Therapy for Parents

You know your teen needs help.

Sometimes, everything goes great until it doesn’t.

Our teenagers have a way of showing us when things are not quite balanced. Their mood and behavior are off.

They might lock themselves in their room and refuse to discuss their feelings. And when you try to have a conversation, they explode.

Follow your first instincts.

It may be your first instinct to buckle down and try harder. If you have been at it for a while, I recommend pausing and inviting someone to help.

For all you know, your teen’s behavior may have nothing to do with you, and there may be nothing YOU can do to help. They need to want to see a change and connect with someone they think is on their side.

It may be your first instinct to find them help ASAP. Our first thought is that we have failed them, and we want them to have someone to talk to if they can’t talk to us. You know they could benefit from having an outside person who will listen to them talk through what they’re going through. You hope they will get support and guidance on handling emotions and decisions ahead of them.

You’re looking for someone outside of yourself because you’ve tried everything you know to do. You feel that a professional will know more about how to help your teenager. Deciding to bring your teenager to therapy because you know that they need help from a professional is a wise move because they do need help.

Parents have hopeful expectations.

When nothing we do feels right, and our child is uninterested in our relationship, it can make a parent feel very hopeless. As much as we try as parents not to have expectations for how our child will develop, we still can’t help imagining a relationship with them and what it might be like.

As parents, we hope for the best and that our hard work will pay off, helping us create healthy relationships with our children. Good parents want their children to be happy even when the relationship feels hopeless, and their behavior is off the deep end.

Parents bring their children to therapy, hoping they will at least have a relationship with a therapist. Frequently, the child does not want the current expectations their parent is putting on them, but they do want a relationship with their parent.

Therapy allows parents to face their expectations.

Therapy clears the slate and allows your child to be accessible to become an outstanding, unique, responsible, kind, and exciting individual. There is emotional work on the parents’ part, requiring an understanding of where their own emotions are coming from.

It can be difficult for parents to describe what they want from their child or life. Often, parents internalize all the stress and end up managing health issues, dependence on alcohol or nicotine, depression, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, and weight management issues while claiming out loud, “Everything is great.”

There may even be a season of grieving after you express your expectations and desires for your child and realize they are not going to happen. During that grieving process, it is essential to let go of the expectations and make room for the actual person in front of you.

As a parent, it can be hard to admit that you struggle, just as your child struggles. Your brain says you have everything you ever wanted, so you should be happy. You don’t allow yourself to acknowledge how exhausted you are – a reality with which you can live only for a while.

How I help parents…

Therapy can help parents unpack their childhood experiences, allowing them the opportunity to understand how those experiences shaped who they are. This knowledge enables parents to decide what part of their life they bring forward as expectations for their child.

Ask yourself, “What do I think will be helpful for my child? What in my life was not supposed to carry forward?” 

Therapy allows parents to set aside time to identify the holes in their childhood. Without a careful look at these holes, parents may ask their spouse or children to fix those holes, thus passing on the trauma of demanding someone meet their needs instead of being the provider of unconditional love and care.

Through therapy, parents can better understand the problem areas and strategize to improve the situation. Often, with parents, there may be unresolved trauma, emotional neglect, childhood abuse in their past – or even current issues with alcohol or drugs.

Parents of teens often deal with their own emotionally immature parents. They are sandwiched between their relationship with their parents and their relationship with their teenagers. Even if parents have worked through their childhood experiences, the life demands on them combined with limited support for their approach to dealing with their teenagers may leave them feeling like they are not enough.

Misunderstandings may reflect unresolved parental issues.

Often, teens worry about their parents becoming emotional during family therapy sessions. Parent emotional outbursts do happen in family therapy sessions and sometimes result from parents not working through their healing. Unpacking childhood experiences is essential because otherwise, all the good, bad, and ugly will be passed on to the child.

As I work with parents to face their issues, I use many resources to help them understand how to integrate the positive parts of their childhood with how they deal with their children. Our overall goal is to start with what matters and what is missing.

The key is not to allow past unfinished business to rule how you approach current relationships with your child. Working with me is a good way to address this unfinished business.

Learn to pay it forward – positively.

Yes, teenagers face challenges, and parents worry about their teenager’s moods and reactions to parental guidance. At the same time, teenagers are experiencing a significant transition – not adults but wanting independence.

In many cases, parents’ interactions with their teenagers reflect unresolved issues. Parental therapy can help resolve those issues.

Find the right balance and sustain a loving, working relationship with your teen.

Contact me today for more information on how I can help.