Kara sits in her kitchen wondering what she’s doing wrong. Her daughter, Bailey, barely speaks to her. When she comes home, she wafts through the house like a ghost, maybe making eye contact or uttering a few syllables, and then disappearing into her room. No matter how Kara tries to bring her out of her shell, it always backfires.
Bailey’s 16 years old. Like many her age, her inner world contains a lot of self-loathing and anguish. Her teenage brain has decided that the best way she can manage the pain is to hide the seemingly unacceptable parts of herself and, well, just hide her whole self. She spends a lot of time in her room with her headphones on, the walls protecting her from the world’s judging eyes and the music drowning out her vicious inner dialogue.
Upstairs, Kara is in pain too. Being shut out feels like a personal injury, a punch to the gut, a black rock in her heart… a daily reminder of her failure as a mother.
Downstairs, her teenager doesn’t know what to do with all this self-hate and confusion. “Why am I such a loser? Everything I do is wrong. Why did I say that stupid thing? Now everyone knows I’m an idiot. I detest how stupid I am. I’m a nobody. I shouldn’t even exist.”
It’s not that adolescents can’t stand you; it’s that they can’t stand how they feel.
And their response — the eyerolls, contempt, silent treatment, contradiction, yelling — is a reflection of the chaos and despair they’re experiencing inside. They are at war with themselves and what you’re hearing are the clanging swords.
Adolescence really sucks.
And so does parenting adolescents…. I mean, knowing the right thing to do to keep them safe and happy is pretty much the primary goal I hear from mothers. You understand that you’ve been entrusted to raise up another human to fulfill their dreams and purpose.
When they’re little, you do that by following your instincts and learning who they are. But when they’re young adults, you don’t have all the information. And when you try to find out, you’re trying to reach a young person who is unreceptive or hostile. No wonder so many parents take it personally, blame themselves and try to figure out how to correct what they’re doing ‘wrong’.
What’s Too Personally?
We're taking our teen’s behavior too personally when we're telling ourselves that it means that we’re lousy parents. Maybe we don’t say it out loud, but these are the deeper thoughts: “Their arrogance, slovenliness, shyness, inability to hold a job, argumentativeness, bad grades at school, rudeness to grandma, stubbornness, not standing up for themselves, poor decisions, awkwardness …. shows what a bad parent I am.”
And let’s be clear: you take it personally when you find certain traits and actions offensive or unmanageable or believe them to be socially unacceptable. Those are your own interpretations, based on your own life experiences and they may be inaccurate, unrealistic or outdated. That’s your stuff.
Another sign of taking it too personally is when your mind makes quick assumptions about your kid doing something to you. “She left that mess to irritate me!” “He didn’t call just so I would worry!”
Sure, when you read it now, you see how unreasonable these statements are. But when you walk into a filthy bathroom or when it’s 9 p.m. and you don’t know where your teen is, your emotions can have you believing such unfounded conclusions. The truth is that, although they can be inattentive and inconsiderate, most teens aren’t that calculating or tuned in to what we’re feeling. They aren’t doing it to you; that’s your system reacting.
Taking it too personally might also involve:
Believing the harsh things they say about you. “He’s right, I’m a control-freak. I’m really failing at this. I’ve got work harder to stop doing that.”
Apologizing for their angst.
Worrying disproportionately about what others think. “The principal must think that I don’t care.”
Taking the blame when it’s not yours to take. “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand why you were yelling at me.”
Obsessing over recent conversations to the point where it interferes with your daily activities.
How to Stay Separate
If you find yourself frequently taking your adolescent’s characteristics or actions personally, you may need to restore some social/ emotional separation in your relationship. Here are some suggestions:
1 Feel your physical presence.
Touch your body in a way that says, “I am here.” Rub your fingers together, knead your arms and thighs, comb your scalp, bounce, raise and lower your shoulders, stretch your hands over your head, wiggle your hips or whatever simple thing brings you back into your physical self.
“I am here. I am an individual. I am separate from this young adult in front of me.”And if that sentence troubles you, remember that separate doesn’t mean uncaring or unavailable; it just means two separate beings, two different souls, as you certainly are.
2 Visualization.
Visualize you and your young adult in two bubbles of glowing light. The overlap represents your relationship, where your hearts are connected. Your energetic connection. Your blood pulsing through their veins and their ways shaping you. See the balance.
And now picture yourself over in their bubble, taking their behaviour too personally. You’re oversensitive, overreactive and over-involved. You’re confused about what’s them and what’s you because you’re too close. And your unclear perspective has you making the situation more charged than it needs to be.
You belong in your own bubble.
For some parents, the thought of being less involved feels like shirking their responsibilities as a parent or not being loving enough. I would argue that healthy differentiation is a most loving state.
3 Widen your perspective.
Zoom out like a camera to take in more of the situation. Create a simple sentence that includes more of the truth.
For example, instead of, “She left that mess to irritate me,” you might say, “Her messiness isn’t an attempt to irritate me; she’s having difficulty managing her time.” (You can help with that.)“He didn’t call just so I would worry!” could be widened to, “His failure to let me know wasn’t intentional; he’s a distractable adolescent who got caught up with his friends.”
“Their criticism is not about anything necessarily wrong with me; it’s about them not getting what they wanted.”
“Their grades aren’t about my parenting; they are about my child’s comprehension, self-confidence, memory, irregular efforts, etc.”
“His social life is not my fault; he’s the one choosing his friends and get-togethers.”
“When she seems to reject me or hate me, she doesn’t.”
What we observe in our young adults is a window into their inner world — the mucky world of adolescence, where there are feelings they don’t want to feel, thoughts they don’t know how to process, and tender hearts and partially formed brains hatching strategies to cope as best they can.
Practice seeing yourself as separate and resisting the urge to make it about you. Put your love and effort into being clearly in your own lane — accepting who they are right now and holding space for their blossoming, like the lotus rising from the muck, as we all did.
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Photo by Matt Baron-Thompson on Unsplash