Parenting and PTSD

Working through the parents’ PTSD symptoms can, in turn, help them cope with their daughter’s trauma. Once they understand that their daughter will be okay, the denial often breaks and real progress in family system can occur.

COMMON SENSE WELLNESS: LIVEABLE LIVING ROOMS

Families that spend quality time together tend to have at least one thing in common—a good place to hang out. If you’ve ever tried to have a relaxed conversation in an uncomfortable physical setting, you know that it’s almost impossible. Setting up an inviting common space in your home that encourages a combination of quiet activity and conversation can help foster communication and connection.

COMMON SENSE WELLNESS: MEALS TOGETHER

In today’s over-programmed culture, the idea of eating together as a family may seem quaint if not absurd. But the benefits of breaking bread regularly with others—especially family—are not only intuitively obvious, they’re also being confirmed by research. Healthier eating habits, social skills, family connection and communication, and even weight control are all positive outcomes that can be influenced by family meals.

COMMON SENSE WELLNESS: VOLUNTEERING

This series of blogs is designed to serve as a reminder of some basic building blocks for emotional and behavioral health. These are not treatment modalities with fancy names or reams of clinical research. These are simple lifestyle choices that can help you and your family feel and function better.

Parenting a Young Adult After Treatment

If your teen or young adult has recently transitioned home from treatment, you may be anxious about the appropriate balance of structure and freedom. According to Dr. Gayle Jensen-Savoie, an executive director for the InnerChange family of therapeutic programs, it’s important to remember that the primary developmental task of young adulthood is to individuate.

Confidentiality in Teen Treatment Programs

The key to effectively balancing confidentiality and sharing is to respectfully involve the student. If they’re not the ones ultimately learning to make decisions about privacy versus sharing, we’re simply not equipping them for young adulthood.

Successful Treatment for High-Functioning Autism Spectrum

Many programs that treat emotional and behavioral disorders will not accept students with high-functioning autism-spectrum disorders like Asperger’s Syndrome, referring those students instead to programs that deal exclusively with neurobiological issues. This effectively segregates young people with autism-spectrum disorders from other populations. “I think that in many cases, this is a mistake…a missed opportunity,” says Utah-based psychotherapist, David Prior, LMFT. “My preference is to judiciously mix different populations in a treatment setting so that patients are challenged to learn new styles of interacting with different kinds of people. This is especially true with spectrum disorders.”

Giving Thanks on Thanksgiving

While gratitude has been long been celebrated as a spiritual and philosophical virtue, psychologists are discovering that an attitude of thanksgiving can also have a powerful, positive impact on psychological well being. Researchers credit the act of giving thanks with everything from stronger parent-child relationships and more satisfying friendships to better sex.

Health and Wellness

ccording to certified recreational therapist, Corey Hickman, today’s teens are experiencing a recreational crisis. “The students I see nowadays typically engage in recreation almost exclusively from a seated position,” says Hickman, who is the residential life director for Sunrise RTC, a treatment program for adolescent girls with emotional and behavioral issues. “Many of our students arrive at Sunrise addicted to video games, television, or social media,” says Hickman, “which typically means that they’re not engaged in more physical or social forms of recreation.”

Lying and Adolescence

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.

ODD vs Normal Teen Arguing

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.

Can Teens Have PTSD?

PTSD is marked by chronic, persistent, and sometimes debilitating emotional distress related to a traumatic event. Once almost exclusively associated with soldiers returning from battle, PTSD is a diagnosis assigned to people in all walks of life, including children and teens.

Your Teen is Away: Learn to Sleep Again!

If your child is away in treatment, you may still be suffering from the sleep distress that was a part of being vigilant and worried. If so, now’s the time to reclaim your right to a good night’s sleep! Your child is safe and, for the time being, it’s someone else’s job to be vigilant around the clock. A huge part of every parents’ job when their child is in treatment is to prepare for their return home. You’re a better parent (and employee, and friend, and everything) when you’re taking good care of yourself. Sleep is at the core of self care; so now’s a great time to practice good sleep habits. I joke that learning to fall asleep and stay asleep has saved me thousands of dollars in carpentry, refrigerator repair, fly traps…oh and plastic surgery. So if you’re a light sleeper, an insomniac, or curfew cop on sabbatical, here are some things I’ve learned that will help you sleep like a baby.

Exercising a Teen’s “Willpower Muscle”

We all experience lapses in self control. For a teenager who is struggling with other emotional issues, however, even a small lapse—whether in the form of procrastinating, eating something not on the diet, or engaging in a compulsive behavior—can create a sense of defeat, adding to her feelings of depression and worthlessness.

Adoption, Trauma and Attachment Disorder in Teens

Adoption is a beautiful and redemptive event, but it’s one that does involve loss. For the child, the loss is not remembered but it’s also not forgotten; it can operate as an invisible force and, therefore, has to be brought to consciousness so that it can be dealt with. Often there is loss on both sides—the parents inability to have children and the child’s loss of her biological family. For the teen, we work to help her realize that she is continuing to behave as if she is going to be abandoned at any moment. We try to help her understand the very real (but until then mysterious) source of her fears, and then to distinguish between real and imagined threats of abandonment.

Argumentative Adolescents: The Good News and the Bad News

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.

Chronic Teen Stress

For a stressed-out teen, lifelong stress-management practices might include DBT techniques, yoga, moderate daily exercise, dietary adjustments (favoring whole, unprocessed foods including fruits and vegetables), meditation, time-management skills, and—of course—keeping a pet!

COMING CLEAN WITH YOUR DIFFICULT TEEN

Many experts agree that the negative effects of anger can be minimized by addressing the emotion in an honest, non-reactive manner. While ranting and raging tend to actually increase, rather than alleviate, anger (according to some studies), the healthy expression of anger can actually reduce its intensity and keep it from festering. In fact, the healthy communication of your full range of emotions—including anger—can be a critical part of your difficult teen’s healing process.

Teen Learning Disabilities and Emotional Problems

Along with the primary effects that may come with learning differences, secondary effects may occur such as low self-esteem, depression, social isolation, anger, low school performance, and so forth. Sometimes these secondary effects mask the primary issue—a learning disability.

ADOLESCENT SCREEN ADDICTION

By the time a parent suspects that their child’s use of screen-based technology is excessive, it generally is! At this point, a parent needs to know, believe, and understand they are in charge—even if the child is an adolescent or a young adult living dependently at home.

When A Family Crisis Hits–Take Care of You!

Like any crisis, a mental health emergency—whether depression, violence, self-harm, psychosis or addiction—is generally symptomatic of a deeper, more pervasive dysfunction. Our tendency with family mental health emergencies, though, is to just treat the symptoms and—once those are addressed—get on with living the same life that caused those symptoms in the first place.

WHEN YOUR TROUBLED TEEN BECOMES A TROUBLED ADULT

For parents of older teens struggling with behavioral or emotional problems, that teen’s 18th birthday may come to represent some terrifying realities. Many parents fear a loss of parental control; or the symbolic and actual loss of their “little girl,” or “little boy;” or loss of legal guardianship and the modicum of protection that comes along with it.

FAMILY THERAPY FOR ENMESHED TEENS AND PARENTS

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.

Enmeshed Parents and Teens

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.

The Serious Problem of Teen and Adolescent Depression

If you suspect your child might be suffering from an emotional problem such as chronic depression (dysthymia), major depressive disorder, seasonal affective disorder or any of the several types of depression, alert your mental health provider (preferably one with experience diagnosing and treating teens) immediately.