Teaching Adolescents About Healthy Relationships

How many times did you hear this as a kid? (To be clear "boy" can be easily swapped out for the correct gender pronoun)

"The boys on the playground are mean to you because they secretly like you?" OR "All boys want is to get in your pants."

I heard them several times each, and looking back these comments helped establish an unhealthy outlook on what relationships look like. I believed that if a guy is mean to me, that must mean he wants me to try to attach more, or tolerate the jerky comments in order to obtain his affection. Then later I began to believe that boys were to be avoided at all costs because they just want to use me... Wow, how confusing? 

I've put some thought into it, and perhaps these revised statements may help send a healthier message:

"If the boys on the playground are mean, what away because you don't deserve that" AND "If a boy likes you, he will respect you and respect your boundaries." 

These statements can teach children and teens that respect, self-love, and having personal boundaries are key components to having healthy relationships. 

Importance of Engaging with you Teenager

What does it look like when you're showing up as emotionally unavailable?

 As a parent its likely that their are unresolved emotional problems that root back to childhood. Often struggle with coping skills and  emotional and psychological needs are not being meet or healed.  As a result, a parent continues to lack self-awareness and often become one of the following:  rejecting, emotionally distant, immature, self-centered or narcissistic, or driven to succeed in life.  The way this looks in a parent:

• Rigidity (unwillingness to be flexible when needed)
•  Low stress tolerance (inability to tolerate stress in a mature manner)
•  Emotional instability with aggression (anger outbursts characterized by threats of physical aggression, suicidal gesture, cutting behaviors or other acts of self-harm)
• Poor boundaries (desiring to be their child’s friend instead of a parent)
•  Unstable relationships (multiple partners or friends who create more trouble than peace)
•  Attention-seeking (looking for accolades, recognition, or support at all costs) among many other characteristics.

How does this effect their child?

They often push their child to become adult-like and emotional independent before their time. Sadly, these same kids develop into emotionally needy teens and adults who are longing for the love, security, and affection they never received. The symptoms look like:

• Struggle with long-term relationships causing a series of short-term and unstable relationships.
• Develop defense and protective mechanisms
• Resist having trusting and secure in their relationships
• Experience unstable, emotionally labile moods which can lead to frequent arguments, paranoia, blaming, and physical or verbal aggression
• Develop ineffective coping skills such as self-harm, eating disorders, substance abuse
• Lack of identity and direction
• Loss of hope, joy and happiness

So with that information what can a parent do?

The good news is this: all you as a parent have to do is really be there with your body and your heart. 

You don’t have to be perfect. 

You don’t have to always be paying close attention and share your life’s dreams over dinner

Take care of yourself by reaching out to resources such as therapy or support groups

1. Have no screen time limits. During those times (meals, for example) turn your phone off and put it in another room.
2. Make a habit of asking your child questions and really listening to their responses.
3. Don’t immediately give consequences to their negative behaviors, do some investigating and see if something deeper is at work.
4. Apologize humbly to your kids if you mess up.
5. Give children eye contact and physical touch. It’s good for their brains.

Children don’t need grand gestures to feel loved. It is the small daily moments where we can them our love and acceptance. Children are still simple and their needs are self-evident.

They need to know we care. 

They need to know they belong. 

They need to know we’re available. 

Handling an Intense Emotion

Feelings of failure, sometimes I think I can't seem to escape them. For example, yet again today I experienced this gut wrenching feeling, the thought felt so automatic, as if I couldn't stop it from reading havoc on my brain. It was this overall "wtf", then a "why am I back in this place of feeling like I fail when someone else rejected me". I was totally filled with anger than a deep sadness, angry at them from rejecting me, angry at myself for being in a situation to be rejected, then sadness about the situation playing out as I wanted, sadness for disappointing myself. 

After those feelings floated around for like 10 minutes, I thought "I'm just gonna let myself feel these intense feelings" after all thats what i would suggest any individual i talk to, to do.

Then I reached out for support which kind of helped, i just vented and said that this all just sucked. 

Finally I thought to myself (about 30 minutes into intense emotion sesh) "where can I find trust and gratitude in this experience". Gratitude tends to be easier for me to find, so I thought, "okay I just learned something, I can be grateful for that learning opportunity". Then I search my thoughts and feelings for trust, I landed on the thought "Let me trust my feelings in knowing that that in rejection it was 100% okay to feel angry and sad and I was not over reacting" and that "I can trust that I will be okay if any person rejects me".

So thats my full circle of handling intense emotions, and I writing this as a way to have closure of that intense influx of emotions and as a way to communicate that when you do intentional emotional healing these methods or perhaps ones that work uniquely for you can be developed to help you cope, recover, find meaning and purpose in emotionally charged situations. 

Brand New YouTube Channel

I created a YouTube to work on being more honest and unfiltered with my community. Join the community that I'm starting on YouTube. I will share information about therapy, my experiences, and some fun videos to continue the growth of a community that I'd like to build of people who are body positive and invested in mental health, spiritual health and physical health

I want you all to have access to great resources and having a YouTube channel is a great way to get a lot of videos out there quickly directly for this community. Plus I want to target specific issues that the community is struggling with, so I encourage everyone to leave comments of the videos.