Managing Anxiety in Teens

I have been providing psychotherapy for teens, young adults and families in Marin County since 2003. In 2004, I became a mother and had my second child in 2007. I remember wondering what my experience would be like many years in the future, parenting my own children as teens and continuing to support local families navigating the exciting and challenging adolescent stage. Well… here I am, parenting my daughter through her senior year of high school and going through our family’s second round of the college application process. 

I have one word for you.....ANXIETY. 

Each year, through my personal parenting, therapy sessions and parent coaching, I confirm the importance of learning about the anxiety process.  Am I parenting my child in a way that is aligned with my values instead of short-term relief? Am I teaching my children to acknowledge their own anxiety, value it, and use it to guide how they approach new tasks? As a family, are we making accommodations to prevent anxiety, instead of allowing our children to appropriately struggle through challenges? Am I effectively answering my child's anxious questions about whether or not she will find the best college based on her goals?

The landscape has changed greatly in our local community with teens and parents busier than ever, navigating intense academic and sport demands. Add social media and an increasingly frenetic college admissions process, and anxiety goes through the roof. I speak to each and every family that comes to our program for therapeutic services during an intake call, and each parent expresses challenges with anxiety in their children. Each and every one. Yes, words like anxiety, depression, trauma, and emotional dysregulation have become commonplace with our children. And yet I see families, clients, doctors, coaches, teachers and experienced therapists teach accommodations and strategies that only temporarily relieve anxiety. Unfortunately, anxiety treatment is often in opposition to our instinctual parenting response, to lovingly help our children bypass challenges. 

Our program is known for our use of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), which often attracts referrals for suicidal and self-harming clients, or other intense and extreme behaviors. However, this skills-based model has allowed our team to support many families and clients through learning about their anxiety and how to grow and confidently improve behaviors. The DBT model provides all the necessary principles to moving forward with typical adolescent challenges. 

I've personally benefited from these skills, hearing echoes reflected back from my own children. For example, I may hear, "What if she doesn't like me, Mom?” and instead of going with my natural urge and saying "Everyone will like you." I stop myself, and turn to, "It will suck, but I know that you will get through it. We'll support you." Or, "I didn't want to tell you because you would be mad." and I respond "Yes, I might be mad, but we can handle that." I’ve even corrected my response to one of my children's concerns about their sensitivity from "you aren't too sensitive" to simply listening as they grappled with their style. 

A certain level of anxiety is part of a normal life process. However, we typically don't have the education to know that acknowledging fear, actually experiencing it and approaching triggers is the way to treat these challenges. Not avoidance. 

When I ask parents in my initial conversations about their goals for their children, I often hear “I want them to be happy.” My own answer would have been the same 20 years ago. Now, as wordy and “therapy-like” as it may sound, I answer, “I want them to be resilient and confident in managing life’s challenges.” 

After all these years of reading, learning, discussing and working through anxiety challenges with my clients, I know wholeheartedly how valuable it is to have a thought partner in identifying all of the valuable nuances of our emotional experience, including anxiety. Using these skills as a parent has relieved my own anxiety in guiding my family more confidently. 

As I prepare to launch my second child off to college knowing full-well that parenting challenges don’t end at the ripe young age of 18, I am able to see all of the numerous joys, arguments, tension, relief, and decisions that come with family life with a sense of deep gratitude. Knowing that I have these deeply ingrained skills at my disposal when big challenges come up helps me head anxiety off at the pass. And, working with families, it’s always so rewarding when I see them integrating these same skills in a way that will have a lasting impact on their family’s emotional health and dynamic.