The Connection Conundrum
The Dalai Lama was once asked if he had any advice on raising children. His response, after humbly reminding the audience of his celibacy vows was this:
“But I do know something about raising children, because I was a child and I was raised by parents. And I learned that the most important thing is to love the child no matter what. The child needs to feel loved.”
Yet as any parent of a teenager knows, we are constantly put to the test in expressing love and connection to our child. Brain changes that are taking place during our teens’ lives affect how teens seek to try new things, connect with peers in new ways, feel more intense emotions, and push back on the existing ways of doing things to create new ways of being in the world. When you add to that, the additional struggles of a teen with emotion dysregulation, anxiety, an eating disorder, or addiction, maintaining connection may feel hopeless. How do we navigate these stormy waters and guide the ship?
Dialectical thinking can help us navigate the waters. Dialectical is the D in DBT Therapy. Dialectical thinking is the ability to know that two opposing views can be true at the same time. The poet Rumi says this most beautifully:
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing, there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
As a parent, you may have a viewpoint that is true for you, while your teen has thier own story and perspective. The goal is to find the middle ground of effective behavior, solve the problem, and ultimately to stay connected to our teen.
In DBT we call this “Walking the Middle Path”. This set of skills was specifically developed for teens and their parents. It is used to bridge the communication between teens and their parents, and to help maintain relationships during the challenging time of parenting a teen. This is done in DBT through an understanding of dialectics, validation, and strategies to change behavior.
Through an understanding of dialectics we learn that there is more than one way to see a situation or to solve a problem. We learn to express to our teens that they are good enough, we love them, we understand where they are coming from AND we want to help them change, become better and learn healthy behaviors.
Start being a dialectical thinker today with these three tips:
Move away from “either-or” thinking to “both-and” thinking. Avoid words like “never” and “always.” Be descriptive. For example, instead of saying “we are always fighting” say “sometimes we have difficulty communicating, and other times we communicate well.” Or, instead of saying “You’re a teenager. You need to be independent,” say “you can be independent and ask for help.” Finally, instead of saying “You never do your homework,” say “sometimes you do your homework, and sometimes you forget.”
Accept that different opinions can be legitimate, even though you might not agree with them. DBT asserts that no one has the absolute truth, and that we need to be open to alternatives. Even if we do not think our teen is right, it is important to try and validate what they think. By validating, we show our teens that what they feel matters to us. It allows them to feel both cared for and respected.
Check your assumptions and do not expect others can read your mind. We cannot assume that we know what is happening in our teen’s head, just as we cannot expect that they know what is going on in ours. We should ask our teens clarifying questions like “can you tell me more about that?” We should also strive to be clear by saying things like “what I am trying to say is that I feel ___ about ____.”
Through these changes, we learn to walk the middle path, to find the field to lay our soul down in the grass, where we think beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing. Through these efforts we reap the benefits of a connected relationship with our teen. Sounds so lovely, right?
It sounds lovely, and also the work is not easy. In the end, we must remember that
we are all doing the best we can, in the context of our lives,
both parents and teens. This is the first philosophical position of DBT, and a most important one to never lose sight of.
WRITTEN BY:
Christine Nolan
GREAT LAKES THERAPY CENTER Group Co Leader, Lover of all things DBT, and Navigator of the ship to her family of six