 By: Dr. Erica WollermanAs a therapist who specializes in working with kids, teens, parents, and families, I have noticed a growing and very concerning trend in my work. So many of the kids, teens, and even young adults that I work with are struggling with anxiety, crippling perfectionism, and so much self doubt that they struggle to do things they desperately want to be doing. At the root of so much of this are feelings of incompetence and a huge fear of failure. I have been contemplating this challenge and recent parenting trends and have noticed that this happens more in the families I work with where parents seem to be struggling to let their kids deal with things on their own. Unfortunately, these parents get kind of a bad rap as “helicopter” parents when in fact, they are parents who are simply struggling to know when it is appropriate to let their kid/teen/young adult fail or struggle through something. And the root of this struggle is usually so much love for their little one (who may not be so little anymore) as well as overwhelming fear about what might happen for their kid/teen/young adult if they do not participate so heavily in their lives. This fear is one most parents know well. What if they don’t get into a good college? What if they make choices that screw up their whole life? What if they do something I can’t help them undo? What if they can’t get a good job? And the list just goes on and on. As a result (I believe), we are overdoing it in the parenting department. We are rescuing our kids way too much and then we come to find that our kids seem to need to be rescued. Weird huh. When you look at what happens and what a person will think if they are being rescued from situations, it starts to make sense. When we rescue a person from a situation that they are either capable of handling on their own or almost capable of handling on their own, the message we are giving them is not one of their own ability but one of their need for us to handle things for them. We teach them that they need us and that they can’t do these things on their own. We teach them to ask for help before they need it, before problem solving on their own, and to at all costs avoid struggling with something. Instead, we need to give our kids the following kinds of messages by verbalizing them as well as by our actions in letting them handle most problems on their own:
I could go on and on but I won’t. The point is that we definitely need to help when it is needed. But we are so often confused about when it is needed that we are rescuing way too often, which is not helping our kids/teens/young adults develop into the independent and capable people that we know they are meant to be. I encourage you to trust yourself as a parent and trust your “little one,” however old they may be, that they can figure things out and will benefit from a little struggle and failure along the way. Just like most of us did on our way to becoming independent adults. At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n.
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 By: Dr. Erica WollermanAs a therapist who specializes in parenting and working with kids and teens, emotions and how we handle them is a big topic in my office. One of the common focuses of my work is about helping people understand themselves better, including understanding their emotions. As a therapist, it often may feel obvious to me that this is really important work but I realize that many parents I work with may not realize just how important our relationship with our own emotions is. So, I thought I would share more about why I am so intent on validating emotions, even the ones that seem illogical or frustrating to others. My understanding of people and the world centers on the belief that most people really crave understanding. Understanding both of themselves but also from their loved ones. We all want to know that we are both good enough but also that we are not “crazy” or experiencing something others have not or do not. “Is this normal?” and “I’m not crazy, am I?” are common questions when it comes to how we relate emotionally to the world. Interestingly, our culture seems to work against us in terms of how we relate to our emotions… we get the message that some emotions are “good” and some are “bad,” which means they should essentially be avoided, hidden, or just not talked about. We tend to internalize these ideas and come up with a lot of strategies to avoid our more unpleasant emotions. We might make a lot of jokes, just avoid emotional conversations, find something else to channel our feelings into, or just pretend nothing is bothering us. Unfortunately, while these strategies may seem to work in the short term, they usually stop working when our emotional cup becomes too full usually because of some challenging life event. Divorce, a big move, loss of a loved one, birth of a child, losing or changing jobs, etc. can all be big triggers for experiencing a lot of previously avoided emotion. This is why therapy can be very uncomfortable for people. In therapy, we often ask people to not just identify their feelings, but to share them and learn how to both express and experience them. This is tough for most people, especially the most practiced avoiders! However, the more we can look at our emotions as helpful cues to our environment, rather than judge them as good or bad, the better we are going to be able to respond and cope with unpleasant situations and feelings. The first step in learning how to manage our emotions is simply to accept we have them. As a therapist, this is why it is so important to me that I validate another person’s experience and emotions. I might say something like: “Yes, it makes sense to feel the way you are feeling. I might feel that way too.” This helps us remember that our emotions are a very human part of us and we all have them. They are not some strange, foreign part of us to be scared of, they are a part of us to learn to embrace. And as a parent consultant, this is why it is important to me that we, as parents, learn to validate our child’s experience. By validating their experience and saying, I see you and your feelings and they are not only okay with me, but understandable, we communicate to them that they are seen and heard and not alone. Validation and understanding of emotions can help prevent a situation from escalating, help our kids learn how to experience their emotions rather than engage in unhealthy distraction and coping behaviors, and can help them have a healthy relationship with others. Here are some ways to help you work more emotional understanding into either your relationship with yourself or your child(ren):
Notice that these questions are just geared to help you notice, express, and communicate about feelings. Often, when feelings are “heard,” they dissipate more quickly than if they are resisted, suppressed, or avoided. When we avoid them, they usually get louder to be heard. So, just by listening more intently to ourselves and our children and using curious observation and questions, we can often defuse difficult emotional situations. At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n.  The Dark Side of Parenting Anxiously |
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Thrive Therapy Studio Therapists Offer Child, Teen, Adult, Marriage and Family Psychotherapy Counseling Services in San Diego, California.
