How Do I Resist the Urge to Jump In and Fix Things for My Teenager?

Photo by Meina Yin on Unsplash

I’m guessing you opened this article because you’ve experienced some of these symptoms:

• Living on high alert parenting a teenager or young adult

• Being hyper-aware of your child’s every mood and movement

• Constantly scanning and trying to anticipate all the hazards

• Watching them make choices you know will turn out badly

• Holding a lot of tension and pain in your body

• An inner voice yelling, ‘GET IN THERE RIGHT NOW AND FIX IT.’

• Always waiting for their next crisis.

And then, even though you try to wait patiently – “I will not jump in, I will not tell them what to do, I will trust that it’ll all work out, I will not fix it this time…” - it gets to a point when you can’t take it any longer. The tension is unbearable. Your heart is racing, your mind is spinning, and your shoulders are almost in your ears. It feels physically impossible to stay on standby when you can see what looks like an oncoming train wreck.

You know what has to be done and so you do it.

And you already know this: when you jump in, give your advice and impose your solution, it doesn’t support your teenager’s development and it doesn't improve the trust or understanding between you two.

Take a gentle breath or two.

It's ok, all of us are repeating patterns we KNOW don’t work. And we will continue to do so until we understand what, beneath the symptom, our system is earnestly trying to avoid or ensure for us.

"It has to be done right!"

One of the ingrained conditional beliefs of parents who have become ‘fixers’ sounds something like this: “As long as I keep my kids in the right lane, then I’ll know I’m doing parenting right.”

Danielle described the urge like this: “I feel very strongly that my parenting has to be done right. I’ve got big expectations of myself to parent my kids really well - that’s not what I received and I believe they deserve it. But my sense of responsibility makes me put big expectations on them too, especially my son, to get good marks at school, hang out with the right kind of people, do well at arts and sports and, you know, be upstanding.

“When things go wrong and he gets into some kind of a mess, my heart rate shoots upward and my mind starts running through all the worst-case scenarios. There’s a voice in my head that says that, if he fails, it’ll be my fault and then I feel like I’ll be a failure too.

"And that thought has me automatically grabbing for control. My voice becomes stern, my body gets rigid and I straight out tell him what he has to do - no ifs, ands or buts.”

Danielle’s Practice: What’s True Right Now

Daneille catastrophized when she was thrown into an unexpected situation with her son, like when he failed an assignment or forgot his baseball uniform, so we designed a practice for her to do in lower-stakes situations first, with her walking club. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, while with her friends, she would pay attention to her inner experience when confronted with an uncomfortable or unexpected situation, perhaps an offhand comment or a choosing a different route.

When she noticed her mind scanning for all the possible problems and scrambling for solutions, she would rub her fingertips together as a tangible signal to her internal system that she’s going to do something different from the old, ingrained catastrophizing habit. (This was something Danielle thought would be helpful to her; each of us would choose a different move.)

And then, feeling her fingertips, she asked herself, “What’s true right now?”

After practicing, she reported that she started seeing how far her mind had wandered from the current reality. Each time, she got better at diverting her attention back to the present moment, first to her own experience - her fingertips, the sensation of the muscles in her legs, the labour of her breathing – and then more broadly to where she was walking, who she was with, and the sights and sounds around her.

"I realized that I had been worrying about what might happen if we went on a different trail, not so much in case we ran into hazards, but more because I didn’t want us to end up feeling like we’d screwed up.”

Part 2

Then Danielle decided to practice this in a slightly more intense environment – at her workplace. She said that, when her boss starts describing a new task or her assistant mentions some setbacks, her mind would already be following its well-worn route and playing out worst-case scenarios and looking for acceptable solutions.

“I often worry that my co-workers won’t do it right and we’ll all look bad, and I know I become impatient and brusque. I’m afraid of being seen as a failure at work and then, rather than waiting for them to do it, I jump in and do it myself, even when it’s not my job.”

So, she practiced becoming more aware of the moment when the urge would first enter her body and wiggling her fingers to remember to change her trajectory.

“I found that when I was able to pivot away from panicking and catastrophizing, I could see the situation for what it was, right then and there, instead of so many possibilities jumbled all together. And with things much clearer, I could more easily sense what to do.

“For years, it went: Surprise - shoulders up – unrealistic concerns – jump in with solutions. And often, my solutions weren’t the best. I was just trying to resolve things as quickly as possible and get rid of the tense feeling and my fear of failure.

“Now the sequence is: Surprise – recognition of tension – feel my body – what’s real right now – pause – discern - act. When I take action from here, it’s usually wiser and more effective.”

Part 3

Then Danielle was ready to apply her strengthened skills during interactions with her son and she was soon noticing the same old sequence, her body tensing up and her mind darting off looking for solutions to non-existent scenarios.

“I'm constantly afraid of failing as a parent. When I was a kid, when I didn’t do everything that was expected of me, I was treated badly. My parents were terrible… and I don’t want to be a terrible parent.”

Finally, there it was, the tender wound her system was trying to protect. Why those faithful shoulders were warning her that she might mess up and be hurt and why her mind was quickly and lovingly creating safe routes to avoid this.

And there, too, was Danielle’s true desire: to be a good parent. To have presence of mind in conversations with her son and provide the kind of support he actually needed, which might be doing nothing. To give him room to explore his interests, try things, make mistakes and learn for himself instead of her fear clipping his wings. And to trust his path, which is essential to parenting, whether we like it or not.

We don’t fix our symptoms by silencing them.

Of course, we tell ourselves to just stop scanning for everything that could go wrong, stop coiling our bodies ready to spring into action, and just ignore the voice that’s telling us to jump in and solve it for them.

But that doesn’t work.

What works is slowly, methodically and reverently meeting what the symptom has been trying to guard for you, that deep value or desire, and bringing out the part of you that can express it in a new way - a way that aligns with your true nature and what’s really important to you in your parenting role.

With you on the journey,

Lori

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