The Emotional Ups and Downs of Adolescence

Think back on your adolescence and how challenging daily tasks could be when your emotions seemed to flare out of control. Think about the ways you learned to deal with your emotions as a pre-teen and teenager and how that affects your reactions now. For a lot of young people, adolescence is a time of big emotional growth.  As a supportive adult, it is good to recognize and understand that one of the biggest ways to help young people with their emotional growth is to recognize it is part of a normal process.

Teaching young people to manage their emotions may be a challenge, but it can help them grow into adults with a greater ability to channel their emotions toward their positive well-being.

In this Good Therapy article, Kathy Hardie-Williams discusses ways to help teens manage their emotions.  She shares several strategies adults can use to support young people in learning better emotional management, including:

• Use non-judgmental language.
• Avoid all-or-nothing thinking and accept there is sometimes a gray area.
• Facilitate independence by providing assistance.
• Be willing to renegotiate and choose priorities.
• Validate by paying attention -- help your teen clarify their thinking and display empathy and acceptance.