 This episode was prerecorded as part of a live continuing education webinar. On-demand CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register at allceus.com slash counselor toolbox. I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on Child Development 101 Working with Teenagers. So we're going to continue to review the developmental tasks that children accomplish at this stage. We'll examine how teens' thinking patterns are different than both pre-teens and adults, because they're not quite to that adult stage yet. So the way we interact with them needs to be a little bit different. We'll explore ways to assist teens in enhancing their self-esteem. Developmentally, they've gone through a lot of Erickson stages at this point. So this stage of identity development is really kicking in strong. And it's a longer stage than many of the others. And then we'll also review Colberg's theory of moral development, which we touched on last time, because the formal stage of moral development really starts at about age nine and progresses from there. So starting off with Colberg, remembering that conventional morality starts at nine plus years. And they're internalizing the moral standards of their valued adult role models. Now let's think about the difference between middle schoolers and high schoolers and who their valued adult role models are. I know working with teenagers, when I was in Florida, we had a facility that housed 16 boys ages 14 to 18. And we had them for six months at a time. And their interests, their values, the people that they idolized, was very different than the children who were 13 and under. So it's really interesting to take a look at what changes as far as who they're valuing and what they're valuing at this point. Their parents can still be valued adult role models just because their teenagers doesn't mean their parents automatically drop off the radar. Parents that are involved in their kids life will be an adult role model. And the strength of the relationship really impacts a lot of how much the child or the teenager looks toward the parent for advice for feedback for whatever. And we'll talk a little bit later about how with parents and at this stage, especially teenagers look more to what parents do than what they say. So parents who are telling their children to do one thing but doing the exact opposite themselves are going to have a more difficult time with a lot of their teenagers because they're going to be like, well, you told me I couldn't but then you went and did it anyway. The media, huge source of adult role models that these young people may start to value. Now remember they're developing their sense of identity. So they're looking and they're looking at these media moguls, they're looking at people who are popular and they're going, yeah, I want to be like that person. Or I think this person has these redeeming qualities and I want to be like that, but I don't like these other qualities and they're trying to figure out who they want to be like and they're looking at people that as our as a society, we've sort of elevated and said, these are important people for one reason or another. As parents as caregivers as clinicians, we can also help youth explore what is it about this particular person that you find so fascinating that you think is what values do they embody that you think are good ones. And is there anything that you don't like, encouraging them to look at it from a more objective perspective, maybe, and the community, not just the individual if you want to think about broth and Brenner's socio ecological model. You're home, what they see on TV, what the parents do what the caregivers do what the immediate family does, then you have the school. But then you also have the larger community in, you know, maybe your county, if you want to kind of look at it that way. What kind of messages are the youth getting from the people in the area that you live in. And those are all things that kids are going. Yeah, I like that and taking that. And I think that's stupid. So I'm going to leave that alone. And yeah, they're kind of harsh when they make their judgments it's not. Well, that's a different idea. And then, with teenagers, I find that it's important to kind of challenge, is it a bad idea, or a bad thought or a bad moral, or is it different than one you have. What makes it bad versus good, as opposed to just different and encouraging them to really look at these things and we'll get to a book in a few minutes that I really found that when I was doing this presentation that I really, really like. Authority is internalized but still not questioned. Many teenagers are still internalizing. And I use the term authority pretty loosely authority comes from their valued adult role models. So if they don't value someone's opinion, then they may not be taking in any anything from them. And it's important to understand that authority is all relative. They're going to give more credence to the authority of people whom they respect and they want to be like. We want to encourage them to start independently and that that analyzing shoulds and musts, I should do this or I have to have this, or I have to do this. And that's a question that I ask a lot of my own children as well as when I worked at the facility. I would ask the youth that were there, who said you have to you know what is it that is compelling you to do this. And is it something you believe you need to do. We want to encourage youth to explore and discuss social problems. Encourage them to start looking at the meta concepts they're able to use deductive reasoning really well right now so we want to start encouraging them to apply that and say okay, there's this big social problem out here poverty, you know, or addiction or whatever it is bullying three big ones that are very prominent for a lot of teens that you can say okay there's this big thing we don't want it to be here how do we fix it and encourage them to start brainstorming. The solutions they can't come up with may not be workable, but at least they're thinking about it and thinking about what's important is poverty relief important. What are the effects of, you know, the Obamacare on people getting insurance and what do you think the rules and regulations revolving around Obamacare are and what impact are they having. For example, people that are not employed cannot get subsidies from from Obamacare. So you can look at it and go well you want them to work, but you can also look at it from the other perspective of what if they can't get work. What if they're not able to get a job because of physical disability because of their addiction because of something else. And there are a lot of issues the way our disability system is right now that keeps people from getting disability. So we want to encourage them to look at all perspectives and start looking at some of these bigger issues because these are going to be our future leaders. When they start doing that, they're going to identify differences in ideology between themselves and their friends and other people. So encourage them to embrace and accept other people and their and their values, even if they're different and say, okay, you know, I don't agree with you on that, but it doesn't mean we have to not be friends and encourage them to be able to rationally and reasonably discuss their viewpoints. Obviously, you don't want to get them started on a lot of hot button topics because I don't want them going to school and going, hey, what do you think about and, you know, really stoking a fire that doesn't need to be stoked but you can start hypothes hypothesizing about broader global issues. Reasoning is based on the norms of the peer group and they're still trying to develop these good interpersonal relationships and maintain the social order. So they want their friends to like them. They want their friends to be happy with them. But they also don't want to feel guilty and they want to uphold the law. So, you know, we see a lot of times in with teens, them wanting to kind of try to break the law. And there are some, whether it's skipping school, it doesn't have to be anything major speeding. My best friend's son got pulled over for driving 103 on the interstate. So, you know, breaking the law is something that they may be tempted to do. So do they have friends that encourage them to push the envelope or do they have friends that go, that's just not even a risk that's worth taking. As clinicians, as parents, we can encourage people to examine their motivations when they do things. Was it because you didn't want to disappoint someone, or was it because you felt it was something that either you could get away with, or you needed to do. As adults, when you're working with adults, remember this stage starts at nine and goes on indefinitely. When we're working with our clients, we still want to continue to encourage them to ask themselves, who says, What do I personally believe about this? And if my values or opinions are different than those around me, what does that mean? And sometimes that can be a big issue for even our adult clients because they are seeking external validation. And we're going to talk about ways we can help them not need external validation as much and have a stronger self-esteem. So here's the book that I found. It's called Moral Questions in the Classroom. And it's actually not what I thought it was initially where they had different questions you could pose, is actually talking about how when teachers and clinicians and parents, you can extrapolate, propose moral questions, we often ask them, but then we have a right answer in the back of our mind. And so youth can provide their own answers, but oftentimes we shut them down and criticize or always play the devil's advocate without giving any credence to their viewpoint, which makes them not want to hypothesize. We want to encourage them to start thinking about who they are, where they're going to be, what they're going to stand for when they get older. We still have those biological needs in Maslow's hierarchy, so they're still trying to fit in. They want to be friends with everybody, or at least a certain peer group. They want to figure out who they are, and this is a stressful period of time trying to do that. I mean, think about if you, well, we've all started a new job. When you start a new job, how stressful is it trying to figure out how everything works and what the procedures are and the social pecking order, if you will, that's going on in the organization where you're at? Well, multiply that times 10 because it's not just school. It's where do I fit everywhere? So this is exhausting for these youth. They need to pay attention to their sleep and the nutrition and get enough sunlight. Too often I see adolescents, and this was even way back when, when I was at the treatment facility with the youth, they didn't want to go outside. They wanted to stay in and play video games, and we forced them to go outside when the weather was nice and do outdoor recreation and everything. But sometimes youth need a little bit of a nudge to pause the game and go do something outside, get some sunlight. They need medical care. You know, you may start seeing some things come out in terms of psychological issues, depression, anxiety. You also may see some ADD characteristics. So making sure that their medical stuff is all in alignment to prevent as many problems as possible. Remembering some of the other presentations that I've done, and we've talked about the fact that there are a lot of symptoms of psychological disorders that are actually caused or can be caused by physiological issues. And since youth are growing so fast and spurt here and spurt there, it's not hard for things to get a little wonky physiologically. So if something starts going wrong, ensuring that they're getting checked up by their primary care physician and getting exercise. It releases serotonin. It helps people keep from getting achy and stiff and all that kind of stuff from being stuck in a chair on the couch or wherever they're at. It's important to encourage them to exercise and destigmatize exercising. It doesn't have to be the gym. What do they like to do that's fun? It can be playing with the dog. It can be going in their room and shutting the door, putting on their headphones and dancing around like a crazy person. I don't care what they're doing as long as they're up and moving around. Safety. Now this becomes more prominent because teens are getting a lot more independence at this point. So we need to ensure they're safe from emotional abuse. If they've got friends and bullying falls in here, but it's not just bullying. If they've got friends who are emotionally abusive, if they've got relationships because they're starting to date now that are emotionally abusive. We want them to understand what that looks like, but we also want to understand them to understand what it means to be emotionally abusive to themselves. When they are telling themselves that they're stupid and they're no good and they're a failure, whatever they tell themselves. We want to make sure that they understand that emotional abuse doesn't just come from other people saying it to you right now. It can be something somebody said to you five years ago, or it can be something that you're saying to yourself. And then we want to encourage them to understand the impact of emotional abuse in terms of keeping them feeling anxious and depressed and hopeless. We want to empower them. We want them to feel like they can be successful. Physical and sexual assaults, again, with more freedom comes more risk. So what does this mean? This means educating about date rape, educating about being able to set boundaries and say no. It means educating about what is a safe situation and how do you know when something may be unsafe. Sometimes it's really obvious and your spidey senses are going, don't go there. Kids are pretty good at picking up on that. But sometimes it's not so obvious. For example, going to a frat party and starting to drink. Is that a safe situation? And if you're going to do that, how can you make it a safe situation, like have a buddy go with you? But making sure that they're aware of the dangers that are out there and not everybody has good intentions. Which takes us to drug and alcohol. Drugs and alcohol, teens experiment. Let's just be realistic. The adolescent brain, and this also goes with other addictions, including porn. The adolescent brain is not as resilient to the influx of these addictive behaviors. The surges of dopamine that happen have a greater impact. And the research has shown that the impact on the adolescent brain is much stronger for any kind of addictive behavior. So we want them to understand that, yeah, you may experiment, but sometimes with some drugs, when you experiment, one time's all it takes. And that throws your brain chemistry enough out of whack that when you start to sober up, it starts to hurt really bad. Or you really want to go back there again. So you use again and help them understand how addiction can start from either chasing that high or from finally experiencing relief. I saw a post on Facebook a couple of days ago that this guy said, you know, addicts really aren't stupid. They're brilliant. Because somebody had said addicts were not so smart. And he said they're brilliant. They figured out one thing that can help them deal with 128 problems. How awesome is that? I mean, it's not necessarily a helpful way, but it makes sense when you look at it. If they're hurting, they know how to make the hurt go away. It doesn't matter what's causing the hurt. So I digress. Drugs and alcohol, we want to help them understand that, yes, they can produce a euphoria, but they also have side effects. And is it worth taking the risk? And then we move on to love belonging and self-esteem, which on Maslow's hierarchy, love and belonging come below self-esteem. And I used to have a hard time with that because I'm like, well, if you can't, if you don't feel good about yourself, if you don't love yourself, then how can you love anybody else? But then I started thinking about it from a developmental perspective. And it occurs to me that a child having love and belonging in their family of origin helps support the development of their self-esteem, aha, hence the pyramid. So to review real quickly, love, belonging and self-esteem and reciprocal determinism, which, you know, I had to throw a bunch of big words in here just because it means that if you're feeling love and belonging, then you're going to feel good about yourself. And if you feel good about yourself, you're going to do things that encourage love and belonging. You're going to improve your relationships. If you don't feel good about yourself, a lot of times it hurts relationships. So we want to make sure we create an environment that continues the momentum of self-esteem building. The initial stages of development. Trust versus mistrust is the first one where the child learns to identify their feelings and learns that they can trust other people to be there. That's kind of belonging. Autonomy is your next step. And the child learns, I'm lovable even if I make mistakes. Remember, this is potty training, so there are going to be some mistakes. But it's not a huge crisis and the child learns that, you know, it's okay to try things and it's okay to be have a different opinion or want to do things independently. My caregiver won't reject me. Belonging. Then we move on to initiative. The child starts to assert independence in elementary school. I can do things by myself, but I can still rely on others. So the child knows that they can venture out, but then they have a home base where they belong, where they're loved, regardless of whether they make a mistake or not. Then industry is kind of your middle school years. I can succeed at things that I try, but I'm still acceptable if I fail. So the child has experienced, in theory, in an ideal situation, unconditional positive regard, unconditional love and belonging, regardless of whether they made a mistake. And, you know, they were always able to come back to a safe home base that said, okay, let's dust off the knees and get back up and figure out how to do it again. So now we're on to identity versus role confusion. So they have this safe home base, but at 12 to 18, what are kids trying to do? Hopefully not 12, but as they get into high school, they're starting to try to assert their independence, which can come out really strong as a complete rejection, or it can come out a little bit more gradually. So kids are trying to figure out, youth are trying to figure out where they fit in. One activity you can do, and unfortunately because of all the copyright stuff, I can't play the song, but I just can't wait to be king by the lion king. It talks about how he wants to assert his own independence, and you can take the lyrics and you can have people try to relate to, you know, what is it that this little lion is going through and how does it parallel, kind of what you're going through. Believe it or not, Disney goes a long way. Pinocchio is wonderful in addiction settings, but we want to help people search for their sense of personal identity through their exploration of their values, not just I am me, never really thought about what I stood for, we want to encourage them to know. So then when they're making decisions, when they're making choices and this goes back to acceptance and commitment therapy. They can choose actions that get them closer to being the kind of person or doing the kind of things that they value. We also want to remember that there are a lot of social influences during this time remember parents are kind of dropping to the background, because they're trying to form an identity and a place within their peer group. Which is great, but sometimes it's hard to figure out what that looks like. And again, another Disney song a whole new world from Aladdin. Encourage them to look at it in terms of a whole new world as an independent person, not necessarily with someone else at first. But I'm in this whole new world, trying to figure out where I belong and what a rush it is. What does this look like for them. How are things different for them now that they're in high school versus middle school. And you can also talk about it in terms of a whole new world with these new friends and these new responsibilities and this new freedom. What is this like, and how does it add extra stress but how does it empower them and make them feel excited about what's to come. Remembering that your social influences help them through their physical pubertal changes and it's important that they have other friends that are kind of going through the same thing and they can go yeah this kind of really thanks. Social support from their peers will help normalize whatever turmoil is going on, and it also helps them develop their value system, which takes us to the mirror. Their identity formation again is going to be largely based on their peer group. So what they see around them is often what they internalize. If they are hanging out if they are developing a peer group with a negative peer group. You know the first thought is, well we got to make that go away. But if you've been around teenagers you know that that's a lot easier said than done so it's more important to start talking with the child about the youth about what exactly is it that this peer group brings to you and what are their values. What is it that they support what kinds of things are they encouraging you to do that make you do things that are encouraging you to become more who you want to be. Which takes us to values clarification and what is it that you want and sometimes they will start to back away from their peer group on their own at this point. There are also a lot of teens who have multiple peer groups, you can have your school peer group, you can have your extracurricular peer group, you can have your church or synagogue peer group. So there may be a lot of different peer groups with conflicting values that they've got to try to rectify and well when I'm here I feel this way and when I'm here. I, I feel and think this way and so what is it that I really feel and think. As I said they're more attuned to what we do than what we say at this point, whether it's a parent, a caregiver, a teacher, a coach, they're looking, whether they intend to or not they're looking for inconsistencies. So and they're trying to become independent which may lead to reactive rebellion, the tighter we try to hold on, the more we try to control what they're going to do, the more they push. So it's a fine balance, and it's going to be different with every with every child and with every adult that we work with to help them figure out how to get that independence. Think about some adult people that you've worked with adult clients who may not have really have a social support system may not have a social group and may not have either bonded with their initial family, or ever cut. Not, I don't want to say cut ties but become independent from them, where they're still controlled in large part by their family of origin, which culturally in some situations is 100% appropriate. For other people, it's simply because they haven't figured out how to become independent because there's so much investment within the family. So characteristics of high self esteem and when we go through these I want you to think why would these be missing in somebody with low self esteem. Remember self esteem is how you feel about yourself and whether you feel confident and capable and the ability to handle positive and negative emotions. Ideally, this is resolved in the trust and autonomy stages. So they've learned, you know, from knee high to a grasshopper that, you know, sometimes things are not going to go their way, and but they've learned how to deal with it. When you take a kid to the doctor, and they get a shot. Yeah, that's never fun. And they cry and they get angry, but then they learn how to get over it we teach them how to self soothe and how to move past it. Act independently, they're starting to develop initiative. So when they were growing up when they were on the playground when they were, you know, when they were two and three trying to learn how to potty train or dress themselves, or they supported in that. If not, then they may not want to take initiative now. If during their formative years that wasn't rewarded or reinforced. Worse yet, if it was always squelched, then they may not feel confident and confident enough to take initiative. Assuming responsibilities for successes and failures is that industry phase when they're starting to try different things and they're going to fail at some, but they're willing to say, I did that for the better for the worse I did that. If it's a success. If it's a failure, what can I learn from it. They're able to tolerate frustration and failure and take pride in personal accomplishments. Now this is more working towards identity, because in this identity phase remember they've got all their peers that they feel are looking at them 24 7365. Whether that's true or not. You know, you could argue but they feel like they're in the spotlight all the time. And all their peers have opinions and if they're trying to fit in and develop this, you know, social relationship. If they have a personal accomplishment. What does that mean is it going to be accepted by the peer group or not. You know, maybe they're embarrassed that they got a 1600 on their SAT or maybe they're because it doesn't fit with their peer group norms. If they form this self identity, they'll be able to take pride in their personal accomplishments, regardless of whether it's a norm in the peer group or not they may just be like, well, I did it and I'm proud of it and you know, moving on. Rejoice in others accomplishments and being okay not being the center of attention. And again this is falls into that identity area where if somebody falls back and they're not the center of attention. It doesn't make them feel uneasy. It doesn't make them feel nervous because someone else is getting validation and they aren't at this particular moment. It's encouraging people to look for why is it awesome to rejoice in others accomplishments. What do you get out of that. How can you feel good and what values does that support when you are supportive of other people's and their successes. Accept and give constructive feedback and the emphasis is on constructive, but kids learn this in in middle school in elementary school they start learning the difference between constructive and destructive feedback. So they're developing that, but this is still true in the identity formation phase. They figure out who they are so they get this feedback and will assume it's constructive. And then they've got to decide. What do I do with this. How does this fit in with how I view myself as a person that can be daunting for an adult, let alone a teenager. They will attempt new tasks and challenges that are presented to them, you know, up when they were little, they were trying new things and you know learning new things. Now, more difficult tasks are being presented more public tasks are being presented. But someone who has an established sense of identity and high self esteem can say, I'll try it. I might not might not succeed but I will sure give it my best shot. And then they feel empowered. They feel capable. They feel like, you know, I can try it and you know what if I fail, I can rely on other people to help me out because they've learned that other people will be there even if they're not perfect. And they're able to offer assistance to others because they figured out who they are. So they're not needing to be picked up and elevated by other people all the time they can reach out to others and go, let me help you out. So low self esteem, big one is need for external validation because they need somebody else to tell them, you're okay. You're a good person, which tells me they, for some reason did not form that idea about themselves when they were younger. And again, think about how many adult clients we've worked with who have abandonment fears and don't feel competent or have any sort of sense of self efficacy. So let's think about how this must have developed. Now, sometimes, I mean, don't get me wrong with adults. Sometimes there can be some major crisis, or all of a sudden there's a cascade of things that happen, and they lose their their confidence. In teenagers, a lot of times we see that it's a progressive developmental thing where they never developed a sense of who they were, or they never appreciated the fact that they are okay for who they are. One of these things can be a failure to understand their self and complementarity. Not everybody is the same sometimes it's a yin and a yang. So helping them appreciate the differences in their friends appreciate the differences in their siblings and how that they may be different than other people but how that's not bad. It's just different. And a lot of times it means that they're bringing something the other person doesn't have. And this can you can go through temperament on this and really look at some of the different dimensions, introverts versus extroverts. Extroverts like to think things out. They like to talk while they're thinking things out and solve problems while they're talking and they're very energetic and they can kind of be all over the place sometimes. They do a lot of things. Superficially, they have 15 hobbies that they're interested in the introvert likes to reflect but they also do things really in depth. So you may have an introvert who takes a problem ponders it and learns everything they can about it. And that doesn't necessarily mean they conflict. It just means they do it a little bit differently. The good thing is they balance each other out. So this person with 15 hobbies may encourage this person with one really intense interest. They may do that one together, but also hey let's try this over here. So it balances. It's not such a bad thing. And we'll go through these more in the upcoming webinars sensing versus intuitive sensing people are details intuitive people are broad strokes. You need somebody to do the frame of the puzzle and somebody to help figure out where all the other pieces go. I'm the frame person. I have to do the frame first I have to have a big picture of where it's going. And I won't have to but I prefer much prefer to have the puzzle box in front of me so I can see what it's supposed to look like. Thinking versus feeling is looking at laws and rules versus ethics. We know from clinical practice you have to have both they balance each other out or they work together harmoniously. And then time management being very very structured or being very very spontaneous. Again spontaneous person can pull this really structured person out of their shell a little bit and the really structured person can keep the spontaneous person on track and keep them from just kind of going off and doing whatever whenever and failing to get other things done. So encouraging youth to understand their personal strengths and talents and their values two songs again from Aladdin to my absolute favorite movie friend like me and Prince Ali. I like friend like me just because I think it's one of the best songs Robin Williams ever did but it the genies talking about how you've never had a friend like me and these are all the wonderful things I can do for you. And Prince Ali he's going to going to the castle to try to win Jasmine's love trying to prove why he's worthwhile. Now, you know, proving wise worthwhile don't really want to necessarily encourage people that they have to prove that, but he was well aware of his strengths. So what are your strengths just like Prince Ali had his. What do you bring to the table what can you do for your friends, like the genie could sometimes you know if you have like a two or three hour group. It's fun to watch the movie and then talk about the parallels between some of these characters and the youth life it's very much more non threatening than going through the standard clinical stuff. This steam leads to fears of failure rejection isolation, which are some of our basic fears, you know if you don't feel good about yourself, then you need other people to tell you you're okay and if I failed and they may reject me. And if they reject me I'm going to be alone forever. And if I'm alone forever and I can't change any of this then I'm powerless. I'm getting overwhelmed just saying it. So you can see how that would cause high anxiety and depression. It fluctuates until the person's self esteem gets stronger, which is what we want to do we want to help them figure out what are your values and why are you awesome. Put on top of this as if they didn't have enough to deal with hormone changes, which, you know boys and girls have major hormone changes during their teen years, that adds, you know, a lot to their emotional reactivity. They're going through rapid growth, so they may require more sleep and sometimes they may not sleep as well because they're achy and, you know, quirky. So they may be more irritable. And they still lack a larger frame of reference. They've been on this planet for 16 years. And think about how much of that 16 years they really have a lot of experiences with versus they were in diapers. They have as much of a frame of reference as we do to say, you know, in the big scheme of things, not a big deal. Everything's a big deal to them. So what do we do to build their self esteem? Help them figure out what they want. Encourage them to set smart goals, specific, measurable, something realistic and time limited. And figure out what it is as we go through it. Make sure the goals are specific enough that somebody else knows what they are, and it's something that can be done achievable. That was it. Something that can be done in a reasonable period of time. We don't want to set six month goals or year goals for a teenager. Let's set what are you going to do this week or this month? So there are some goals like graduate high school that are way out there. But right now, you need to get through biology. You need to get through this semester of biology. So what do we need to do to get through this semester? We'll worry about the rest of it after we get through this semester. Helping them walk through setting these goals, measurable. So what does it mean that you want to be successful in school? What does success mean? You will be president of the student council. You'll be quarterback on the football team. What does it mean to you? Achievable. Make sure it's something they can do. If they're 14 or 15 years old and have never taken, you know, a gymnastics lesson in their life and they want to be on the next Olympic gymnastics team, probably not real achievable. We want to make sure we keep it realistic. What can they do? And then time limited, again, keeping it in a time frame where they're going to get rewards from it. We want to make sure that they have small goals so they get small, frequent rewards. So let's take biology, for example. They need to get through this semester. But what comes before the semester ends? There's probably four or six tests. Okay. So our first goal is going to be to pass the first test with a grade of C or above, you know. The next goal would be to pass the next test with, you know, maybe stick with C or above, but encourage them to have progressive successes. So they realize that, you know, they can do this if they don't get overwhelmed by looking at everything they've got to study for the final. So if you just worry about studying chapters one through three, it's more doable. Encourage them to write about their strengths, good traits, achievements and successes. It doesn't have to be something they share. Most teens don't want to share this stuff with you, but they need to do it. Positive self-talk doesn't help if it falls on deaf ears. So you link in your class for compassion-focused therapy, and it does talk about why CBT doesn't work for everybody. Some people have difficulty being kind to themselves and believing that they're okay, because they've heard so many negative things for so long. So telling them to tell, telling them to tell themselves, I'm good enough and I'm smart enough. No, it's not going to work. They're going to just feel like they're reciting a skit out of Saturday Night Live. We want them to actually believe it. So instead of just random positive self-statements, I am a good person because and have them list three reasons. So objective evidence. Encourage them to develop balanced core beliefs and all of these links that are blue on here, you can click on in the PDF. It will take you to worksheets. Hopefully this one will. Yep. Improving self-esteem. The Center for Clinical Interventions, I've brought this up before this particular site. Again, this is a wonderful workbook for improving self-esteem. And developing balanced core beliefs is one of the activities that they offer. Identifying their negative core beliefs and adjusting them to be less negative, but also identifying their positive core beliefs and enhancing those. And it takes them, let's see, this is a 12-page workbook that they can go through. So it's pretty comprehensive. It does well for several groups at least. Build body and self-acceptance. Again, it's from another workbook from that same site. It is really helpful in helping teens start to accept themselves for who they are and what they look like because there's a lot of emphasis in the teen years and beyond on appearances. So encouraging them to develop self-acceptance. Building assertiveness. How can you set boundaries effectively, not only with your peers, but also with your parents? And how do you respond to criticism? Because some teens and some adults, even if it's constructive criticism, because their self-esteem is low generally, they feel very threatened if anybody gives them any constructive feedback because they're afraid that they're going to be rejected because they weren't perfect. So we want to help youth understand how to effectively communicate. Thinking about dialectical behavior therapy, interpersonal effectiveness is a big one. So we want to enhance some of those skills. More causes of stress. Time management. We have difficulty managing our time as adults. Teens also have difficulty managing time. Looking at some of the time drains and figuring out how to address them is one step. You know, maybe the computer, it's maybe Facebook, maybe games, maybe something else. So setting a timer so the computer goes off. Doing what you need to do to address your time. You can also identify what has to be done. And I have clients write down everything that has to be done this week. And then we go through that list and we separate it. This has to be done or there will be significant negative consequences. I'd like to get this done this week and if I get to it, pile. This has to be done this week or there will be significant negative consequences in adult life are things like paying the bills. Eating. You know, you need to eat dinner. For youth doing homework, it's going to be one that has to be done. Things that you like to get done, you know, although a parent may disagree, cleaning your room may take a back seat to studying for a biology lab. So figuring, helping you figure out how to prioritize is huge because they haven't had to up until now. Most teens haven't. It will benefit them later in life. Peer pressure. And this is true for adults and teenagers. Our social circle tends to impart certain pressure on us to do certain things to kind of fit in or to go along. So, and it can be something very innocuous like we're all going to the movies. You need to go to the movies with us or we go out every Friday night. This is just a ritual that we do. But it can also be something like using alcohol and drugs or whatever. So encouraging them to figure out what things they're good with and the things they're not. How do you say no, how do you assertively back away from it. Parental expectations. As parents, caregivers, teachers, coaches, we can inadvertently add a lot of stress to teens lives because we see, we have so much more perspective or background or whatever. We may see a bright future for this for this child in XYZ career or XYZ sport and start pushing them because we feel like they can achieve it because it's something we could achieve for getting their teenagers. They don't have the same coping skills. They're doing a whole lot of other growing and other stuff. That takes up some of their time and energy and they are not little adults yet. So parental expectations can get a little bit overbearing sometimes and parental expectations that go against what the child or youth wants. You know, sometimes, and I used the example last week about, you know, maybe in this particular family, it's expected that little Tommy is going to grow up and be an attorney like his dad. So he's groomed for that from the time he's a little kid. And there's a lot of expectations put on little Tommy revolving around that, but Tommy doesn't want to be a lawyer. Tommy wants to be a football player or a fireman. So there's a lot of stress for Tommy trying to figure out, well, this is what I want to do. But will I be accepted if I go against my parents' expectations? Following, what am I going to do with my life? As they get older, you know, juniors and seniors in high school are starting to pick colleges or trade schools or find their first job. They're trying to figure out, you know, what am I going to do to put a roof over my head and be an adult? What is that going to look like? And that's kind of overwhelming because they haven't to date had to really deal with a lot of that. And even, you know, going into college, a lot of teens and youth aren't doing a lot of figuring this out, but some do. Some get hooked on it when they're 14 or 15 and they just get this career path in their mind and it's laser focused. Traumatic events and losses, really important. Four teens because just like with alcohol and drugs, their brain is not, tends to be affected more greatly by the influx of the dopamine and the drugs and all that stuff. Traumatic events and losses can also have a more significant impact on adolescents and younger children. So it's important to understand that while it may be something that you deal with for two or three days and you can get over, it may have longer lasting effects for the adolescent. My daughter made the analogy that she's like a computer. And I said, okay, I'll follow, follow with you. And she said, when there's a traumatic event, it's like when your computer just automatically you're in the middle of doing stuff and it just shuts down. And then it starts to install updates. It reboots on its own and it starts to install updates and you just sit there and you can't do anything until it finishes installing updates. And this is how she explained to me what trauma is like for her. We had lost a pet. And then when it's finished installing updates, it still takes a while to figure out what to do with all these new apps that are in your computer. So you don't just all of a sudden get over it. There's a period where you just can't hardly function. Then there's a period where you've got to try to figure out how to put the pieces back together again. And I'm like, okay, that makes perfect sense to me. So kids have this, you know, shut down period and we need to make sure that we help them figure out basically how to reboot. How do you take care of yourself after a traumatic loss and work your way back through the stages of grief and into acceptance. Romantic relationships, they're starting to date now. Oh, isn't that fun. But there can be a lot of heartbreak. And again, because of if they have low self esteem, it may be more detrimental, more devastating. But even if they don't ending when relationships end, especially if it's somebody you're in a relationship with at your high school and you see them every day. That can be really devastating and re traumatizing, helping them figure out how to deal with that. And failure to achieve something. For youth, if they try something and they fail, you know, it's more like a one in 10 thing, they try 10 things and they failed at one. So they failed at 10% of the things they've tried. For us, you know, because we have so many more years behind us, you know, we've tried a bunch of other things. So for every 100 things we've tried, we've failed at one. So we're only failing at 1%. It's not because we're better at it. It's just because we've tried more. There's a greater breadth of experience that we're drawing from. But it's devastating. So remembering when a when a youth fails at something that percentage wise, they failed at a lot less things than we have. And they've succeeded at a lot less things than we have because they're young. So we need to help them process it and accept how they feel about it and validate their feelings regardless of if we feel that they're overreacting because they are acting. They are feeling what they are feeling. And it's just what it is tips, parenting and reparenting insist on respect and show respect, including to yourself being direct, but not too direct as adults talking with teens. We don't want them to feel like we are lecturing finger wagging at them. So encourage times where you can just kind of hang out together, even if it's driving in the car somewhere where you can talk. Avoid invalidating or minimizing feelings by saying things like, well, when I was a kid, or compared to other people, you've got it pretty good. Or in the big scheme of things, that's invalidating because they don't have a big scheme. And they're comparing themselves to their peer group and they don't care what it was like before the internet was invented. Try the miracle question. If you woke up tomorrow and you felt a little bit better, what would be different? Encourage them to identify their needs and wants. And with the miracle question, let me go back to that. It's a little bit better. You don't want to say if you woke up tomorrow and everything was fixed. I want to know if you woke up tomorrow and you felt a little bit better, you had a little bit of hope. What's one thing that might be different? Help them identify their needs and wants. And this is true if we're working with an adult or a child. What do you need to be happy? We can want a whole lot of things, but what is it that you need to be happy? What kind of environment is best for you? Not stressful, enjoyable? And as far as friends and friendships and socialization, what do you need to feel satisfied and supported? Is it a couple of chat buddies or is it 15 friends that you go out with every weekend to go fishing? Big difference. So what is it that you as an individual need? Pay attention to cognitive distortions such as all or none. Help them identify the middle path. It doesn't have to be just right or wrong. Maybe both of you are right. Let's take a look at it. Overgeneralization. Encourage them to look for exceptions. Mindlessness. Staying focused in the present. A lot of times youth's mind will go off to their anxieties. They'll be doing their homework and then they're going to start thinking about something that's coming up or a dance that's happening or something. And they start worrying about that stuff instead of staying focused on what they can do in the present. And try, if they become pessimistic, to encourage them to find the silver lining without invalidating. And this is almost impossible. It feels like a lot of times. But occasionally model this yourself. You know, if something doesn't happen so well, just be like, you know, thanks, but at least blah, blah, blah. Encourage them to start doing that because they do notice what we do and they do model what we do. Be self-compassionate and address these negative beliefs about compassion, which include sadness and grief activation. If nobody was ever compassionate to them, then if they start to be compassionate to their self, then they feel even worse because they're like, nobody ever did this for me and I don't have anybody that will do it for me now. So we need to help them as clinicians, we need to help them figure out how to be compassionate to themselves. Some people were taught that if they were compassionate, it meant they were needy or lazy or weak or unlovable. So what kind of messages did they receive about being compassionate or self-compassionate, you know, cutting themselves a break and saying, you know what, today's just an off day. Adolescents still lack the experiences and frame of reference of adults. Their physical and hormonal development can make them especially vulnerable to high emotionality. Improving self-esteem means we're helping them improve self-acceptance, self-awareness and self-efficacy. So they believe they can handle tasks, they know they can handle their emotions and they're ready to take on new challenges. Adolescents are still exploring roles and values and need to be encouraged to examine their personal belief system in order to solidify it. Adolescents who continue to strive for external validation and who fear abandonment will maintain high levels of stress even into adulthood, will continue to feel helpless and powerless and may develop alternate ways of surviving these fears such as rejecting social support, self-isolation, antisocial behavior. I'm going to take what I want when I want it because I don't care about anybody else, addictive behaviors to numb the pain or unquestioning compliance to peer pressure. Adults who had difficulty navigating adolescents will often benefit from self-esteem work, identifying and addressing automatic thoughts including that internal critic as well as cognitive distortions. Development of mindfulness, encouraging them to stay focused in the present moment and identifying what they need right now. Exploration of the concept of compassion and self-compassion and identification and resolution of losses from childhood which often manifest in adulthood resentments. Happiness and recovery is entirely possible. All teens will go through phases of dysphoria, so it's important to help them identify their process for getting through it. The key is to learn to identify what the youth's goals and values are, help them identify this, what makes them a good person, and which behaviors and thoughts get them closer to being the person they want to be and achieving their goals and values. Are there any questions? If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe, either in your podcast player or on YouTube. If you want to attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes, you can subscribe at hgtbs.com. This episode has been brought to you in part by allceuse.com, providing 24-7 multimedia continuing education and pre-certification training to counselors, therapists, and nurses since 2006. You can use coupon code, Counselor Toolbox, to get 20% off of your current order. If you're a podcast listener, especially on an Apple device, it would be extremely helpful if you would review Counselor Toolbox. 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