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Topic 4: Managing Stress and Emotions

*This theoretical content was developed in collaboration with the Centre RBC d'expertise en santé mentale. 

UNDERSTANDING STRESS AND ANXIETY
Stress is an alarm system that is completely normal and even necessary in human beings. It's the body's reaction to a threat. When proportional, it enables us to take action and adapt to any situation. It's useful for our survival!

The right amount of stress enables us to respond. Too little or too much stress, however, can have negative effects on a person.


Anxiety, on the other hand, occurs when a person imagines the worst of a future situation. In fact, they are afraid of what they imagine to be catastrophic scenarios. A situation doesn't have to be real to trigger an anxiety reaction and put the body into hypervigilance mode. Anxiety can be normal. It becomes problematic when it has negative effects on your teenager's functioning and causes distress. 

How can I help my teen better manage stress and anxiety?

1- Maintaining a relationship of trust

Listen and normalize 

  • Take what your teen is going through seriously. The fear is real to them, so avoid trivializing it.
  • Explain that what they are experiencing is normal: what you're feeling is uncomfortable, but it's normal and not dangerous. 
  • Ask questions and listen, but don't try to find a solution to their fears at any price. They often just need to be heard and understood. 
  • Choose a good time to talk to them, when you're calm and open.

2- Support and guide

Identify avoidance behaviors

Avoidance is a strategy used to avoid the discomfort of a situation. An anxiety reaction can sometimes make you feel very uncomfortable, so it's only natural to try to relieve it as quickly as possible. It's a natural and human way to regain control of the situation. 

Although avoidance brings quick relief, it increases anxiety in the longer term. Why? 

  • Because it doesn't allow you to develop effective strategies for dealing with the next anxiety-provoking situations (there are many in life). 
  • It's as if you're confirming to your brain that the situation presents a real danger, which is often not the case at all. 
  • Avoidance makes you believe you're incapable of dealing with the situation. This causes you to gradually lose self-confidence, making you more and more anxious.

Support during exposure

It's important to encourage your teen to deal with situations that make them anxious. That's called "exposure to stressful situations."

How you can help

  1. Normalize and reassure: "I understand how you feel, it's uncomfortable, but it's not dangerous."
  2. Encourage your teen to take small steps: "I'm confident you can do it. What's the smallest action you can take to reach your final goal?" 
  3. Choose the means: Ask them to think about and name ways in which they could feel better in anxiety-provoking situations. Revisit the difficult events they have already overcome, what the winning factor was, and what helped them meet these challenges. 
  4. Work on your teen's thoughts and perceptions: See the video presented by the RBC Centre. 

Travail sur les pensées. 

Reduce your parental accommodation behaviors

Parental accommodation involves modifying parenting behavior to prevent or reduce your child's anxiety-related distress. Accepting and tolerating avoidance behaviors places you at the focal point of parental accommodation! 

  • Here are some examples: 
    • Excuse the absence of your teen who refuses to go to school (e.g., "It's okay this morning; just rest and it will be better tomorrow"). 
    • Trying to control everything in their life (work schedule, choice of friends, studies, etc.). 
    • Make calls, order in restaurants, or ask questions for them when they are afraid to do so alone.

Is accommodation normal? Of course! 

One of the main roles of parents is to protect their children. So it's normal to try to avoid difficult emotions or distress. Most of the time, parental accommodation is well-intentioned: we want to help, but sometimes we also want to reassure ourselves as parents. 

The unexpected, setbacks, and disappointments are all part of life, and teens need to develop the ability to adapt to adverse situations. Get involved in your child's life...but not too much! 
Supporting your teenager to adopt healthy lifestyle habits

  • Get a good night's sleep.
  • Adopt a healthy diet.
  • Reduce sources of pressure; avoid overloading your schedule.
  • Get active and exercise. 
  • Reduce screen time. 
  • Engage in family fun, laughter, and simple enjoyment.
  • Take care of your social network; surround yourself with the right people.
  • Integrate stress management strategies into everyday life at home: yoga, breathing, relaxation, mindfulness, art, contact with nature, etc.
  • Be a role model and set an example
  • Confront your own anxiety-provoking situations and share your successful strategies.
  • Accept mistakes and express them. 
  • Talk about your emotions to normalize them. 
  • Adopt a healthy lifestyle. 
  • Manage your own stress! Your stress can exacerbate your teen's, but your confidence can increase theirs. 
  • Take care of yourself; get help for yourself when you need it.

3- Oversee and supervise

Provide a predictable and secure environment.
Applying clear, predictable, and consistent rules helps your teen feel calmer and less anxious. Knowing what to expect, knowing parental limits, and being prepared for new situations has a calming effect and better prepares your teen for dealing with stress. 

4- Prevent, defuse, and intervene

Be on the lookout for situations that can stress your teenager. Some examples are a major change, the loss of a friend, an unforeseen situation, or a disappointment. In those moments:

  • Encourage your teenager to take care of themselves. Look for warning signs when your teen is experiencing times of stress and reactions. 
  • Help to play it down without invalidating it. 
  • Be there. Validate what your teen is experiencing. Teens often try to be strong and in control until they finally can't take the pressure anymore. 
  • Give them space to calm down if that's what they need.

5- Consequences: stop acting

Stress is not an excuse for unacceptable behavior (e.g., yelling at parents, refusing to do something, being aggressive toward a sibling, etc.). These inappropriate reactions might indicate that something is wrong or that your teenager can't control the intensity of the stress or emotions they are experiencing. These reactions, however, should not be tolerated. Your teen needs to develop appropriate strategies for expressing themselves. It's therefore important to maintain your limits and your family framework, as a consequence or gesture of reparation can and must be applied if the teen adopts unacceptable behaviors. 

Managing emotions during adolescence

Remember that adolescence is often a time of intense and sometimes contradictory emotions. This hypersensitivity represents a real challenge for your teen. Moreover, they need to gain a little more independence in managing their world of emotions. You remain the person your teen trusts to support them in this learning process.

1- Maintaining a relationship of trust

Talking about emotions isn't always easy for many teenagers. It's much easier if they feel listened to and not judged by their parent.

2- Support and guide

Adolescence can be an emotional roller coaster for you as a parent. Taking care of yourself is essential. It will have an impact not only on your own well-being, but also on that of your teenager.

If the emotion gets too intense, allow yourself a pause if you don't feel you can intervene appropriately. Let your teen know that you'll be taking a few minutes out to take a few deep breaths. 

Once you are calm and ready to be attentive, here's how to support your teen:

  1. Listen without interrupting. 
  2. Welcome your teen's emotions and be empathetic.
  3. Give them a moment to calm down. 
  4. Once they are ready, help them find the words to express what they are experiencing. 
  5. Conclude positively.

3- Oversee and supervise

Be clear about your expectations, rules, and expected consequences. If this is provided for, emotional reactions are less intense and it is easier for your teen to take responsibility. 

4- Prevent, defuse, and intervene

Does your teenager have difficulty managing their emotions, the intensity increases, and they often lose control? Let's revisit the concepts of avoidance, parental accommodation, and exposure, this time tackling emotional management (refer to the stress management section to understand the concepts, if necessary).

 Teen avoidance Parental accommodation Support in exposure
 

Emotions are very uncomfortable and anxiety-provoking.

Quickly look for a source of relief to avoid the emotion.

Use winning strategies that work quickly for teen: shouting, threatening, aggressing, blaming others, repressing or denying emotion.

If those around you accept and tolerate the teen's avoidance strategies (accommodation), calm is quickly restored.

 Discomfort with my teen's emotions: I feel guilty, responsible, anxious, afraid of losing the relationship with them.
Use strategies for rapid relief: 
  • Set aside the intended consequence or requirement.
  • Rigidify/tighten the rules to keep control over them.
  • Avoid talking about it. 
Quick return to calm.		 

Teen experiences an emotion: The parent embraces the teen and normalizes what they are experiencing.

Teen empowerment: it's your anger, not mine. Expresses experience in words. 

Maintains requirements and rules.

Trust them: I understand it's difficult, you're capable of finding a way to feel better, can suggest something.

Calm returns more quickly

 IMPACTS IMPACTS IMPACTS
 

Little opportunity to develop emotion management strategies on their own.

Increased intolerance of emotions: increasingly impulsive and reactive.

Negatively affects family and social relationships: refuses to accept responsibility and prefers fusion-type relationships (I need others to manage my emotions).

Negative impact on personal confidence: low esteem of themselves and their reactions.

A major challenge in managing emotions in adulthood: workplace, social network, romantic relationship.

Teen's distress, risk of developing mental-health problems.

 

Encourage teens to take no responsibility for their emotions. "I'll calm down if you do what I want."

The teen comes to believe that their reactions are explained by the actions of the other person (I'm violent because you won't let me see my girlfriend tonight).

Increased guilt, worry, anxiety, or insecurity in your parent/teen relationship.

Tense family climate.

Parent–teen relational impasse.

Parental exhaustion.

Risk of relational disconnect between the parent and teenager.

 

Learns to manage emotions on their own.

Takes responsibility for the actions they take to manage their emotions.

Feeling that their emotions are normal and can be controlled.

Feels increasingly confident, develops good self-esteem.

Improves social skills.

Satisfactory family and social relationships.

Protective factors in the development of healthy mental health.

5- Consequences: stop acting

Your teen does not respond well to your interventions and they continue to react strongly, they become increasingly angry, are physically aggressive, and you are afraid of them? 

  • Refer to the crisis-management procedure.
  • Contact your CLSC or an organization of your choice to get the help you need (directory of resources).
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