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Teenage Depression and What the Parent Can Do to Nurture Their Loved One Back to WellnessTeenage depression is a very strong danger to young people in their emotional passage from childhood to adulthood. The teen years are times of greater, not lesser emotional need in which emotional difficulties are a very real possibility, if parents do not understand these needs and meet them in their young adult children. Proof of this is divorce has more effect on older children than it does on their younger siblings. Younger children bounce back more readily than do older brothers and sisters when parents part ways in separation or divorce. In this look at this life damaging condition, we will look at why this is, for the facts will surprise you! If you are the parent of a teenager who is having trouble coping with problems, or if you are a young adult experiencing emotional problems, thank you for being here. We hope you find the encouragement you deserve at our site. If you have any questions please email us, we would love to hear from you. Welcome to our website, and thank you for visiting us. In this look at the emotional problems of young people, we will look at the increased need teenagers have for the approval of their parents than in younger years, and the role the parents have in meeting those stronger needs. Teenagers are a duality of need for approval from their parents, and the need for finding themselves as individuals different from their parents. Sadly, what will often happen are the beginning attempts of their teenager finding his or her self the parent takes as a rejection of the values and traditions the parent has sought to teach them, and the parent feels threatened. The parent retaliates by criticizing their kid's colored spiked hair and heavy metal (alternative) dress, and the young adult's self-esteem is threatened. In addition, the breakdown in the relationship begins. This is tragic and often leads to social and emotional problems for which there is no recovery. For most young people, early attempts at self-expression will always be awkward and off base. The parent needs to understand that. Their son or daughter needs to find his or herself, and has nothing to do with rejecting established values and traditions learned in earlier life. The parent needs to have thick skin and not take their young adult's first attempts at self-discovery as rebellion and immorality. The parent is critical to helping their emerging child find him or herself as an adult, separate from their parents in identity. On one hand, they want to be as dramatically different from you the parent as decency will allow them to be, and on the other hand, they are desperately seeking your approval of them as young adults to be that self. They begin to dress weird and act weird in part to get you to approve of them and you must understand that! They need you to love them in their weirdness, not reject them because they are weird. As they mature, the weirdness will wash away, and the real ‘they’ will remain to emerge again, we promise!
If young children like to imitate their parents and dress up like them in earlier years, then why the sudden need to be anything but what you the parents are like? Why the sudden need to be different and as different as they can be? Why do teenagers need to be the opposite of their parents for a time, and to avoid their parents in public and only be in public with their friends? The answer is in the herding instinct. From about age twelve for girls and about age fourteen for boys, they become obsessed with the urge to herd together and march to the beat of their own drum. Nothing matters except their absorption with their own culture.Every part of their lives is an expression of that absorption into group identity. Dress, words, interests, actions, lifestyle, and attitudes are all expressions of their group. It may be a part of their school, church, or it may center on an activity such as music or skateboarding or skiing. On one hand, they look to you for acceptance as being a different emerging adult, and on the other hand, they look to their peers for acceptance and recognition of their identity as well. They seek their needs in two different sources for nurturement, approval from you the parent, and recognition from their peers. The potential for emotional and social difficulties is very great because the emotional need of your child is great during this time. Like their physical appetites, their emotional appetites are astronomical. Part of this is due to hormones, and part is because of their transition into adulthood. Growing up increasingly introduces them to the complexities of adult life with none of the emotional and coping skills. Young adults have another distinct disadvantage in that they cannot easily verbalize what they are feeling. They cannot quantify their emotional needs as more mature adults can. When your son has a crush on a girl at school, he will not be able to put it into a personal perspective, but will see it as this big change in the universe over which he has not control. This is overwhelming to them. If your teenager does not have the skills to put his or her feelings into words, then those feelings will go underground. At that point he or she will begin to act out or express out what they cannot verbalize to you. This is where you must learn to understand teenage-ese. This will require much patience on your part, for once your son or daughter’s feelings have gone underground, it will take much to uncover what is really bothering them. Please be patient in your attempts, for the work will be worth it. Middle and High School age students have a different reality than that of their parents. Parents have the luxury of being emotionally self-contained, whereas younger adults must always connect with their herd. Years later when they start splitting off in marriage that phenomenon will go away. Another concept of teenage life we adults need to remember is this concept of self-esteem and perfection that all teenagers have. Boys and girls are different in their self-esteem needs, but the danger to place self-value on ‘perfect’ is very high in both. Boys relate to athletics and superiority, whereas girls relate to beauty and poise. Depending on the personality of the teen, this can be the emotional death card. Popularity is the money on which all emotional transactions in the teen world take place. Sadly enough, dress, fashion, accessories, and wealth can become overly important to the teen in their world with their peers, in their ever-increasing need to impress. Teenagers are high maintenance as they grow and try new things. Disagreements and squabbles with your teen are part of the growth of teenagers, and that is as it should be. One of the critical signs of danger is if your teenager suddenly becomes quiet, obedient, and starts to remain in the background rather than out front participating. That of all signs is the worst sign to notice! While the lesser caring parent would think this is a good thing, for it relieves him or her of the responsibilities of having to take their kid to activities, it is not healthy! Disagreement between the world of the teen and the adult should be high with a lot of radio traffic and noise, mostly complaining by your teen about how unfair life is. Again, that is normal and as it should be. Do not take your teen’s complaining as a sign that you are a bad parent, far from it, for as long as they complain and whine and cry, that is showing you are actually a good parent. Do not become discouraged Mom or Dad, for that is the lot in life of parenting. Remember when you were young how much you criticized your parents before you grow up! Also, do not take it upon yourself to solve all your teen’s problems for them, for that is not your job. Again, remember when you were young, and all the problems you thought you had, most of them disappeared when you grew up a little! The adult world introduces teenagers to a lot of stuff, and sometimes too much stuff too soon. Emotional abuse, sexual abuse, divorce, car accidents, loss of health, national disasters, failure at sports or school, war, criminal behavior, police contact, and the court system are all wakeup experiences that may tell the teenager that they are not Dorothy in Kansas anymore. For us older and stronger adults, we face setbacks and scarcities all the time, and know that life will be there twenty years from now and all will be well. However, for the teenager, they have no such long-term perspective. It is very important for you the parent to realize how much your teenager needs your love and approval at this time. You are not a bad parent; otherwise, you would not be here. We want to compliment you on being a good parent and trying to get your teenager’s emotional needs met. God put you as being your kid’s parent for a reason, and that is because you are the best parent for your teenager. Do not be discouraged if there is a breakdown in the relationship with your kid. That is okay, over time it will pass. There are things you can do to help your teenager to weather the storms of growing up in the present. The first thing is to tell them that you love them. We know it sounds corny, and your teen will tell you so, but tell them anyway. The second thing you can do is to make time to listen to them if they want to talk to you. Time is precious and your teenager will notice that you offer to spend your precious time with them, for they are busy too. Offer to take them out for some coffee or ice cream or something, just the two of you, no brothers or sisters or friends. Again, this is a corny thing to offer, and your teen will refuse and criticize you for offering, but do it anyway! When you finally get them to agree to go spend a few minutes with you, let them talk about what ever it is that they want to talk. It may be their relationship with you and their childhood, or it may be about their friends and school. If all they want to talk about is their world, do not take offense. It is good that they are telling you about stuff in their world, for that means they are including you in their perspective, nothing could be better. When they do that, just listen. Do not parent them, or put your unwanted opinion in while they talk, just listen and enjoy. Do not worry that what they may want to talk about does not make any sense, it only matters that they are talking and sharing. Just share with them. The time you spend listening is time that they need. That is all. The greatest weapon in helping their sense of wellbeing is the participation of the parents, coaches, and teachers in the lives of those teens with depression. No medicine will ever work as well as the attention of an adult who notices and cares. There is one last piece of advice for you parents; Conduct yourself with the same level of honor and personal integrity that you always have. While you may think that you the parent are the last thing that your teenager notices, that is opposite of the truth. Your teenager is watching you like a hawk as to how you conduct your life with those around you. If you are honest with all others in your dealings with them, and you are emotionally honest with yourself, your teenager will notice. More than that, he or she will begin to copy you. Remember that they are not watching you as a child anymore, they are watching you as an adult, and they are seeing you with new eyes. If you pretend everything is all right and you never address problems then they will learn they cannot trust you and that they cannot trust life either, because you do not. At this time, you need to be the best ‘you’ that you can be, not only for your own good, but also to teach them how to be the best that they can be as well. Do not better yourself to help them, better yourself because you deserve to be the best you can be, period. If you practice selfishness and being true to yourself, as you should, then they too will learn that valuable lesson. Growing through the teen years is about emerging young adults seeking their own Authenticity. When obstacles get in the way of that search, then emotional blockages form into life-stopping dams, and depression is the result. Teenage depression is only the first stage, but out of that first stage, life-long depression and personal failure can result, if you the parent do not address their and your emotional needs. Teenage depression is ultimately about emotional abuse or emotional neglect in some form or another. Lack of knowledge about our emotional selves is the cause of teenage depression, and all emotional depression. (Experiential causes are responsible for emotional depression, and medical needs are responsible for medical or clinical depression.) Please visit the links on the left as well as our Books and Articles page for our first in series new book Overcoming Depression from Emotional Abuse/Tools of your Mind. For help with any emotional abuse, self-esteem and emotional healing issues, please consider this book as the definitive answer to your or your loved ones difficulties, as your teenage son or daughter emerges into the adult world. In our book, we talk about the whole overview of our soul’s journey as we follow our heart’s dreams to our ultimate destiny. We answer many questions about selfishness, prosperity, psychotherapy, and finding our dreams and happiness. We talk about the importance of, and our responsibility for getting our emotional needs met as we grow and heal. We also talk about the spiritual controls we have within to bring our good to us. Those controls are our Sincerity Switch, Spontaneity Switch, and lastly our Feelings and Dream Switch. Any teenager would readily understand these terms. Written for both parent and teenager, this is the ultimate book for your type of situation. The teen years can be the best of times or they can be the worst of times. Let us work to make it the best years of their lives, for we all love them and they deserve that very much. God bless you as you begin your new life today. We would love to hear from you at depres15@depression-and-anxiety-recovery.com Please tell us how you are doing in your search for answers, and to share your trials and victories with us! Shayne and Lori North
Overcoming Depression from Emotional Abuse/The Tools of Your Mind The Book
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