9 Emotional Regulation Skills for Effective Parenting
Nine strategies for calming our emotionally-overwhelmed brains, recovering our logic and reasoning skills and giving ourselves the best possible chance for an effective parenting response.
When your teen says or does something that activates intense emotion in you, remember these goals:
Goal #1: Do NOT react immediately (Don’t say or do anything yet).
Goal #2: Implement emotional regulation skills to calm yourself down before responding to your teen.
Goal #3: Once you are calm, think strategically about an effective way to approach your teen for optimal influence.
As parents of teens, we all become overwhelmed with fear, anger or hurt when our teen says or does something that upsets us. Unfortunately, too often we react to our teens while we are still in this escalated emotional state, and the results can be detrimental and erode any positive influence we still have on them as their parents. This is the emotional state we are in when we do things like: berate them for their failures in judgement, ground them for 6 months (only to back down after a few days when we realize that we overreacted), question their ability to succeed in life, threaten to kick them out of the house, and wonder aloud where we went wrong in raising such a ___________ child. When we are hurt, angry or scared, our knee-jerk reaction is to hurt, anger and scare them back. It is only later, when our brains and bodies have de-escalated, that we realize the damage we have done to our teens and to our relationship with them.
Fellow parents may completely understand our reaction, but it is essential to realize that teens have NO IDEA what it is like to be a parent. I mean ZERO idea! Over and over in my practice, I have seen suicidal teens who think their parents don’t love them based solely on the evidence that they are always in trouble and getting yelled at. Most teens do not understand that a parent can be furious with them and yet still willing to sacrifice anything for their well-being because of their great love for them. Instead, teens feel like their parents’ intense anger or cold shoulder is evidence that they don’t love them anymore…and in some cases, believe that they wouldn’t care if they killed themselves. I WISH I was exaggerating. Please hear me: teens DO NOT understand what it is like to be in your shoes and will NOT understand your emotional reaction to the upsetting things they do.
Often what they hear instead, is that they are stupid and incapable of making their own decisions. This is NOT what we want them to remember as their understanding of themselves is developing and still quite fragile! Discipline is about teaching, not about punishing. When we are in an intense state of anger, anxiety, hurt, etc., we lose the opportunity to come alongside them and help them learn how to be a mature human being. Instead, we create an adversarial, “us vs. them” relationship. It is near impossible to get through to a teen when you’re seen as the enemy.
Human beings have an innate ability to shut down and shut out perceived emotional threats. This is why lecturing, berating or even pointing out another human being’s mistakes can be met with defensiveness or a “glazed over, shut down look” and it feels like they won’t hear what you want them to understand. Human beings are much more likely to receive constructive criticism and be open to learning something, if they don’t feel threatened. Remember, the goal is to teach them HOW to make their own good decisions…NOT to control their decisions until they leave the house. The latter strategy will not give you the results you are hoping for!
How often do you wish you could take back something you said or did when you were in the height of intense emotion? We all make mistakes, hurt others and are in need of forgiveness, but how might our relationship with our teen be different if we were able to calm ourselves down BEFORE we reacted? Do you wonder why it is SO difficult to stay calm, think strategically and choose a response that our teen might actually be willing to hear?
Neuro-biology researcher, UCLA Professor and author, Dr. Daniel Siegel has taught us that when human beings experience intense feelings of fear or anger: our brains become overwhelmed with emotion, stress hormones flood our bodies, and it becomes incredibly difficult to think reasonably. In other words, when our teenager does something that scares or angers us intensely, our brains CANNOT make good parenting decisions until we are calm again. Studies have shown that it takes our bodies approximately 40 minutes to de-escalate physiologically from the initial trigger; longer if we continue to entertain thoughts that trigger anger and anxiety. The good news is that researchers have also learned what types of activities help us to calm our brain and regain our ability to think effectively.
When your teen says or does something that activates intense emotion in you, take the following steps:
Step One: Communicate to your teen (as calmly as possible) that you need a little bit of time and space to think about how you want to respond to the situation and that you will be back when you can think more clearly.
Step Two: Remove yourself from the room where your teen is
Step Three: Utilize one or more of the following emotional regulation skills:
Take several deep, slow breaths.
Don’t discount this one! Controlling our breathing is the physiological override switch we need to calm down. When we feel scared or angry, it’s like our body flips a switch and our sympathetic nervous system goes into effect, sending signals to our body to prepare us to run or fight. When in this state, our heart races and we take shallow breaths. This is a great feature if we are running from an angry bear, not so great for trying to have a rational conversation with our teenager. The manual override for this automatic physiological feature is to take slow, deep breaths. Since no one has time to take deep breaths while running from a bear, the deep breaths slow the heart rate and signal to the brain that we are not in danger and to switch to the parasympathetic nervous system: rest and digest. Focus on what it feels like to breathe deeply: notice how your nostrils feel and how your belly inflates. If you need some help, visualize your lungs as a big red balloon: imagine the red balloon slowly inflating and deflating with every deep breath. Or imagine the ocean: imagine it is your breath that pulls the waves toward the shore and your breath that pushes them back out to sea.
Take a 10-minute vacation in your mind to the most relaxing place you know.
Research has shown that our body feels what our mind focuses on and that we can really only focus on a few things at a time. If we entertain thoughts about the worst case scenario, our bodies will feel tense and stressed. If we think about our recent trip to our favorite relaxing getaway, our bodies will feel relaxed. The key is to recall the location in vivid detail, using all 5 of your senses. Close your eyes. Focus on all that you can see in your favorite place. Then focus on all that you can hear in your favorite place. Then focus on what you can smell and taste in your favorite place. Finally, focus on what you can touch. In other words, vividly imagine digging your toes in the sand, feeling the warm sun against your skin. I promise, your problems will wait for you while you take a 10- minute vacation! Notice how different your body feels and how much clearer your mind is after this mini vacation!
Take a brisk walk:
Once again, when we are triggered into feeling anxious or angry, part of our brain prepares us for fight/flight by releasing stress hormones into our body. Since we aren’t actually running or physically fighting anything, it can feel like a really uncomfortable, jittery feeling throughout our body. A regular routine of cardio and/or weight lifting is fantastic for managing prolonged anxiety and anger, BUT even if you aren’t into regular exercise, a brisk walk around the neighborhood after your teen triggers you can significantly help you get rid of the jittery feeling and regain your rational mind before you confront your teen.
Pray to the ultimate parent.
Our Heavenly Father loved us so much that He sacrificed Himself on our behalf while we were still screwing up and making bad decisions! Psalms 103:8 tells us that “The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever.” It is this great love for us that inspires us to WANT to grow and be faithful to how He teaches us to live. Ask Him to give you the patience and peace you need to be able to respond wisely to your teen.
Call a wise friend who is good at listening, keeping things in perspective and calming you down.
Our minds don’t think in complete thoughts. Sometimes our incomplete, emotionally-driven thoughts even escalate into bigger, more irrational thoughts that FEEL true. Often, it’s not until we talk to someone else and hear our thoughts out loud that we realize that the fears that felt true, are actually irrational and not likely.
Write out your thoughts.
Writing also forces our brain to compose our thought fragments into coherent sentences, making them easier to make sense of and sort through. Consider writing a letter to your teen. You don’t have to send it, the process of writing it is often what your brain needed to identify what you are feeling, why you are feeling it and to organize your thoughts BEFORE attempting to communicate with your teen.
Give your weary mind a break with the help of a mindfulness app.
Let Headspace, Calm or Simple Habit teach you how to clear your mind of the stressful thoughts that keep you in an emotionally-heightened state. In just 3-5 minutes a day, with consistent practice, you can learn how to free yourself of worry and unhelpful overthinking. Just stick with it!
Distract yourself for a little while.
When your sympathetic nervous system is activated, it is like every anxious thought you entertain in your mind squirts more stress hormone into your body, making you feel nervous and jittery. Too much of this stress hormone can lead to panic attacks. Much like having too many alcoholic drinks leads to getting drunk…too many anxious thoughts leads to your body getting overly amped on adrenaline.If you can’t seem to stop ruminating over your teen’s latest bonehead decision, and you notice your emotional intensity is not coming down…distract yourself with something you enjoy. Remember, you don’t have to discipline or respond right away, you know where your teen lives! So, go ahead and watch your favorite feel-good movie. Go out to dinner with your spouse or a friend. The point is to give your body and mind a break from over-feeling and overthinking so that you have a better chance at addressing your teen in an effective, non emotional way.
Seek support from a professional.
Parenting teens is HARD and requires a completely different strategy than parenting children. It can often feel like your teen is actively TRYING to ruin their life with the decisions they are making! A Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist is educated and trained to help parents face the challenges of raising teens in today’s world. Therapists will work with you to understand your situation to help you figure out a customized plan that will work for your family. EVERYONE can benefit from meeting with a therapist. We’ve ALL got room to improve ourselves and our relationships!
One last note of encouragement:
Practice makes progress! Don’t give up on these strategies! Learning anything new requires repetition and practice for it to become effective and more automatic.
If you aren’t ready to reach out to another parent or a therapist to help you make these changes stick in your life, at least read Parenting From the Inside Out by Daniel Siegel. Your relationship with your teen may depend on it!
