Learning to Validate Emotions In and Out of Residential Treatment
When I first began working in residential treatment at Sunrise, I was hit by so [...]
When I first began working in residential treatment at Sunrise, I was hit by so [...]
Relationships are often built upon others consistently respecting other's boundaries. We all have boundaries, and [...]
Lying is an almost universal behavior among adolescents. Will Mangum, a mental health writer for [...]
So regardless of where you are in your journey, please tell us briefly about a relationship that has made, or is making, a difference in your life. What is it about this person and this relationship that is has been particularly powerful ? How has it changed your perspective?
NEVER TRUST AN ADOLESCENT! Okay, I should qualify that. In general, don’t offer complete and unreserved trust to a teenager. Why not? For the same reason you shouldn’t fully trust someone to fly a plane if they’ve never flown a plane before. Teens are a bit like untested pilots. They are in the cockpit of a powerful machine--namely their rapidly morphing bodies and brains--that is new, powerful, and a bit out of their control. They’re still learning what all those levers and buttons do and how to navigate, steer, and land without crashing.
Arguing, says Hinman, is not only normal adolescent behavior--it’s developmentally necessary. Adolescence is a time of experimenting with and forging new levels of autonomy. Part of that process is learning how to express independent opinions that run contrary to those in authority. Your job is to help guide that behavior so that it evolves into normal adult independence, rather than chronic contrarianism or a disorder like ODD (oppositional defiant disorder). So as far as effective parenting goes, the question is not whether or not your adolescent will argue with you (they will), but how you should engage that behavior.
When parents reach a point where occasional arguing morphs into chronic defiance, they may not have any opportunities to make relational deposits. A chronically defiant teen will simply not allow positive interactions. It’s at this point, when lost ground cannot be recovered, that outside help from a therapist, clergy person or other trusted adult may be necessary for a parent to regain positive access to the relational account.
When we are motivated to be involved in relationships we’re being driven to something that creates some of the most joy and peace in life: connectedness. Most of us want to connect and most of us want to be accepted by others. We just need to channel our efforts to meet these needs in a healthy direction. That’s what we aim for with enmeshed relationships at Sunrise, to redirect relational energy in a direction that will bring out the most peace, connection, and growth possible.
Those in enmeshed relationships are often the last to see it. But with awareness you can start to recognize some of the signs: 1. If you cannot not tell the difference between your own emotions and those of a person with whom you have a relationship. 2. If you feel like you need to rescue someone from their emotions. 3. If you feel like you need someone else to rescue you from your own emotions. 4. If you and another person do not have any personal emotional time and space.
Socially contagious behaviors include bullying; dangerous games such as the choking game, high-risk dares, and drinking games, hitting games, etc.; promiscuity or high-risk sexual behaviors; eating disordered behaviors such as binging, chronic overeating, purging or restricting; drug and alcohol abuse; cutting and other forms of self-harm; and almost any other negative behavior that occurs with frequency among adolescents.