Things You Learn in Therapy
Things You Learn in Therapy
Ep 137: How To Respond When Your Teen’s Anxiety Feels Big
Sharing some of my favorite throwback episodes from Kids These Days...
What if the first second of your response could change how your teen handles anxiety? We unpack a practical, compassionate approach to big feelings that begins with a steady face and ends with stronger connection. No jargon, no lectures—just a clear framework you can use tonight.
We start with the counterintuitive move that lowers the temperature fast: fix your face. Learn why a neutral, grounded expression and tone signal safety to a nervous system on high alert—and how to repair quickly if your surprise or frustration slips out. Then we pivot to co-regulation, using short prompts and shared breathing to slow runaway thoughts. Instead of shutting worries down, we draw them out with simple questions that shrink vague fears into specific, manageable pieces.
With calm restored, we shift to consent. You’ll hear scripts that honor autonomy: “Do you want my take?” and “What should we do together?” When teens say yes, we offer concise, doable steps instead of lectures. When they say no, we respect the boundary—and keep the door open. We also map out the follow-up rhythm that builds trust over time: a light touch the next day, a check-in later in the week, and a watchful eye for changes in mood, sleep, school, and friendships. Finally, we cover how and when to seek professional support, frame it as teamwork, and navigate waitlists while keeping momentum at home.
If you’ve ever wondered how to help without hovering, how to listen without minimizing, or how to advise without taking over, this guide to teen anxiety gives you the tools. Expect practical language you can borrow, evidence-informed reasoning for each step, and a steady reminder that presence beats perfection. If this helped, share it with a friend who’s supporting a worried teen, subscribe for more science-backed parenting strategies, and leave a review to tell us which step made the biggest difference.
This podcast is meant to be a resource for the general public, as well as fellow therapists/psychologists. It is NOT meant to replace the meaningful work of individual or family therapy. Please seek professional help in your area if you are struggling. #breakthestigma #makewordsmatter #thingsyoulearnintherapy #thingsyoulearnintherapypodcast
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health concerns, please contact 988 or seek a treatment provider in your area.
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Feel free to share your thoughts at www.makewordsmatterforgood.com or email me at Beth@makewordsmatterforgood.com
www.bethtrammell.com
Hey everyone, welcome back to Kids These Days. I'm your host, Dr. Beth Tremell, and I am a licensed psychologist and associate professor of psychology at Indiana University East, where I'm also the director of the Masters in Mental Health Counseling program. And today I want to talk about teen worry or teen anxiety, or frankly, just any kind of emotion that feels pretty big from your teenager. So I have a four-step process for you, and some of these may be uh perhaps counterintuitive to you, right? So some of these are gonna feel like the opposite of what you wanna do. And so I'm gonna start with the first one. Step one, when your teen is having worry or anxiety or fear about anything, the first thing to realize is we have to fix our face and our body and our whole approach to whatever they're talking about. So that means don't have the oh wow face. I'm trying not to say a curse word, but make sure that your face isn't like overly shocked or oh my gosh, I don't know how to handle this kind of face. You may have to kind of practice this a little bit, but if you have the face like, oh my gosh, you're probably only going to escalate their fear. So we don't want to have the oh snap face, and we don't want to have the oh my gosh, you're being dramatic face, right? So we don't want to have it be in either direction too far, like, oh, this is not a big deal, or oh my gosh, this is a huge deal. We want to try to have our face live somewhere in the middle so that our teen knows that we can handle whatever they're gonna come to us with, even if internally we're literally freaking out. So remember that most teens don't tell us a lot about their inner world. And so it took a lot of courage for them to admit that they were feeling some sort of way. So try not to mess it up in the first few seconds of them sharing it with your face sort of being a screwed up kind of way. Now, if you do make that face, either the oh snap face or the rolling of the eyes, I can't believe you're making this a big deal kind of face, it's okay. It's okay. Just repair as quickly as you can, right? So if your teen starts to say something like, oh, I knew you wouldn't care about this, or why do you make me think I'm crazy? They say something like that because they are interpreting your immediate reaction uh negatively, then you can say something like, I'm sorry, I made that face. It isn't how I really feel about your worry. I think I was just taken by surprise. Or maybe you could say, I'm sorry, I made that face, I didn't know that it mattered this much to you. Tell me more about it, right? So go immediately into repair so that your teen knows that when they become vulnerable and they share parts of their inner world, we are going to honor that experience and want to be a part of that experience with them. So step one is to fix your face. Step two is don't shut them down with all of your great ideas. Okay, so we as parents think we are all knowing and wise. And so when our teens have a struggle, we tend to think we have the right answer for them. And many times we might. But if you were ever a teenager, you can remember that your parents had brilliant ideas that you also thought were absolutely the dumbest thing. So it doesn't actually help us in these moments to share our great ideas, especially if they're at the height of their worry or fear or anxiety. So keep in mind that almost all worry or anxiety that has gotten to this point is illogical, right? It's illogical. It doesn't make sense, it's not supposed to. That's what emotion is, okay? So all of our great ideas come from a logic base. So you see, it's never going to work. They're never timed right when your teen's brain is under the control of illogical thought processes or illogical emotion, and we're trying to meet it with logic. Okay? So if they are in this space of kind of being really anxious or worried or afraid, take some deep breaths with them. You may sit down next to them or ask them to come sit down with you and just take some audible breaths with them, right? Right? Just take a minute to just breathe with them. It helps the body actually slow down, taking that breath. After you've helped them kind of take that breath, do the opposite of what you probably want to do. Instead of saying, don't be anxious, don't be afraid, don't be worried. I want you to do the opposite. I want you to say, tell me all about what your fear is. Tell me the things that you think are maybe crazy. Because you know what? Sometimes I worry about things that I think are crazy. Draw out of them the worry, the fear, the anxiety, rather than shutting it down. When we shut it down, we tell them what's what's going on for you doesn't matter to me. Even if we say it really matters to me, but I don't want to hear about it. Right? So do the opposite of what you want to do, which is we really want to aim to draw it out of them. So fix your face, make sure your face is welcoming and ready to listen. Don't shut them down with great ideas. Instead, focus on drawing all of it out of them. Say things like, is there anything else that you're worried about? What specifically about that are you most afraid of? So try to ask continued probing questions until your teen is able to say, no, I think that's all. And they'll they'll most of the time actually say, no, I think that's all, or I don't really want to talk about it anymore. That's your cue that they have kind of gotten as much of it out as they're going to in this moment in this session. And that's your time to move to step three, which is don't fix it without permission. Instead, focus on asking for permission to work on it together, right? So once they've talked enough that they appear calm, right? They've kind of talked through enough that their body is kind of slowing down a little bit, because you've drawn out their fears or their worries, ask them, what do you think we should do about this? What should we do? We're doing it with them. We're not doing it for them, we're doing it with them. Or maybe you say something like, Do you want to hear my take on it? If they say no, that's not your moment to launch into telling them. That's your moment to honor their no. And that may be hard for us, right? Because we want to stop our child from suffering. But they may want to take their own road to get there. And we have to really honor that. So we're not fixing it unless they give us permission, right? And then once they give us permission, then we can share some thoughts we have. And now that they're calm, their logical brain is back online and they can start to hear some of those things from us. So fix your face, don't shut them down, instead, draw it out, don't fix it, instead ask for permission. And step four is to follow up the next day and the following week about it, right? So this is really important. Set an alarm on your phone. Make an appointment in your calendar that says, follow up with Maya about friend issue. Now, when you do this, keep it casual, right? Be casual. Believe them if they say no at first, or believe them if they say they're doing okay that next day. They really may be doing okay. Now, if you start to see lots of changes in behavior or changes in mood, and they're still saying they're okay, but their behavior's telling you they're not okay, that's when we may need to move on to the last sort of optional step, which I'm going to talk about in a second. So ask them that next day, how are you doing? About what we talked about. Hey, you seem like you're feeling better today. Um, was there anything else that you thought about that you're worried about? Sometimes they do think about things, and the fact that you bring up the next day that it still matters to you because it matters to them sends the message that you're in it with them, right? And that's really important. So optional step five, when to seek help, right? So if you've got a kiddo who's worried pretty frequently, right? And that means it is starting to get in the way of their ability to learn, it's starting to get in the way of their ability to kind of function the way a typical teen would, it's probably time to get help, right? These are things that you can do on the daily at home. But if you're having kind of regular conversations about fear, worry, or anxiety, it's probably time to seek help. And what I find is that most of the time, if you ask a teenager who has been suffering a lot with anxiety, hey, what do you think if we talk to a professional about this so we both can figure out ways to support you better? Again, this thing, we're gonna do it together, sends a message to your teenager that, hey, I'm not sending you to someone who will just fix you. I'm here to learn how to help all of us cope better with the world around us. So that might mean calling your insurance to find a therapist in your area. Right now, um, there are probably waiting lists to most counselors in your area, but get yourself on the waiting list, call back frequently to ask if they've had cancellations, um, seek out some perhaps online support groups. If your child's in school, you may ask the school counselor if they have any resources at the school. If it's in the summertime, we may try to do some anxiety or worry decreasing activities as a family, whatever it might be to kind of help bolster your child's mood is kind of what we're aiming for here. So, just a quick recap. First, fix your face. Second, don't shut them down with great ideas, instead, draw it out. Third, don't try to fix it unless you get permission. So ask for permission, join them in it. And uh the fourth step is to follow up the next day and the following week. And the optional fifth step is to uh seek help if you need it. I hope this was helpful to someone out there. Feel free to share this episode with someone who you think may have a teen who has a little bit of fear or a lot of fear, uh, worry or anxiety. Would love to share that with them. So until next time, everyone, stay safe and stay well.
