How to Help a Teen with Depression
Parents of teens with depression often have a difficult challenge. You may notice that your child is especially irritable or sad, has a lack of energy, and is no longer interested in things they used to enjoy. Maybe they are struggling with procrastination or they’re isolating themselves and seem lonely. Often, a teen with depression falls behind in school and their grades start slipping. These things can be very alarming to parents! You may be used to stepping in to help when your child is in trouble. However, a depressed teen may push back, strongly, when parents try to help. A dilemma I see in my office often is a parent who has a distant and high-conflict relationship with a depressed teen that has developed because of a loving desire on the part of the parent to help their child feel better. Often, the teenager is angry, hurt, and in need of support from their parents. Parents sometimes ask me “What am I supposed to do? I can’t just leave my child alone, they are clearly suffering! But when I try to help and offer suggestions they become so angry and we get into a fight that just makes things worse.”
A parent in this situation is often suffering, too. They love their child and want to be there for them. They may be struggling with their own fears or sadness about what their child is going through. When parents come to me for therapy regarding these problems, I spend time listening and empathizing with their experience. I want to try and see this problem through their eyes and imagine what it is like for them to not only see their child suffering, but to have their child get angry and shut their parents out when parents try to help. When the parents can confirm that I understand their problems and I have given them the support and understanding they need, I explore any good reasons they may have for continuing to do things the way they have been and to not use the kind of help I have to offer.
The truth is, the help I have to offer a person in this situation is inherently unfair. That’s because I would only be able to help them change how they are handling the problem, rather than focusing on what can be done to get their child to behave differently. Often, parents are dismayed by the behavior of their teen who has depression. They have a lengthy list of behaviors they see that are making the problem worse and worse. I would agree that the teen really has a lot of things they could be doing differently to change things. But the parent is the person who is coming to me for help, not their child. Therefore, I can only focus on what the parent could do differently. To work with me, a parent would need to be willing to only look at how they are contributing to the problem in the relationship with their child. In fact, they will have to take a sometimes painful look at how they are actually causing their child to treat them in the ways they don’t like. This requires a death of the ego that can be extremely difficult. For the parent who is willing to experience this ego death, the benefits available are beautiful. They can transform the painful, frustrating, sad and lonely relationship with their loved one into a relationship of joy and love.
Let’s say a parent decides they want to work with me on this problem, even though it will be unfair and challenging for them. The first step will probably be to complete what’s called a Blame Cost-Benefit Analysis. This is a simple and powerful tool created by Dr. David Burns to bring to light all the good reasons for continuing to blame the other person for the problems in a relationship, and all of the disadvantages of doing this. You can see an example of a complete Blame Cost-Benefit Analysis at this link to Dr. Burns’ website. You can also listen to an excellent episode of Dr. Burns’ Feeling Good Podcast on the topic of addressing resistance to changing one’s own behavior in a relationship at this link. If after a parent completes the Blame Cost-Benefit Analysis they discover that the disadvantages of blaming their teen outweigh the advantages, I will offer them the tools of the Interpersonal Model of TEAM Therapy. A great place to start is learning the Five Secrets of Effective Communication. You can listen to an excellent Feeling Good Podcast episode that introduces the Five Secrets at this link.
Why do we focus on effective communication when a parent is asking how to help a teen with depression? We do this because of a paradox of relationships: The urge to solve problems is the cause of most relationship problems. The refusal to solve problems is usually the solution. At first, this sounds like confusing nonsense. “My child is in trouble! They need help! How can refusing to help them solve their problem be the answer? They need to get out of their room and do something!” Well, hear me out and see what you think.
If you want to have a closer, more satisfying relationship with your teenager, the biggest change you can make is to stop problem-solving and start communicating effectively. In the book “Feeling Good Together,” Dr. Burns teaches that if you want to communicate better, learn to talk with your EAR. In other words, do more listening than talking! Specifically, talking with your EAR means using three things: Empathy, Assertiveness and Respect.
In future blog posts, I will explore the E-A-R model and the Five Secrets of Effective Communication in more detail. If you are interested in learning more about the Five Secrets, check out Dr. Burns’ book “Feeling Good Together.” You can also get fantastic information on how to use the Five Secrets for free by listening to The Feeling Good Podcast. Try starting with episodes 65-70, which focus on the Five Secrets of Effective Communication and then explore the rest of the episodes to find other topics that are relevant to you.
To learn more about ways to help a teenager who is suffering from depression, check out the book “The Antidepressant Book” by Dr. Jacob Towery.
If your teenager is interested in therapy, you are welcome to schedule a free 15-minute consultation with me. This is an opportunity for me to get to know what your child would like help with in therapy and for me to show them the type of help I have to offer. If we agree that therapy with me could be a good fit for their problems, we can move forward with assessment, goal-setting and treatment.