How To Connect to What's Real When Your Teenager has Big Emotions

Today’s article is for every parent who has ever unintentionally matched their teenager’s emotions. 

“It's like I absorb her tension.”

“He was really anxious and, within one second, I was anxious too.

“I feel like their moods are steering me.”

“Just knowing how hurt she was, I could feel myself sinking down into where she was.”

There's no denying that pang of motherhood. We felt it when their first cries had our breasts aching and when we saw our toddler’s big tears when someone didn't want to play with them. Our hearts hurt for them.

And now they're almost adults and they come to us mortified about the dumb thing they said in front of everyone, irate at a teacher, despairing about finding a job, hating their body, lying awake freaking out, etc. In an instant, you're anxious too. Your heart rate goes up and your shoulders go up. Your stomach flips over and your forehead aches.

But this is not empathy; it’s emotional enmeshment.

And we all know what happens next: well-meaning parents lose their grounding, become reactive and make things worse instead of better.

Stopping ourselves from getting swept up in their big waves of emotion is an essential skill because adolescence is full of emotions. Your teen feels emotions on a whole new scale (450% more intense than their pre-teens), their body chemistry is changing and their brains are like houses still under construction.

Big emotions are natural when they’re finding their rhythm. What’s required of you is to maintain your own rhythm and not be dragged into theirs.

Is this tension yours or theirs?

Think about a recent emotion-charged situation with your teenager. Was the tension yours or theirs?

You’re feeling calm reading this article and so it's probably obvious to you that the tension was theirs. You know that they were upset about something that had happened to them, not you. But it's not so easy to distinguish their tension from yours during an intense conversation - we’re just not as aware of ourselves when an emotional tornado is swirling.

One of the ways we can help ourselves is to engage our senses to help us differentiate ourselves from our kid. Our senses help us land in ourselves and stay in our own experience and our own emotional landscape.

Engage your senses to separate facts from feelings.

When your teenager is expressing big feelings and you feel yourself taking on their emotions, blink your eyes and look more closely. What do you see? What are the basic physical facts?

“I'm sitting on the couch and they are standing by the bookshelf.”

Already you’re identifying that there's a physical space between the two of you. That's a clue to your system that you aren't in their experience - you’re a separate human being in your own experience.

This might sound obvious right now, but it's not so obvious when your teenager is screaming that you don't understand them and you never will, it’s all your fault, etc., etc.

“I'm sitting on the couch and they are standing by the bookshelf.”

Make sure you're not including any interpretations like “I'm sitting here calmly and they're over there being a jerk/ drama queen/ big baby.” Just stick with the facts.

Once your system registers that you’re having your experience and they’re having theirs, then you can identify your emotions as separate from theirs. “She’s feeling anxious and scared; I’m feeling confused, fragile, shocked, hurt, protective... (something different).”

~

When we feel the pangs of motherhood, we automatically follow them to see if we can support them. But we don't have to go into their experience with them. We don’t have to take on what they're feeling to be helpful. We don't have to fix their problem or carry the weight for them to be good mothers.

What I know for sure is that, when you’re not tangled up in their mood, you have more capacity to really listen to them, validate their experience and empathize with how it made them feel. You don’t take on what’s not ours, or solve anything, or take offence or make meaning that isn’t there. Instead, even when your teenager has intense feelings, you can be grounded in our own experience and engage your best parenting skills.

Most importantly, when you stay in your own body and your own rhythm, you can do something very beautiful: be there with them while they have their reaction.

That’s what they need most.

That’s what will strengthen your connection.

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