It's Not Therapy but it Feels Therapeutic [What I Do & Why it Works Fast]

Hey, I'm Ashley Chandler, The Teenage Guide. And for nearly 2 decades, I've worked inside middle schools and high schools and with college-age students and family living rooms, helping hundreds of families go from daily conflict and closed doors to real connection with their teenager. I speak parent and I speak teen, and I create a bridge between you that'll A lot of other methods can't and won't. If you're navigating adolescence in your home, and a version of yourself you're still becoming, you're exactly where you need to be. Let's reimagine the teenage years with science and soul at the forefront. This is The Teenage Guide Podcast.

Hey there, welcome back to The Teenage Guide Podcast. I took the week off last week with the 4th of July and I am back better than ever. No, I don't know if it's better than ever. It's just me. I took a break, people. I'm Ashley Chandler and I'm so grateful that you're here with me today because this is an episode that I've actually been sitting on for quite a while. I get a version of the same question pretty frequently. Sometimes it comes to me in the version of a parent who just found me. Sometimes it comes to me from a referral or they've been following me for a while and they need a refresher. And it goes a little something like this. Ashley, is what you do therapy? Can you help my kid with school or friends? And so in this episode, I am gonna be walking you through Exactly what I do and why it works so well for families, for parents, and for teenagers. And not only does it work well, but it can work fast. So the answer is no, what I do is not therapy. I am not a licensed therapist or clinician, but I am a dual credentialed educator and coach. So what I do is not therapy, But it feels therapeutic. Let's get into it. Before I get into anything about myself, I wanna start with you, because if you're listening to this, I already know some things about you. Maybe your teenager is notoriously struggling in school. Every morning feels like a negotiation that you didn't sign up for. Every evening after school feels like that. Their grades are slipping. There's stress. There's hiding. Maybe that's you. Maybe there's more disconnection or tension in your house than not. You try to reach out, they pull back. Maybe you feel a little bit resentful or scared or worried, and you have this low-grade ache that things are not where you want them to be in your relationship. Maybe it's the social piece and Your teenager struggles with friendships or having high-quality friendships, or that they're hanging out with a crowd that you don't particularly love, and you fear that they're more isolated or lonely than they're letting on. Or maybe nothing is catastrophically wrong per se, but you're in a transition period where they might be going into middle school, into high school, into college, And you are just kind of gritting your teeth through the process. And you wonder, like, is this it? Is this how it always is for every family? Because this stress and this depletion that I feel cannot go on much longer. And this is a really big piece that I want to address. Maybe underneath all of that, you're going through your own transformation. I have a feeling if you're listening to this, you are also in midlife, and what you would put up with before, you no longer want to put up with. You're going through your own transformation. You can see the end of life in a way that maybe no one else in your family can, and you can look back and see that you're becoming someone completely You're outgrowing that former version of yourself. And so I really wanna say you're not falling apart, you're transforming. And that's really important to call out in the midst of parenting a teenager. You're going through almost like a reverse adolescence. You're going through your own transformational period. Nobody's really talking about this, and I'm on a mission to change that. If any of this lands with you, then you're in the right place. So I've been working with teens and families and parents for nearly 2 decades in public education, in private education, neurotypical learners, neurodiverse learners, in parent education program development. The list goes on. I've been in the room when everything falls apart. And I've also been in the room when everything comes back together. And after all of that, I can tell you with 100% certainty that every family challenge, every conversation, every late-night text, every challenge that a family faces boils down to 2 things: relationships and skills. So I'm gonna break this down for you. Relationships, and I mean all of them, the relationship That your teen has with themselves, the relationship that you have with yourself, the relationship between you, the family dynamic, the relationship they have to school, to individual people in their life, teachers, socially, the relationship that you have with your partner, with school officials, with extended family, right? This is the foundation of every challenge, the way that we relate to ourselves and each other. Relationships are the soil of my framework, the Teenage Tree. And here's what I want you to really get in a simple framework. Think of a tree, imagine a tree, right? When the soil is depleted, nothing grows. It's that simple. You can throw every fancy gadget that you get on Amazon. You can throw every strategy, every well-intentioned, perfectly worded bit of communication. You can throw everything at it and it won't work if the relationship is depleted. And now let's move on to skills, specifically the skill of self-awareness, the skill of self-regulation, the skill of social-emotional intelligence, executive function skill building. These skills, and I would argue most things are a skill, are things that enable us— this is the language that I like to use with my clients— when we focus on skill building, it enables us to become a leader in our own lives. I like to say everyone's a leader, everyone has impact. I like to frame my work with clients in a really individual way because everyone processes their world differently, experiences life differently. So we focus on skill development to enhance individuals within the family, teenagers, parents, the unit, to be able to lead in their own life, to be able to have an idea, have a dream, make it come true. And what most people don't realize is that skills are not fixed. They can be learned and developed over time. The amount of skill building that I've done— I was a gifted kid who got lost and then went through a really lagging period, especially around school with skill building. The fact that I provide support for teenagers where, let's say, they're early in college, they lose their scholarship freshman year, through the work that we do together, they've gotten it back within 6 months' time. The fact that me as a struggling college kid myself who was put on academic probation now does this for a living, it just shows you skills are built over time and with intentionality. And when we focus on skill-building in our relationships and in our life so that we can lead in our own life, they really provide us this foundation to handle anything that comes our way: grades, motivation, friendships, family dynamics. Any sort of conflict or challenge can be healed or can be repaired and achieved Through intentional skill-building. So in the work that I do with parents and with teens, it is a very intentional process. There is a method to skill-building, and I walk you through the method behind this with so much clarity and purpose. So you're not just winging it, right? You know what you're aiming towards, and you can see how the actions that you're taking, the beliefs that you're having about it, How they add up to growth, to being able to do the thing, right? So going back to my teenage tree visual, I wanna really kind of paint this picture for you because I'm a visual person. Most people benefit from having a visual that they could kind of anchor into. So I want you to imagine a tree and not just like, you know, a simple stick figure tree, but the whole thing. The whole ecosystem. So you've got the soil, you've got the roots that the soil grows in, you've got the trunk and the branches, and then you've got the leaves. Here's how it maps to your family. We wanna kind of zoom out as if we're birds. So taking that bird's eye view of the tree, what do you see? You see the leaves, right? And the leaves represent the very tangible, visceral experience of parenting.

Mm-hmm.

Or of being a teen. So this can be the yelling more than you'd like to. This can be looking at the portal and seeing low grades. This can be the friend who was snarky to you in the hallway. So it's a very real experience that we feel. This is the leaves. Okay, so we've got the experience up here that we can see, that we can feel, and it's so uncomfortable. And what we wanna do is we actually wanna go all the way down to the soil of the tree. This is where we start now. And the soil represents the relationship that you have with yourself. And this can encompass a lot of things. In my work, I focus on 3 specific areas, the 3 selves: self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-compassion. We really wanna become aware of what we're believing about ourselves. We wanna become really aware of how we experience our world. What are our triggers? We wanna become aware of our inner narrative, our inner stories, how we treat ourselves, true self-care. Once we have built the skill of this, then we can move up to the roots. The roots represent our relationship that we have with our teenager. For teens, this may be the relationship they have with you, or it could be the relationship they have with friends. Okay? So the roots represent relationships that we have with other people and how we relate to each other, our approach, our ability to co-regulate, to regulate with them, to turn down the energy in the room, to bring it back to balance, our ability to connect in a way the other person can receive. There's so many different layers to the relationship that we have with other people. Those are the roots. And when the relationship with ourselves and the relationship with each other is tended to in really intentional, powerful ways, then we move to the branches. And these are systems or tools for skill building. Then we can identify Where do we need to grow? What systems need to be in place? What skills do I need to build? And when we go through that process, I'm doing this winding thing, like we're going up from the soil to the, all the way to the leaves, right? Then the outcome, the experience, those leaves, the yelling decreases, the grades go up, the friendships get more soulful, get more real. The experience that was once the challenge shifts. And that is the framework that I use in all of my work with parents individually, with teens individually, with parents and teens combined. For teens, if you're having social-emotional challenges, social challenges with friends or with just the social world that is adolescence, everything shifts in life when we focus on the relationships that we have with ourselves, each other, and when we focus on intentional skill building. And for the parent who's in her own season of life, the season where things are being reorganized, whether we like it or not, our own fluctuating hormones, our own brain reconstruction, this framework hits very, very differently. And it's important to acknowledge that our relationship with ourselves With our own identity, who we're becoming is having a direct effect on our relationship with our teenagers. The soil is not just like a good parenting strategy. It is absolutely critical to everything else. It is also happening physiologically. It's necessary. It's part of our own transformation. Your nervous system as a midlife parent is being completely rebuilt. You've got multiple people in the same household going through a complete transformation, multiple people in the same household who need and require a different kind of relationship to themselves. Now, I love this stuff. Everything is grounded in what I like to say is a soul-to-systems toolkit. It's grounded in neuroscience and it's grounded in Universal laws, how the adolescent brain, how the midlife brain and nervous systems actually work, and where you're headed, where your soul is headed, where you want to grow in your life, being intentional about how you want to live this precious life that you're living. Your teenager's brain is quite literally under construction. So is yours. Their prefrontal cortex, you've probably heard this by now, is under construction, which means— That the part of the brain responsible for them being a leader in their own life is not online the majority of the time. So they may not have the best impulse control— understatement. They may be very emotionally charged or illogical, or they may lose track of time. They may lose their stuff all the time. This is developmentally appropriate and it's very typical. And it isn't fully developed until their mid-20s when they're Long gone outta your house. So your teenager is not difficult on purpose. They are living out exactly what is developmentally designed for them, which means if you are responding or reacting, yelling, fighting, conflict, resentment, all these things to their behavior, the leaves, instead of their biology, the soil and the roots, you are fighting the wrong battle every single time. When you understand what's happening, On a neurological level and what's happening identity-wise and what's happening all the way to on a spiritual level, you stop trying to out-logic a brain, a nervous system, and a spirit that is growing into logic. It's not primed for logic yet. You start working with their nervous system and their identity formation and their need for autonomy instead of swimming upstream and fighting against And all those things that we want for our teenagers, right? The good grades, the great friends, to be able to have a close relationship with them. Those are built through regulation and self-awareness and those quality relationships first. We have to anchor into the relationships every single time if we want that outcome. So another layer apart from the science piece is universal laws at play. And I practice these with all of my clients. These are universal principles that apply to every single human, whether we like it or not. The law of resonance, the law of energy, the law of attraction. I believe what we think and what we speak comes into existence. We have to be really aware of the words we use, of the energy that we bring into a room. As an example, And your teenager is exquisitely attuned to your energy, whether you realize it or not. So often a really common pattern that I see is parents who will dig their heels in and say, well, I said it this way, or all I did was this. It doesn't matter. They feel your energy. They know performance calm. Versus real calm, or when you are genuinely curious and nonjudgmental. And what I've seen happen inside every family and every human that I've ever worked with is that when your inner narrative shifts, everything shifts. When you notice the relationship you have with yourself From this universal law place, oh, interesting. Everything is a reflection of the way that I'm thinking or feeling or being. You move from fear into love. You move from control into trust. The outer world shifts almost immediately without forcing anything. We're all holding very tightly right now. We're all feeling so much visceral Social stress and worldly stress, global, all these different things impact us. And we have to return to the energy that we have within ourselves, how we metabolize that, how we move that stress through, how we are processing our own world, how we're showing up, being curious about it instead of saying, I'm right and you're wrong. These are universal laws at work right here, right now inside your own home. So for the midlife human who's going through this, this kind of inner energy transformation that we go through in perimenopause or menopause for women, and I know there's a lot that happens for men too, this is the law of resonance at work in your own biology. It is pruning and stripping away the conditioning and the ways of being that we've been showing up our whole lives up until now. And we realize, oh no, I'm not approaching things this way anymore. I actually know what I deserve. I'm not willing to put up with this anymore. Oh no, that's just not me, right? It's actually such a beautiful gift that when we can harness it in healthy ways, when we can develop it and strip away all the stuff that works against us, And what we're meant for. We come into these guides inside our own homes and in our lives with our teenagers that we are called to be.

I love this.

It's like data and energy, structure and trust, skill and soul. It's the balance of both that is required to truly transform our lives from the inside out as parents, And as teens. And this is why this work doesn't feel like other things that you've tried. So back to the therapy question, because I wanna be really clear about this. Therapy is extremely powerful and necessary. I am not talking trash about therapy by any means. In fact, a lot of the wisdom that I've gained and a lot of the research that I have is from clinicians and psychologists and counselors and child development specialists who have dedicated their lives to therapy, to clinical research, and being boots on the ground with different modalities. It's so incredibly valuable. I am the first one in my practice to say, I think what you require requires a different modality. So oftentimes I can be a bridge To that different modality that is required, to therapy that may be required. It can be so beautiful for families. So I'm not a replacement for that. And again, I'll be the first person to tell clients when it's needed. And here's what I am. I'm a bridge. I'm a guide. I'm an educator. I'm a mentor. I'm a coach. And I've spent nearly 2 decades working with adolescents and with parents as someone who speaks Both languages. I speak parent and I speak teen. I understand what the school expects and what's happening at your dinner table. I've been inside middle and high schools on a regular basis, and I've been inside living rooms. I do what a lot of therapists won't because it's not within their scope. And I do what a lot of schools can't because they don't have the bandwidth, the resources, or the relationships built. So what happens in my work with families Is that it feels lighter. You feel more resourced. You feel more clarity. You truly feel more confidence, more connection. Parents often tell me that they can breathe again, that there's light at the end of the tunnel, like a lot of ahas, a lot of, I get it now. That is very real, but it's not therapy. It's coaching. It's education. It's mentorship and it's relationship repair. And skill development. And most families who work with me feel a very real, measurable shift within 30 days. So what does this actually look like in practice? I wanna show you how you can work with me right away and give you a little bit of a preview, a little excitement about what's coming. So you know where you could fit right away, right now. So if you just found me or you're just getting started, and you want a little bit of a deeper insight into my work, my coaching, my frameworks, and you've got an immediate challenge to solve, I wanna encourage you to check out my teenage guides. They are individual value-packed 1-hour video audio workbook guides that help walk you through the step-by-step process of the work to do on the inside, how to approach and work with your teen, and the specific skills to build that focus on the top 10 challenges that most parents face. The teenage guide to low motivation, low confidence, hiding, lying, emotional breakdowns, and the list goes on. So there are plenty of teenage guides and you can download one of them right away. If you want me in your corner working with your family directly, then you need to contact me, get into my private containers, and I'll put all the links below where I work with you and your teenager. It's wraparound support where we do weekly calls, and I also offer touchpoints throughout the week through WhatsApp. So it's regular access to me to support your family through whatever you're going through right now. These are for families, these containers are for families who are done figuring it out alone. They know that they need a change and they need it fast, and they are ready for something that actually gets to the root and solves it long-term. And as a preview, I'm about to do a big promo around back to school, which coming in 3 weeks. So I'm not going to go into it all right now, but just know that if you're like, ooh, I like Ashley, or I want to learn a little bit more about her, be sure to like, subscribe, share this video, get on my email list, make sure that you are one of the select people that actually hears about this promotion first so you can be the first one in the door. I am running a live class coming up. And there's gonna be lots of amazing opportunities for you to get even more support. And if you happen to be listening this summer and you think, ooh, I definitely want support, I just need like a tune-up with my teen or a little boost before school starts, check out the Summer Shift. It's a package of sessions that you can get with me where we focus specifically on the one thing or the one area that you wanna tune up for you or your teen. And you can access that right away and start working with me tomorrow. All the links are in the show notes. So whatever brought you to this episode today, the struggle, the grind, the conflict, that is not evidence that you are failing as a parent. There is nothing weird or wrong with you. The teenage years are very challenging. This is why I do this work. Me and my mom's relationship was like this. I am the me that both of us needed when I was a teenager. Where you are right now, it's simply information and we can take that information and we can create real change. So again, let's review what— a little overall review of what I've covered inside this episode. There's 2 things to focus on when it comes to solving a challenge: relationships and skill-building. Neuroscience backs it and universal laws support it. And the families who've done this work with me, they know That it works. It's not therapy, but I promise you it feels therapeutic. On that note, I want you to remember, never underestimate the power that you have as the parent. I'll see you next week.

Hey, I'm Ashley Chandler, The Teenage Guide, and for nearly 2 For 2 decades, I've worked inside middle schools and high schools and with college-age students and family living rooms, helping hundreds of families go from daily conflict and closed doors to real connection with their teenager. I speak parent and I speak teen, and I create a bridge between you that a lot of other methods can't and won't. If you're navigating adolescence in your home and a version of yourself you're still becoming, you're exactly where you need to be. Let's reimagine the teenage years with science and soul at the forefront. This is The Teenage Guide Podcast. Thank you so much for being here today. If this episode resonated with you, or if you heard yourself somewhere in it, that is not an accident. You are meant to be here. Come discover more about me and my.

Work.

At theteenageguide.com, or follow along wherever you are. And if this episode helped you, share it with one parent who needs to hear it. A like and a subscribe means more than you know. And as always, never underestimate the power that you have as the parent, because you are the teenage guide too.