Parenting The Emotionally Extreme Teen- Free Workshop

What happens when you find yourself parenting your teen in the exact way you wanted to avoid? Our ability to parent arises from what we know, and there is no script for how to do it right! Teens can challenge our values, get under our skin, and set off intense reactions.

I will be offering a free one hour workshop that will help parents clarify values, embrace dialectics (balance opposing truths), understand developmentally normative teen behavior, and sort though emotional responses.

Being effective in parenting is a dance that involves flexibility, setting limits, enabling responsible behavior, and equipping teens with the tools to prepare them for adulthood.

Come to this workshop for practical resources and experiential exercises to help you be the best parent you can be. Being around others that are experiencing, expressing, or generating strong emotions can be a challenge for anyone.

Clarify values

A series of writing prompts to generate some ideas of what is important to you as a parent, how it is (or is not) showing up in your parenting, and how this may be influencing your parenting in ways you haven’t considered.

Embrace dialectics

Dialects allows us to hold multiple and conflicting truths while our teens poke holes in the universe. Parenting can be lonely and render us at times helpless and incompetent. An example of a diabetic is supporting our children (dependence) while fostering or encouraging them to do things without us (independence). Both are needed to launch a teenager into adulthood, and one is not more important than the other.

Understand developmentally normative behavior

Argumentativeness, relying more on friends, blowing off parents, taking risks, and testing limits all has a purpose. Let’s talk about it!

What to do when you don’t know what to do?

We’ll spend some time making space for your own reactions with some private writing assignments and prompts.

Where and when:
This workshop is free to participants who are on my mailing list and will take place Wednesday January 6 at 7:00, 2026.

Attend Workshop

Want a live workshop at your school, library, or parent resource group? I have a limited number of presentations I can offer for the first six people who contact me directly. Just reach out to and ask.

What Should I Do If My Teenager Hates Me?

Consider the difference between anger and hate. Anger is an emotion that functions to advocate, prevent further hurt, change a situation for the better, not be a doormat, get out of harm’s way, and help people not to stay in situations in which they are taken for granted. Anger is a necessary emotion to help people survive stressful life situations. If people did not have anger they would be helpless, get taken advantage of, and stay in unfortunate circumstances that could be changed for the better.

Since emotions exist to help people solve problems, your teen may be trying to communicate (however ineffectively) something to you. Sometimes anger is so intense that the actual feedback is actually lost, is not spelled out clearly, or does not make sense. Like any other emotion, emotions come and go, can be more or less intense, and are not permanent facts. Emotions arise out of specific circumstances. And strong emotions can actually interfere with problem solving.

Consider how you express yourself when you are feeling hurt, taken advantage of, or are infuriated. Do you have an effective means of giving feedback, speaking up, or advocating for yourself? How is anger and feedback modeled in your family? Do you tend to give up or avoid people who express their anger with you? Pick fights or draw out arguments? Become irritable or hostile towards those around you? Perseverate on the hurt?

Consider the difference between emotional pain and emotional expression/ actions. Feeling hurt, let down, disappointed is part of what comes along with life. Fighting reality, pushing limits, testing what they can get away, and taking risks are all things that teenagers do. They are working towards the important task of adulting; increasing their independence, blowing off their parents, and finding out if the values they were raised with really work for them. Poking holes in the universe, if you will.

Being in emotional pain is one thing, how a person acts when upset or distressed is another. The behavior of “hating” may include things like antagonism, blaming, shaming, verbally attacking, ranting, or bringing up everything they “hate” about you. This behavior is probably not actually effective in making changes, asking for what is needed, clarifying requests, or giving feedback. It is possible that rage is too intense for your teen to develop the necessary skills for handling disappointment, keeping and maintaining relationships, advocating, and negotiating.

Do you give in to the demands of your teenager once the verbal attacks begin? The principles of reinforcement are this: The closer and time and space a consequence (giving in) is to the behavior (attacking) increases the probability that it will occur again. If the only means that your teen has of getting what he/she/they wants, the verbal attacks will be more likely to occur in the future. If you can withstand the anger and steer the course, stay on task, and not become reactive yourself, you will be the one in the driver’s seat. Tolerating intensity without taking the bait is a skill.

Consider reframing and validating your teen’s perspective (of course you want to stay out late and be with your friends) but maintaining your limits when it comes to having parameters (I know that when you stay out late your sleep and focus suffers). You can validate an emotion (anger, disappointment) without validating a behavior (verbal attacks, disparaging comments). You can also shape your teen to be more skillful when confronted with reality or asking for changes to be made.

Finally, is what you are asking of your teenager realistic? There is no manual for parenting, and sometimes a teen with strong emotions can take us off guard. Are you the one being extreme? Consider if there is any feedback coming your way that is useful, even if it is hard to hear. Sometimes if verbal attacks are frequent and hard, we shut down our ability to see things from other points of view. Getting your teen to be more open/ direct/ realistic can also be part of your willingness to work on being effective. What is going to work in this situation?

To sign up for Parenting The Emotionally Extreme Teen parent class this fall please contact me.

Are You Crazy!? What Does Being Out Of Control Do For You?

What does it mean to be out-of-control (OOC)?

Out-of-control (OCC) behaviors often are extreme to the situation and create consequences for others that are problematic, painful, and in some cases generate even more problems. Most of the time the OOC behavior doesn’t necessarily fit the context or the the situation. In other words a person may behave in a manner that is more extreme than necessary and often don’t solve problems- in many cases it makes problems worse. OOC behaviors can occur with intense and magnified emotions.

In out of control situations emotions often take over, and emotions tend to take the blame. Some examples of out of control behavior can include:

Antagonistic arguing
Coercive communication
Escalating, barraging, interrupting, and dominating a conversation
Verbal attacks
Stonewalling / shunning other people

While OOC behaviors are often problematic, many people don’t understand why they occur, what could prevent them from occurring in the future, or how to stop/ change/ fix the OOC behaviors. OOC can be downright scary, threatening, and disruptive to families, children, and relationships. However, if there was no good reason why an OOC behavior should occur, it would not happen. Here is a look at how OOC behaviors can work or function for people. OOC behaviors might:

Justifies a response
Gets someone’s attention
Allows a person to be taken seriously
Gets a certain reaction or response from someone else
Gets someone to respond
Maintains an identity as (fill in the blank)
Sends a message
Validates the seriousness of the situation
Makes a person feel in control

However your OOC behavior works for you, some of the basic outcomes of the above can be better done through means that are more skillful, enhance and improve relationships, result in stronger connections, and ultimately a more successful means to an end.

OOC behaviors are problematic mainly because they create unwanted consequences. While some people may not be deterred by the havoc and pain they create, others are looking for ways to step outside of the cycle and patterns of transgenerational trauma and start living a more fulfilling and less crazy life.

Skills learning, acquisition, and generalization helps people to identify more effective means to have influence, power, self control, acceptance, and self-esteem by looking at the role of OOC behaviors. The idea is to manage emotions while being effective- what do you need to communicate- and can you do it in a way that doesn’t include shooting yourself in the foot (and keeping important relationships along the way).

Why Isn’t My Teenager Honest With Me?

One of the problems teens struggle with is honesty. And it’s not only honesty with one’s parents or authority, but honesty with oneself.

Part of psychological distress comes from hiding the more difficult and disturbing aspects of experience from oneself. While this can sometimes be adaptive, it can become problematic when it comes to drinking, sexting, drug use, teen pregnancy, domestic violence, and other situations teens can sometimes get themselves into.

Being honest about a situation means admitting it is actually happening, admitting it is real, admitting the distress is real, and addressing potential consequences. Not admitting it is real, not asking for help, and not coping with the situation can lead to even more problematic consequences. Addressing something openly- while often difficult- can lead to prevention of further problems.

Admitting to the reality of a situation also may involve admitting to one’s role or part in the situation. Teens can sometimes not be honest because they have a fear of getting into trouble or a fear that it will escalate an intense reaction in the person they tell. They would rather avoid the short-term pain of intense reactions than the long-term problems of the situation. And teenagers are often not thinking about long- term consequences! The double bind is to deal with it all alone. A teenager who is all about gaining independence and relying less on one’s parents may believe that secret keeping is the only way to gain privacy and independence.

If you are a parent and want to increase you teen’s ability to confide in you, consider the following:

What are you doing to invite conversations about difficult topics, and what are you doing to punish conversations about difficult topics?

Are there topics or themes in your own life that are “off topic”? Are there conversations that would be too emotional for you to handle if someone were to ask?

Is the short-term anxiety of “not knowing” something worth avoiding based on the long-term consequences of not having a conversation at all?

What types of things do you “hide” from yourself because if you admitted they were true, you’d have to face the consequences?

If you were being completely honest with yourself, what situations would you have to confront?

What types of things did you keep from your parent/s when you were a teen, and what do you wish could have been different?

Being open about emotionally “forbidden” topics will help create an environment where openness is encouraged. Being more and more comfortable with intense emotions, painful life situations, and one’s own ghosts will help you develop deeper relationships. Avoiding painful life situations can sometimes create more psychological distress than seeing what is in front of you, admitting it exists, and taking steps to address it.

Boston DBT Parent Class: Parenting the Emotionally Extreme Teen

How did this class help you? Here is the feedback from four parents who took the Spring 2015 class:

“To try and react better..To try and anticipate my daughter’s behavior triggers..try to find out what is causing the extremes and deal those triggers… By accepting emotions and where they are coming from; not to deny my emotions but they are there for a reason. To validate how I feel as well as my daughter. To be calmer. “- Parent 1

“To better understand my emotions, and that they have a purpose…To explore that purpose. Better able to identify escalation in my daughter. I’ve learned to buy time, to put some time in between responding to my daughter and others. What was most helpful was the overall impact of the course which has left me better equipped and more curious about DBT.” -Parent 2

“It made me more willing to bit my tongue, take a deep breath, and not focus on ‘fixing things’. Acceptance was important, both dealing with my own emotions and allowing for acceptance of my child’s emotions. Using mindfulness techniques to tone down my level of arousal was also important. Understanding that emotions might be valid but ineffective in some circumstances. I thought the (video content shown in class) outlined some very pragmatic examples and techniques.” -Parent 3

“To be more present with my emotion. To validate how I feel as well as my daughter. To be calmer, to think things through. Being able to listen to others’ experiences. Each class was built on each other. Have learned many skills to be more effective with my daughter.” -Parent 4

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Parenting the adolescent, DBT, and dialectical dilemmas: From Miller, Rathus, and Linehan

In 2007, Alec Miller, Jill Rathus, and Marsha Linehan published Dialectical Behavior Therapy with Suicidal Adolescents. In the book, they outline specific dilemmas related to adolescent development. I think their work is quite clever and clearly fits the dialectical theme: Two opposing concepts can both exist at the same time, people can get “stuck” in extreme polarities, one extreme does not negate the existence of the other extreme, a person has to look for the truths in both extremes in order to get unstuck, and the “middle path” is a place where both parents and adolescents to be understood and acknowledged.

The extremes that parents of adolescents can get stuck in include the following: Being too loose vs. being too strict, making light of problem behaviors vs. making too much of typical adolescent behaviors, holding on too tight vs. forcing independence too soon (page 308).

One of the assumptions in DBT is that clients are doing the best they can. This assumption is held for both parents and teenagers. Parents sometimes parent with an intention to give their children what they didn’t have or prevent their children from making the same mistakes they’ve made. The pain of “letting go” and watching their children become more independent, make decisions, and be faced with extreme consequences can be hard. Sometimes parents can get stuck in extreme ends of these dialectical dilemmas because they are trying so hard to be the best parents they know how to be.

Consider your own childhood for a moment.

How did you experience your parents (in terms of polarities) as a teenager?
Where do you see yourself as a parent now?
Where do you think your teenage son or daughter sees you? Where you see yourself and where he/she sees you may be very different.
Consider what kinds of things get you to move towards one polarity or another- and what gets you to move closer to the middle.
Consider the consequences (including the impact on relationships) of being in the extremes.
Consider the necessity of both extremes- and how they can be effective vs. ineffective.