feel this way all the time, even when they cannot pinpoint a reason, and consequently they live with emotional misery. Does your teenager feeling this way? Do you see them stress out over things that you wish they wouldn’t worry about? If so, you know the heartbreak of watching your child feel completely wound up while you are helpless to comfort them.
Here are 5 tips to help with anxiety. These will reduce anxiety, but not completely eliminate it. By the way, completely eliminating anxiety should never be the goal. Anxiety is a motivator. Some of the adolescents who come into my therapy office have too much anxiety, but some have too little. The ones who have too little are the kids whose parents cannot seem to find anything to motivate them. These teens don’t care about grades, getting a job, getting into college, etc. So, for those of you who have teens with too much anxiety, keep in mind that the goal is to restore them to an appropriate level, but not to completely fix it.
Try these ideas, and if they aren’t successful, it might be time to seek out professional help:
1. Be mindful. This means becoming present in the moment. Notice the things you see, hear, smell, taste and feel. Pay attention to the small details. Find something beautiful to focus on in your environment and enjoy it. For me right now I can look outside my window and see a tree that has some new growth on it. If I hadn’t been intentionally mindful, I wouldn’t have even noticed it. Looking at the new growth on the tree took me out of my own concerns for a moment, thereby reducing anxiety.
2. Talk to yourself about the truth. Most of the things we worry about come out differently than we predict. That’s because we think of the worst case and then focus on it. The attention given to the worst case scenario makes it start to feel real. The truth though, is that most things are relatively easy compared to how we predict they will go. It is easy for a teen to assume they will fail a test. However, chances are, if they’ve been paying attention in class and studying, they won’t fail; they might not get an A but they probably won’t get an F.
3. Get some exercise. Our brains release calming chemicals when we get a good work-out. It’s hard to be stressed when your brain is releasing calming chemicals. The time spent working out, and therefore away from the cause of the stress, is also very important.
4. Get busy with a consuming task. Anything that requires focused attention will take you out of your anxiety for awhile. This could be reading a book, calling a friend, playing an instrument, etc.
5. Recognize what you can control. Think about what you can do about your situation, and then do it. After that you have to understand that it is beyond your ability to control. Let those parts go because they are going to happen however they happen. Your teenager worrying about it does not change it at all. For example, I worked with one girl who had trouble with insomnia. It was an awful problem some nights, and then others it didn’t bother her at all. She started coming to counseling because she began to spend the majority of her day anxious about whether or not she would sleep that night. I asked her whether her worrying at 9 am had any impact on her falling asleep at 10 pm. She said it didn’t. While the technique of only thinking about what you can control didn’t completely solve her anxiety, it was one of the many techniques we employed to reduce it.
Anxiety is overwhelming and frustrating. Show your anxious teenager empathy, and keep reminding them to be mindful, tell themselves the truth, get some exercise, find something consuming to do, and recognize what they can control. You will probably have to say this to them several times, but it should be helpful.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS, MFT
by Lauren Goodman | Jul 28, 2016 | Teen Anxiety Therapy
Social anxiety can lead to feelings of loneliness and depression.
Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Social anxiety is a struggle for teens. They are often worried about what their friends think, and get nervous about social interactions. It causes stress and depressed moods. Learning to negotiate middle school and high school social politics is difficult for the most confident of adolescents. For the socially anxious teen, it’s nearly impossible. This is the teenager who desperately wants friends and to be part of things, but is too scared to make it happen.
True social anxiety is something different than just feeling nervous in social situations. This is when a person cannot bring themselves to talk readily in front of peers. People who suffer from social anxiety often do not have many friends. They fear saying the wrong thing each time they talk. When they have had a conversation, it is replayed in their minds over and over to look for mistakes. Other people’s reactions to conversation are misconstrued. A person might laugh at something funny that was said, but someone with social anxiety will believe the laughter is directed at them. Dating is impossible. Often someone with social anxiety will speak inaudibly when they do talk. Social situations with peers are terrifying. Developmentally this is problematic.
Fortunately there is help for social anxiety. Through the process of counseling someone suffering from social anxiety can learn to manage their nervous feelings. As they have successful interactions with peers, they are able to gain a little bit of confidence. Slowly they learn that others are indeed interested in what they have to say. The advent of social media has made overcoming social anxiety a bit easier. It is a safer place to start than in direct conversation. This allows the person suffering from social anxiety to think carefully before communicating with a peer. When they get a response, it is a positively reinforcing experience.
If you think your teen is suffering from social anxiety, please get them help. Future success in relationships and their career depends on their ability to function in social settings. A lot of what is learned in middle and high school is how to navigate a social world. In fact, this is one of the most important lessons taken from school. It is something every person who joins the workplace needs. Not everyone will remember details about The Revolutionary War, or The Pythagorean Theorem, but they do use communication skills the rest of their life.
One thing you can do at home to help a socially anxious teen is to have them start answering the phone whenever it rings. A lot of us no longer have home phones, but you can still have your teen answer your phone. Even those brief interactions increase confidence. When you’re at the grocery store, send your socially anxious teen up to an employee to ask where something is. Make them order for the family at a restaurant. Gently, gently push your teen to do more talking. When they get the small talk down with strangers, start the discussion about how to apply it to their peers.
Dealing with social anxiety is a huge challenge. Be patient and love your teenager through what can feel like crushing fear. Stay positive and remind them that you believe they can overcome their struggles.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS, MFT
by Lauren Goodman | Jul 8, 2016 | Teen Anxiety Therapy
Some teens socially isolate because they feel so awkward they just want to hide. Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
If your teenager basically refuses to socialize with their peers, it’s really important to find out why. Some teens want to, but are terrified of making a social blunder. Other teenagers are struggling with self-consciousness. Still others have depression, and have no motivation to see friends. A fourth group is so entrenched in online activities they don’t seem to care about being social. There are a host of reasons why your teenager might not be interacting with peers, and the aforementioned are just a few.
A great majority of the time I find adolescents actually do want relationships with friends, but don’t necessarily know how to obtain them. Sometimes they are so incredibly socially phobic (afraid of making a social mistake) that it is almost impossible to maintain friendships. They fear they will sound dumb. As a result their minds blank out when they have to have a face to face conversation. It leaves them looking, and feeling stupid. Around people they are comfortable with, your teenager might be the most talkative person in the room. Get them around other adolescents, and they move to the outside and can barely speak audibly.
Others who feel a strong sense of self-consciousness worry constantly that others are judging them. They talk to their friends at school, but simultaneously wonder if that friend is thinking something negative about them. A lot of the time the negative things your teen is concerned with aren’t even noticeable. Your teenager might be afraid everyone they talk to thinks they are fat, or is staring at their acne. In either case, I almost certainly guarantee you the other person isn’t thinking anything about your child; instead they are worried others are judging them. Adolescence is such a difficult age because the level of self-consciousness most teens feel is barely tolerable.
The third group is the adolescent who can’t seem to muster any interest in friends. They know they would feel better if they’d call their friends, but just can’t get enough energy to do it. Depression is a very real phenomenon, and it can be debilitating. If you’ve never experienced it yourself, it’s really hard to understand what your child is going through. The antidotes to depressed moods are selflessness, activity and sometimes medication, but when your teenager is emotionally down, it’s very tough to do any of those things.
Your teen may not be socializing because they have become too entrenched in an online world. Unfortunately I see this pretty frequently. Your teenager has become addicted to technology, and very likely, role playing games. This is incredibly difficult to change unless you become a really strict parent. Your teen is comfortable living in this alternate reality, and doesn’t feel inclined to do anything about it. Once their addiction has ended, they are always glad to be interacting with real people, but until then they will probably fight you tooth and nail. While this might keep your adolescent out of trouble, it’s a great hindrance to their emotional development.
All four of these groups of teens will probably benefit from counseling. While their problems vary quite a bit, the consequence of not socializing can be damaging. It can also perpetuate their struggle. Many times once a non-social teen starts to spend time with a friend or two, their emotional load begins to lighten and they become happier.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Lauren Goodman, MS, MFT
