Helping Your Teen with Social Anxiety.

Parenting help for teen social anxiety.

Hi. And welcome to the Parenting Your Teens podcast where each week we take a question submitted from a viewer, and we answer it, so that you leave with practical solutions to a specific issue that you could potentially be facing in your teen. 

So today, we have an email from Mary that lives in Portland. So that's awesome, we're getting some reach going and she's all the way out in Portland. So I'm excited for that, and thanks a ton, Mary, for submitting this. 

Now what Mary is asking is she says, "My teenage son, he's 16, is suffering from social anxiety. My husband and I don't deal with it ourselves, so we don't know what to do to help him through this." 

Okay, so social anxiety is very, very common in teens. They don't have that sense of self like we talked about in previous podcast, they have a lot of concern of what other people think, so there's this constant message of judgment and I'm not good enough sort of going through their mind. So her question is what do we do to deal with social anxiety. 

How bad is your teen’s anxiety?

Now first you have to look at like what degree of social anxiety we're dealing with, because you can have really low level, I just have a little sort of awkwardness or hesitation when I'm in a group of people that I don't know. Or you could have social anxiety that is more like what we call agoraphobia, which means they don't even leave their house because it's so debilitating. So like I said, you want to kind of look at where they're at, and I think you'll see that this kind of hits sort of that majority of social anxiety cases, but it won't work for those real extreme cases, because that's just a much different situation and obviously much more severe. As a side note, that usually takes years and years of dealing with untreated anxiety to develop, so you probably won't deal with that with your teen in the first place. 

Understand your teen’s anxious thoughts.

But really the biggest thing is understanding what your teen's going through by understanding what their thoughts are. Now this is really scary for teens, because they don't really want to openly share the idea of being vulnerable and talking about things that are emotionally-based, it can be really overwhelming. But you have to tell them like, "Look, if we can identify the thoughts that you're having, we can really challenge what your emotional response to that is." 

So you just want to start by saying, "Okay, let's look at it, you're experiencing anxiety, what's the thought that you're having?" 

Now this is the key part - when you talk about the thoughts they're having, you want to look at the core negative thoughts, automatic negative thoughts that are core, right? So a negative thought of like I don't like the rain, right? Okay, so that's kind of a negative thought, but it's very basic, very general, very surface level. What we want to do is get down to that core negative belief, right? 

Eliminate negative core beliefs in your teen.

So a core negative belief would be - I'm bad, I'm unlovable, people won't like me, there's nothing good about me, just that like self-loathing sort of attacking thought that really just takes all of our value away, so why would we ever open up to connecting with somebody in that way? So what we want to do is we want to identify that thought, right? 

And then we want to start the process of challenging it. We want to look at what's the evidence that supports that thought for your teen. 

Now here's the thing - you have to look at it and address it as if that is true. Because for them it really is true. Once you get what that evidence that supports is, you can then look at what is the evidence that doesn't support. So say that the negative thought is I I'm not good enough, right? So you'll look at the things that say I'm not good enough and they'll say, "Well, I got rejected by a peer. I don't get good grades. I'm not pretty or I don't look good. I'm not tall. I'm not skinny enough," right? All of that kind of self stuff.

And then you have to look at the evidence that says you are good enough, right? And so they'll say, "Well, I actually have friends, people like to spend time with me, I'm funny," right? And so they'll start challenging it. And you want to do a basis of comparison in that. And have them do the basis of comparison. 

Establish positive thought patterns for your teen. 

Now you shift to creating an alternative thought, right? So what's the thought that they're going to challenge that initial negative core belief thought with? Now this is the key - I tell them you can't bring a water gun to that fight, because that core negative belief, you attach truth to that, it's such a strong association that if you come with a, "Well, maybe sometimes I'm sort of good enough," right? No, it's not going to be it. You got to be like, "I'm amazing, I'm fantastic, I'm incredible." And here's the thing - they have to tell that to themselves over and over and over again. You can't do it as a parent, but you can teach them how to do that for themselves.

And then the feeling that comes after it usually is not, "I'm anxiety-free," and I always make this point to kids, it's, "I'm less anxious." So you want to kind of right-size the expectation from the outset. 

Here's the thing - neurologically it takes about 28 days to build in a new neural pathway, and really a neural pathway is just a thought pattern. So 30 days of regularly challenging that negative belief, they're going to start to feel better and better and better, and we get to the end of that 30 days they're going to have way less anxiety than they started with. 

So anyways, here's just a really sort of basic, kind of DIY, work with your kids at home to start rooting out some of that negative belief and replacing it with some positive thoughts that they have about themselves. And I think you'll start to see those social anxiety symptoms decrease pretty quickly, and at the very least, or I should say at the very most, at about 30 days you're going to see a real big shift occur. 

So anyways, thanks for tuning in this time to the podcast. And like always, if you want to learn how to end defiance or disrespect in your teen visit parentingyourteens.com where you can attend a free training on how to do that very thing. Thanks a lot, and we'll see you next time. 

About Christopher Taylor, MFT

Christopher Taylor, MFT is a teen expert, therapist, author, and speaker with 16 years of experience working with teens and families. He provides teen and family therapy services in Folsom, Granite Bay, El Dorado Hills and surrounding areas. Chris is the author and creator of the Back to Basics: Tayloring Your Teen For Success Program, consisting of the book, workbook and online course.