How to Stop Walking on Eggshells with Your Depressed Teen
Parenting a teen is a challenge in and of itself, and when you’re parenting a teen struggling with mental health, it can feel even more scary and overwhelming. If your teen has experienced depression, expressed suicidal thoughts, cut themselves, or even expressed not wanting to live, it can start to feel like you’re walking on eggshells.
Worrying about and reading into every behavior, comment or event and fearing the worst is common among parents with teens struggling with depression. Maybe even just reading this brings up physical tension for you, heaviness in your chest, or panic.
Trying to allow for freedom, trust and development in your adolescent, while important, can feel impossible when you’re faced with fear and anxiety. When it comes to family dynamics, an individual’s mental health doesn’t just affect the individual, but the entire family. This is why family therapy is so important.
Parenting strategies are helpful in teaching new ways to communicate and maintain physical and emotional safety for teens, but it is also important to learn to understand your own experience as a parent in this journey to healing and attending to the relationship between you and your child, and even you and your partner.
That’s often where I come in with family therapy, as a therapist in Westchester NY. Often when parents get to my door, their teen has already been in treatment to some degree, whether it’s individual therapy, DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy), Intensive Outpatient, a Partial Hospitalization Program or sometimes even after a residential treatment center.
Here are some of the most commonly discussed dilemmas parents face and strategies we use together to help address them.
Dilemma: Frustration with your teen for doing things that usually lead to them feeling more anxious or depressed.
As a parent, you see it all play out, from the post on social media, to the comments from peers, leading to intense feelings of sadness, anger and rejection. Or the amount of time they spend in their room, the little amount of time they spend outside or exercising, and the prolonged or more intense depression they feel as a result.
It’s so hard to let it all play out. Often parents end up intervening at some point, leading to more conflict, intense emotions and your teenager feeling like you don’t trust them.
Strategy: Differentiate between feelings and facts.
That fear and worry you are experiencing, may or may not be just justified. When I say justified, I do not mean valid. They are completely valid feelings. When I say justified, I mean: is there something in that moment that justifies the intensity of emotions you are experiencing as a parent at that moment?
When we feel emotions so intensely, some times we start to believe they are facts. That because we feel so much fear, there is actually a safety issue at hand. Take a moment and “check the facts.”
If your emotions are truly justified by a safety risk, then that may be a sign you need to step in and take action. If it’s not justified and your fear and worry stem more as a result of past experiences or your own “stuff”, then pause and give your teen some space to use new skills, learn to tolerate distress and build internal motivation to change.
Dilemma: “Do I allow them to go to the sleepover, party, social event? Are they stable enough? Strong enough? Do I need to be around them 24/7? I feel like I have no social life.”
It can be so hard after witnessing your teen express their feelings of depression and hopelessness, to leave them alone for even 30 minutes.
Now, if you’ve been instructed by your child’s therapist to follow a certain plan, by all means follow that. And If they’ve just recently expressed these feelings, reach out to their therapist, call 911 or do what you know is safest for your teen.
If you’ve gotten past the point of immediate safety concerns and are trying to rebuild trust and move towards healing, I recommend considering this:
Strategy: Remind yourself that you cannot possibly meet every need your child has and that’s okay.
You are a parent. Not a therapist (or maybe you technically are a therapist, but you’re not your child’s therapist). Not an expert on all things teen or even all things adult. You are human and you have limits.
You need to take care of yourself, in whatever way that means for you.
This will benefit your teen. You’ll be more emotionally available to them. You’ll be less on edge and anxious around them, allowing them to feel more at ease and strong. When you begin to show less anxiety (whether you think you’re showing it or not, if you’re feeling it they are too), your teen begins to feel like they are capable of managing their emotions.
Dilemma: “Am I making the right decisions? I feel like I can’t trust myself anymore.”
If you’re reading this, my guess is that you most likely are not parenting without lack of information. It can feel really overwhelming when you’re taking in information from all directions. The school, your teen’s therapist, maybe your therapist, a mom friend who had a teen experience depression or other mental health diagnosis, an internet search, social media, the list goes on.
Strategies:
1) If you can, limit how much you intake.
Even from me. Even when sources are reputable and professional, it’s usually semi-general recommendations and doesn’t consider every single aspect of your situation, child and family.
2) Be Kind and Avoid Blaming or Shaming Yourself
There’s often so much blame and shame for parents around their children’s mental health. I hear all too often “I should have noticed earlier. I missed the signs. It runs in my family.” While there may be some truth to these statements, you are NOT to blame.
Don’t shame yourself. Be kind and gentle with yourself. As gentle as you’re most likely trying to be with your teen.
Dilemma: Dealing with family tension and the “elephant in the room.”
Sometimes, when a child experiences depression, individuals in the family worry about upsetting them so they “walk on eggshells” to avoid potential conflict. Sometimes family members avoid the individual all together, not because they don’t care about them, but because they don’t know what to say.
Finding an effective way to talk about mental health within the family can be challenging. Finding a way to meet everyone's needs when one member is particularly sensitive and vulnerable, can be a challenge.
Strategy: Be patient and flexible.
Just like individuals develop and change over a lifetime, so do families. When things within a family unit begin to shift, the other members of the family may begin to feel lonely, scared or confused. Sometimes this can come off as resistance or anger.
As a parent, be empathic, patient and flexible with yourself and your teen, and also the rest of your family. Make sure to spend some time with other family members. Encourage neutral conversations between your teen and other family members. And seek out support if needed, from a parent coach, a family therapist or your own therapist.
Reach out to a Professional.
Creating a safe space for everyone in your family when a child is facing depression, anxiety, or another mental health diagnosis, can feel exhausting and frustrating. There are resources available for parents and families.
f you’re in New York and struggling to find resources, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or your child’s therapist. If you’d like to learn more about family therapy with me, click here, I am currently accepting new clients. And if you’d like to follow along for more free information and resources, please join my mailing list.