Teenage mental anxiety is a common concern for parents today. Many struggle with how to teach teens to regulate their emotions.
Emotional dysregulation is a condition in every teenager’s life that affects the brain’s hormone regulation and general life experience. Often, it is caused by genetic dispositions or environmental factors such as family, school, and social life. Thus, emotional dysregulation shouldn’t be disregarded, and teens experiencing it must be given attention and proper support.
This article will discuss different methods and practices of regulating emotions to give teenagers healthy mental and physical well-being. If your son, daughter, or relative faces such issues, read more below and see what you can do to support them.
Professional Consultation and Therapy Plans
The first thing you can do is to encourage teenagers to speak with a professional. Emotional regulation is linked to deeper-rooted concerns and conditions. The first thing to do to help them is to learn more about this and understand the full scope from the eyes of a professional.
Depending on the diagnosis and suggestions, your mental health provider will create a proper treatment plan and initial prescriptions when necessary. They often suggest antidepressants or similar inhibitors like Citalopram, which can be a significant expense. To save money, check online for Citalopram HBR Discount Coupon packages and generic versions through your doctor’s guidance.
Bubble Breathing
A good strategy for teens facing stressful situations or anxiety attacks is bubble breathing. Bubble breathing is a variation of breathing techniques for calming down and delivering proper oxygen to the brain. Breathing through their nose and slowly exhaling in the mouth calms them down and regulates their emotions to make sound decisions.
Additionally, it calms down their fight or flight receptors, avoiding any chances of outbursts and further panic. This is a good strategy when teens face stressful situations regularly, like school, socialization events, and depressive thoughts.
Fidget Toys
At some point, fidget toys like spinners and clickers have become popular with teenagers for many reasons, one of which is they help with their mental health. To be specific, fidget toys are made to distract them from pent-up feelings and relieve excess energy, just like a typical stress ball.
Fidget toys come in many shapes and forms and can be discrete for everyday use. Other alternatives include pens, bracelets, or any objects they can squeeze, pull, or hold without being harmful and distracting.
Positive Listing
Positive affirmations bring out your teen’s good core values and self-esteem by teaching your teen to write down at least ten positive things about them. This method eventually boosts their confidence and allows them to tackle situations with sound decision-making and mood.
Positive Self-Talk/Affirmations
Self-talking is deemed one of the effective ways to improve function skills, regulate emotions, and regain self-confidence. Although it requires energy and confidence, the effects benefit long-term stability and well-being.
Teach your teens to think or self-talk on their positive traits or affirmations in every negative statement they can think of. For example, if your teen says, “I feel ugly today,” they can say, “I am awesome and beautiful no matter what.” Guide them through this until it becomes a habit, and it will be their simple but effective outlet for driving out negative thoughts.
What You Can Do As Parents
Aside from the points above in teaching your teens self-regulation, the following methods aim to improve parent-child relationships and take their condition as a team effort. As the strongest support pillar for teens, parents must improve their mental state.
Curiosity and Exploration
Take time to be curious and wonder about your teen’s emotional state. They can uncover pressing issues and unmet needs that cause them. Teens need to be heard, and parents must train themselves to become active listeners.
But this doesn’t mean we must cater to their wants and needs. Sometimes, reaching out and giving the child time to vent without judgment fosters a genuine connection with your teen. Ultimately, this leads to pushing out pent-up frustrations and leads to actionable insights that you and your child can do.
This could also be an excellent first step aside from professional consultation. If your teen sees you as a dependable adult to their problems, you can even introduce the self-help methods stated earlier.
Metaphorical Communication
Teens under intense emotional states can often hinder their capacity to verbalize their thoughts and make sound decisions. When this happens, you can be creative and use metaphors to understand the situation better.
Also, they may prefer other methods of communication, like writing notes or texting, if they don’t feel like talking. Nevertheless, it helps them open up without being confrontative and hostile. And over time, you both can establish a routine of similar conversations to boost their confidence and better understand what goes on in their minds.
In other words, do a temp check on whether they’re in their good or bad moments to strike up an insightful conversation.
Final Thoughts
A teen’s life is where they explore things, be independent, and establish their personalities simultaneously. And it can be hard on them and cause dysfunctions from their hormones to brain functions and emotions. As the older and mature demographic, we guide them through their experiences and lead them to better well-being and state of mind.
This article and the tips mentioned above can be a significant first step into shaping them into better and more positive versions of themselves.
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