Dealing with teenage friendship problems

Hi there, my name is Caroline Cavanagh. I'm an anxiety specialist with a particular passion of working with teenagers. I run a closed Facebook group called Teen Stress 101, and in that group, one of the real common themes that people come to the group asking for help for is relationship issues, friendship issues with their children. And I have to say, it does seem to be predominantly Girls. Now I've got a teenage daughter and a teenage son, and that certainly manifests itself in my life. My daughter has so many more teenage— or sorry, friendship problems than my son does. So what I wanted to talk about really on this, on this short video is my approach both as a parent and as a therapist in how I work with teenagers to help them resolve those issues, to move forward from them, and also the advice I give to parents too. And I tend to come from a position of Tough love. One of the things I think is particularly poignant with, with this area, with friendship issues, is it's not just a teenage problem. Now I'm in my late 40s, I have friendship problems now. People can be nasty, friendships change, they move on. And so what's one of the first points that I would love to make is that when you're talking to your teenager, About friendship problems. It's make— it's not sugarcoating life. This is something that they need to learn to deal with because it's not going to go away. Hopefully it's not going to stay, but these things are going to come up again and again. So the real foundation of all of the work that I do is about building resilience. If you can't stop the problem, then building resilience stops the problem affecting you in such a way. And so really, that's my first piece of advice to a lot of the parents that I work with, is making a decision on how much you get involved in solving your teenager's problems. There's not a right and wrong answer. There's obviously lots of variables— the age of that child, the severity of the friendship problems that are being dealt with. There's a scale. Some people may want to jump in over here, other people may say not until over here. There may be certain beliefs that you have, such as, for example, if it gets physical, I've got to get involved. That's a very personal decision. I'm not here to say yes, no. But obviously, we will all make those decisions based on our own values. My perspective, however, would be that the more you jump in, the more you resolve those problems for your teenagers, the less resilient they're going to be for the next time that it happens. What I see very much is the role of parents as our adolescents grow up is to move from being the person that solves the problems, that wraps them in cotton wool, that keeps them safe, to being the person that allows them to leap and becomes there to catch them when they fall. They need to learn in that passage from being a child to being an adult how to solve their own problems, how to become— and I keep going back to this word— resilient, because that resilience is going to stand them in very good stead in many, many different ways of life. Let's get back on track and talk about friendships. 2 realities I've already mentioned in life: people can be horrible, and friendships will change. So let's look at that first one. There will always be people out there that will have a go at you. As I said, as a 40-year-old, I know full well that, you know, people still have a go at me about various things. And so the first thing that I help the teenagers understand What is reality? I often use the analogy of a bully is actually a really, really weak person. A bully is feeling very, very low. They see you as being high, so what they're trying to do is to make them feel stronger by bringing you down. They can't do that. They can't do that. You allow them to do that. If you allow their words, their actions, whatever it is they're doing to affect you, you are allowing them to bring you down. They're not bringing you down, you're doing it yourself. So it's talking about being a victim. You choose to be a victim, and this can be a really, really hard one for kids to get their head around. No, I'm not, it's their fault. It's their fault. They are just expressing an opinion, perhaps in a very horrible, nasty way, in an unacceptable way, but it's still only an opinion. And I keep coming back to that one gentle fact: what is true? What is their truth? What is your truth? If someone's calling you fat, ugly, stupid, whatever it may be, is that true? That's good. I'm going to come back to that in just a minute. But often this can be the first thing that starts to shift that teenager from their stress, is acknowledging that actually that person is saying that you're fat because actually they're feeling pretty insecure about their own physical body, and they're trying to make themselves feel better by accusing you of being fat, ugly, as I said, whatever it may be. And that can start to again move the power away from what they're doing to actually seeing it— they're the one that has the particular issues. So that's the first thing that I always try and do with teenagers, is take them out of what they're seeing to look at it from their angle. What is it they're trying to do? And that moves us on very, very nicely to the next bit of control. Coming back to this victim complex, no one makes you a victim, you choose to become a victim, even if that choice isn't a conscious one. When you take back control, you feel empowered, and that control can come from recognizing actually that person is feeling very weak, they're feeling very vulnerable. That starts to give them the strength. I see why they're doing this. It's not about me, it's about them. Control can also come in the form of taking other actions. So for example, teaching them particular techniques or things that they can do. They can let it go over their head. So I tend to play a lot of games with some of my teenage clients. So it may be, for example, everything that they say, imagine that as an arrow and see it go, and imagine it landing somewhere behind you. Don't let the arrows hit you. If they're a tennis player, I might say it's like a tennis ball, so dodge the tennis ball. You don't have to let it hit you, or just whack it away. Don't allow it again to bruise. It may be you just walk away, laugh it off, all those things that as adults we have probably learned to do, you can pass on again to your teenager. They don't have their skills yet, they need to learn them. When a teenager, and even as an adult, you take back control, it reduces the anxiety. Control and anxiety can't be on the same level. They tend to be. If you're in control, you feel less anxious. If you're very anxious, it's because you abdicated control. So when you take back control, it tends to dramatically reduce the anxiety that the teenagers are feeling. They're then empowered. It allows their energy— this is very much— I'm not going to get into quantum physics, but it's all about energy. They take the energy back, and that empowers them to move forward in a very, very different way. And again, many of us would have experienced in our own lifetimes. When you're strong, the bully disappears and picks on someone else that is weaker. And that again is really empowering for that teenager to learn. You be strong, the bully, the friends that are not being very nice will go and pick on someone else because actually you're not an easy target anymore. So that's all about dealing with people being horrible to you, trying to look at it from a different perspective, recognizing what is the truth, what is their reality. The other thing that again is a bit part of the tough love reality of life is friendships do change. I've seen this a lot even in my adult life. I'm an army wife, moved around a lot, and friendships that I thought were really, really strong— one of us will move, or perhaps all of us will move in a group, and 2 years later we're hardly ever speaking anymore. And I used to take that very personally, to think, why aren't we still seeing each other in the way that we used to be? And it's not a reflection on any one of us. It's purely that the context has changed. Life is a journey. And people often use this thing about you find a tribe. Well, if you're in a tribe in one location, if that location changes, if the context changes, you might need to go and find a new tribe. That's not a bad thing, it's not a weakness, it doesn't mean you've done anything wrong. People move on. And within the teenage sort of years, there are 3 really critical times within that journey that tend to lead to new tribes being formed. One is Year 7, the obvious move from primary school into secondary school. And I think for a lot of kids, again especially girls, Year 7 is a really, really difficult year. Because those 30 or so girls in the new class, or mixed class potentially, are all trying to work out who's my new tribe, who do I gravitate towards, who is nice, who isn't. And there's all these dynamics going on, and it takes a little bit of time. And quite often, who you draw to you first isn't necessarily the best fit. It's the fear of being alone. You just grab the nearest person, and in time, perhaps towards Christmas— now may be a really critical time if you've got Year 7 kids, that they may be experiencing that friendships are changing. And again, it's often taken by that teenager, if the tribe tends to start to dissipate, taking it personally. It's not personal. It's just that tribe isn't the right one for you. Another critical time is Year 10. where the friendships groups spend a lot of time doing similar classes together, start to get diluted because they're all off doing their different GCSE options, and the tribes move on. It's also quite a big time, especially for boys, where their maturity tends to change. In that kind of, you know, 14, 15-year-old age group, a lot of boys can suddenly mature a lot more quickly than others. So it may be just again the maturity issues. People that used to be fun are now deemed as stupid, and it's just an indication that their maturity has changed. They need to find another tribe with similar maturity levels. And again, the third major change is when they get into Year 12, or move on to a college-type scenario, where another big change means that tribes that used to be quite close suddenly aren't in the same way, and things move on. So it's helping your child recognise that there are these phases in life. It's like waves coming in on the sea. You can't stop them coming, but if you're prepared for them, you know it's going to happen, you've taken that back— control back. It gives you a better energy to be able to move forward. Don't take it personally, it's not a reflection on you, it's just one of the things that's happened. But what can you do about it? Go find a new tribe. And again, I'll pick up on that again in just a second. So those are the realities of life, we can't get away from them. So how do you deal with them? Back to that R word, resilience. How do you build the resilience to help your child deal with these waves, as they come in. Deal with the people who unfortunately in the world are going to try and bring you down to make themselves feel better. We've already spoken about a couple of them. What's the perspective? What are they seeing? What is the truth? What is the reality? Take back the control. What can you do to rather be a victim, be the one that's in control of the situation? As a parent, what I would encourage parents to do is to actually listen back to that truth. What is the truth? Has the friendship group, the perpetrators of the nasty comments, whatever may be going on, picked up on a particular vulnerability in your child? Does your child, for example, feel that they're fat, or they're stupid, or they're ugly? We all know, I suspect, as parents— my kids certainly know which buttons to press on me. And to send me nuclear in day one. And so kids will do that too. If they sense a particular weakness in someone, if they are that way inclined, they will get in there, they will push that button. So does your child have a particular button that makes them vulnerable? Are they feeling ugly, fat, stupid, whatever it may be? So a way to help them is then help them overcome that weakness. Perhaps that is the reality for them, they do feel fat. So what can you do To help them take back control of having a different body image, of being aware of what they're eating, changing their diet, doing some exercise. By taking back control, they are no longer being a victim, they're in control of their situations. That may be something that you, as a parent, can start to do, to actually sort of listen to that and say, okay, what am I hearing here? Is it just the bullies, or is my child actually reflecting something that they're unhappy about, that they need some help with? resolving and overcoming, strengthening a particular weakness. One of the models that I talk about very much in Teen Stress 101 is the 7 Cs of resilience. It's 7 C words that all combine to help build this word resilience. I don't really talk about confidence. Confidence is actually quite a fragile emotion. we've probably all experienced again as adults, it can be shattered really, really quickly. Whereas resilience is like that rock, it provides a foundation that allows confidence to be built upon. But unless you've got that foundation, confidence can be really, really fragile. One of those 7 Cs I think is particularly important and poignant to friendships is the element of connection. Sorry. Sorry about that. Doesn't always happen when you're doing Facebook Live. Someone calls you. No one's called me all day, but they called today. So what I talk about, 7 C's. So there is the C of connection, and that's all about if you've just got one friendship group, it makes you very vulnerable. It's that having All of your eggs in one basket scenario. If you've got lots of eggs, if one goes bad, it's not so much of an issue. Something again girls tend to do is they have that one special friend, or perhaps their friendship group, and they have nothing else. If that friendship group rejects them for whatever reason, they're left feeling extremely vulnerable. What connection does is help you build communities, other areas where you have relationships with other people. So something that I work on a lot with the teenagers that I work with is encouraging them to join other groups, whether that's sports, whether it's music, volunteer groups, it really doesn't matter. But it's having connections with other organisations outside of their school friendship groups. It may be having friendships that are not related to the classroom that they're in, having friendships to do with sports, as I said, The more there are, the less vulnerable they become to any particular friendship group coming down. So again, I know for a lot of teenagers that are in this situation, their friendship group may be falling apart. To go out and find a new one is really, really difficult. But when they do find a new one, they become much less vulnerable. And it's not just finding one new friendship group, moving from one group in the classroom to another one. Find some things outside of school. And that allows them also to reinvent themselves. And it also teaches them the skills of recognising that a relationship is two ways. It gives them the empowerment to say, okay, I found a new friend over here, so even if you reject me, I can do that again somewhere else. I can find new friendships. And again, that may require some support from you as a parent. They can't necessarily do it on their own, but it's all about guiding, not doing it for them. Right. Empower your child to say, okay, this has not worked, but what else can we do? Let's find some other friendships, let's join some organisations, let's do other things that broadens those connections beyond just that one relationship group. And the final thing I really wanted to talk about on the, on the video today is what I call my ABC of stress management. 3 things that you can very easily teach your child to do, When their stress levels, when it really is in crisis point. And it's a bit like the ABC of first aid. A doesn't actually start with an A, but hey, doesn't matter. Breathing. We all know that when you take a deep breath, you feel different. And I won't go into the biology about it, but teaching your child just a very simple technique that when they're feeling crap, when it's all going horribly wrong, take themselves away from the situation and just breathe differently and they will feel differently. There's huge amounts of breathing techniques out there, but the one I love and the one I teach children is purely to control an out-breath. When you start to breathe out, be aware of breathing out, take conscious control. We're all breathing now, but you're not thinking about it until now when I just said you probably are breathing out, thinking about it. Think about the breathing and then just breathe out, control the out-breath. So as they start to breathe out, you keep breathing out for longer until the Point that there's nothing left. And then what happens is you automatically breathe in more deeply. Then when they start to breathe out again, take that conscious control, breathe out for longer. And what that does is it changes the biology internally, which accesses different emotions. But more importantly, you're taking back control. So teach your child that breathing technique. It's incredibly powerful. The second one is posture. Now, it's a bit difficult to show this, but if you're in victim mode, if you're feeling down, if you're feeling depressed, what typically happens is people drop their heads, they round their shoulders, they round their back, they literally withdraw into themselves. It makes you vulnerable. To caveat that, to do the reverse means the reverse posture. Stand tall, take your shoulders back. If you're sitting down, stand up, okay, hold your head high. And it's a lovely game that I play with all of the teenagers that come to see me. I get them to be a victim, and when they're in this curled-up, horrible posture, I say, right, try and feel happy. They kind of look at me and say, God, you're weird, how can I feel happy? And that's the point. When you are in certain physical postures, certain emotions either are accessible to you or really hard to get to. So when you're all withdrawn, you tend to have the lower energy level of emotions— depression, down feeling, withdrawn. Whereas if you're strong, then you suddenly can access the higher level of emotions— feeling strong, feeling buoyant, feeling resourceful. So just teaching your child, be aware if someone's bullying you, if someone's giving you a hard time, how are you sitting? How are you behaving? And they'll start to recognise, yeah, I'm I go into myself. Say, okay, when you recognize that, change your posture, get up, walk around, breathe deeply, take your shoulders back. You will feel differently. Back to that same point I keep coming back to, you are taking control. You're not being a victim. You're going, no, stuff that. I'm feeling strong. I'm gonna be strong. And that old expression, fake it till you make it. Fake being strong, and suddenly you'll feel less a victim. the victim. And the third thing, which is the one that your teenager will probably love, I get all of my clients regardless of their age on their phone to have a short playlist of songs that they love. It can be songs that take them back to happy memories, songs that just make them want to dance. It may only be 2 or 3 songs. I think my playlist is about 10. And when you listen to that playlist, it changes how you feel. So I have down days, we all do, but if I listen, start to listen to my playlist, I start to feel differently. Whatever grey cloud is above my head starts to change, the sun starts to come out. Music is incredibly powerful. Our hearing is the first sense to be developed when we're just after being created, and it's the last one to fade in our last breaths of the— of our life. It's incredibly powerful, and it forms associations really, really strongly. So use that association to connect back to good things, to happy memories, to good feelings, and just use it as an emotional change. So having those 3 tools that you can teach your child can be really, really powerful. Change their breathing, change their posture, plug themselves into their favourite tune, and just go and listen. And ideally, Do all of those 3 things. Doing them all together will escalate the power that they have. They're taking back control. They're not letting those friendship groups bully them. That's very short-term, but it breaks the pattern at that moment and then allows them, when they're in a slightly more resourceful state, to put in some of those earlier things that we talked about. What's the reality? What's the truth? Friendships do come and go. How can I go and find a new tribe? Not always easy, but when you take back control, when you're the one with the tennis racket, with the ball, you get to play your game, not being the one standing there with the balls being hit at you. So I hope this has helped. If you want to come and join the Teen Stress 101 group, just check it out on Facebook. We'd love to have you in there. The only requirement is that you are a parent of a teenager. It's a very close group. We share a lot of very vulnerable intimate things in there, so I do control the membership very closely. But if you fit that criteria, we'd love to have you involved. If you'd like to ask questions, then please do so, and I will respond to them as quickly as I can. But thank you very much for listening. I hope that, that has helped, and I look forward to speaking to you again very soon. Bye-bye for now. Thank you, Caroline.