Parenting Post-Wilderness: Parenting a Struggling Teen Before, During and After Treatment Beth Hillman | Parent Coach for Parents of Struggling Teens

Have you ever felt stuck in a triangle within your family, where one of you takes on the role of the victim, the other the villain, and another the hero? Maybe good cop, bad cop sounds familiar to you?This is what we call the drama triangle, or triangulation, and it happens in every single family, whether you have a struggling teen or not. It often becomes a vicious cycle leading to massive problems and dysfunctional dynamics in our family. When one of you falls into their role, it triggers t...

In this deeply personal episode, I share my own journey through the challenges of parenting a son struggling with anger and substance abuse. In this crossover episode with People Who Suffer, Andrew McKee interviews me for a change and I’ll walk you through the first signs of my son’s struggles and how my emotions became entangled with his; when he was angry, I was angry. When he was upset, I was upset.The situation escalated when my son confessed his substance use, disappeared emotionall...

Why do our teens keep falling back into old habits?Whether it’s big changes like making healthier life choices or smaller ones like working out more, change is hard! But why? Why is change so hard? And at the same time, it’s also hard to watch someone go through the stages of change, isn’t it? When your struggling teen knows their behavior isn’t working for them anymore and they want to change, they’ve taken an incredibly important step in the process of change, but they’re not there yet...

What can you do as a parent when your teen is refusing therapy? Or when your kid stops engaging in therapy?I have a question for you, parent: Do you know WHY your struggling teen doesn’t want to go to therapy (anymore)? “I think most people really want to rise to what level they can and there’s probably something significant in the way if they’re not rising to that point” - Trevor AllenToday’s guest, Trevor Allen, helps us see beyond therapy refusal and take a collaborative approach with...

What do you do when things aren’t working and it feels like there’s nothing left to be done?Whether your teen is isolating themselves in their room, refusing to go to school, self-harming, refusing to eat, refusing therapy, or any other negative pattern you find yourself in with your struggling teen, we sometimes reach the point where it feels like there’s nothing else we can do.You can’t control your teen. You can’t make them go to school or make them stop using substances. And that can feel...

Should you support your teen in college if he’s still using? Or let your daughter go to prom when she’s still breaking curfew?You want to support your teen in healthy behaviors but how do you go about that when they’re still showing maladaptive behaviors? You don’t want to take away activities that have a positive, healthy impact on your teen but at the same time don’t want to ‘reward’ them while they’re still breaking your home agreement, right?In this episode, Seth and I discuss how you can...