Words&Dirt

Summary:

Lisa Damour’s The Emotional Lives of Teenagers provides a handy crash course for parents and mental health professionals who are seeking to understand and support the teenagers in their lives. Drawing from her career in clinical psychology and contemporary research, Damour lays out the reasons why adolescence is a particularly challenging and special time in a young person’s emotional development. Her central argument is that it’s impossible to prevent teenagers from experiencing pain and unhappiness, so it’s better to assist them with acknowledging and managing these intense emotions when they arise. In the book’s opening chapters, Damour dispels several common myths that distort our thinking about teenage emotionality, outlines salient gender differences in how boys and girls experience and express their emotions, and describes some unique elements of how biopsychosocial development proceeds during adolescence. In the latter chapters, she provides excellent advice on how caring adults can help teens express and control their emotions in ways that are psychologically healthy and contextually appropriate.

Key Concepts and Notes:

• The main assertion of Damour’s book––that we should help teens recognize and manage their emotions rather than try to protect them––is well-timed for our safety-obsessed and happiness-worshipping cultural moment. As she rightly points out, “Mental health is not about feeling good. Instead, it’s about having the right feelings at the right time and being able to manage those feelings effectively” (27). Adults often try to minimize or quickly “solve” a teen’s psychological pain because we are uncomfortable with it and put our own needs above those of the young people we care for. Damour’s perspective goes a long way to correct this error, prioritizing the importance of empathy, listening, and having faith that teens can usually solve their own problems if we give them time and space.
• Although some aspects of this book are specific to adolescence (e.g. teenage brain development), many of Damour’s points apply to people in general. So while this book is directed toward parents of teens or professionals who work with teens, it also has a lot to offer readers with a general interest in the psychology of emotions and interpersonal skills. I think it’s important to remember that people sometimes “get stuck” in various stages of their development, which can result in grown adults acting like teenagers or even small children. I’d even assert that most of us have certain parts of our personalities that remain juvenile long after we’ve “ascended” to adulthood––I know I do!
• I really appreciated Damour handling of the issue of self-esteem. Instead of promoting self-esteem based on feeling “special or important” in a general sense, she argues that a teen’s self-esteem should be rooted in “well-earned accomplishments and meaningful contributions,” including “service to others” (67-8). Everyone should learn at a young age that self-esteem requires active cultivation through positive engagement with our natural interests and communities.
• As someone new to the counseling profession, I enjoyed Damour’s stories from her practice and advice for how to effectively work with teens in therapy. In particular, I loved her suggestion that therapists should listen as if they are editors who need to write headlines for their clients’ experiences. These “headlines” then serve as summaries/reflections that the client can use to verify our understanding or provide correction if we’re off track.
• Damour presented a couple pieces of research that stood out to me. The first is that, contrary to my previous understanding, girls do not engage in “relational aggression” more than boys. I find this a bit hard to believe based on “anecdata” from my own life, but I am happy to have my views on this topic become more complicated. The second is that there is now research explaining why people enjoy listening to both “mood-matching” and “mood-countering” music to confront, process, and claw their way out of difficult emotional periods. I watched my father do this growing up, and then naturally adopted a similar practice during adolescence; I think it was––and continues to be––one of the most important emotional tools in my life.
• There were a few minor areas where this book fell short for me, but the only one worth mentioning is the limited scope of Damour’s personal perspective. The vast majority of the examples Damour provides from her clinical practice are––to put it bluntly–– “first world problems” such as not getting the lead in the school play, feeling betrayed by a mother who told an aunt about a crush, or anxiety about making friends during a summer trip to Israel. It’s not that these aren’t legitimate problems that can benefit from therapeutic attention, but rather that they reveal the edges of Damour’s socioeconomic bubble. There’s not much in this book for people who want to help teens who are experiencing severe versions of childhood adversity such as poverty, abuse, trauma, or neglect. It’s possible that Damour doesn’t have much experience with such clients and therefore decided not to go there, for which I wouldn’t fault her. Or perhaps she has covered these topics elsewhere. But I just want to point out that this book is probably not the best resource for people working with teens from underprivileged or oppressed backgrounds.

Favorite Quotes:

The aim of our work is less about comfort and more about insight. When teenagers understand what they are feeling and why, they suddenly have choices that were not available to them before. (xvii)

When it comes to decision making, we ought to view our emotions as occupying one seat on our personal board of directors. Other spots on the board might be held by ethical considerations, our personal ambitions, our obligations to others, financial or logistical constraints, and so on. Ideally, these board members will work together to help us make careful, informed choices about how we conduct our lives. In this metaphor, emotions have a vote, though it’s rarely a deciding one. And they definitely don’t chair the board. (6)

Mental health is not about feeling good. Instead, it’s about having the right feelings at the right time and being able to manage those feelings effectively. Not that there’s such a thing as a “wrong” feeling; what we’re getting at here is whether emotions make sense and are proportional given the situation. (27)

Normally developing teenagers experience pronounced highs and lows, but that is not, in and of itself, reason to be worried that they are falling apart. We can be confident in their overall emotional health so long as three things are true: Adolescents should have feelings that make sense in light of their circumstances; they should find adaptive ways to manage those emotions (such as having a good cry); and they should rely on a range of defenses that offer relief without distorting reality. (30-1)

So far, what have we established about the emotional lives of our teenagers? First, their emotions provide valuable information and have a place at the decision-making table. Second, it is not our goal to protect adolescents from unwanted emotions, because those emotions play an important role in maturation. And third, adults shouldn’t mistake the extreme emotional intensity that is natural to adolescence for psychological fragility. Putting it all together, we want our teenagers to appreciate the input provided by their feelings, to know that uncomfortable experiences will help them grow, and to learn how to navigate their emotions effectively. (35)

A true sense of self-worth does not come from telling our children that they are special or important. Rather, teenagers feel good about themselves for well-earned accomplishments and meaningful contributions…One reliable way to ensure self-esteem is to be of service to others…When our kids make themselves useful, too good things happen at once. First, their attention is pulled outward and they get a break from worrying about their own concerns and shortcomings. Second, they are reminded of all that they have to offer. As people sometimes say, it’s hard to be sad and useful at the same time. (67-8)

The healthiest romances are the ones that layer amorous intimacy over genuine friendship. This approach returns teens to familiar territory and helps them set off on their love lives in the best possible way. To deepen these conversations, you can talk in specific terms about what makes any good relationship, whether it’s a friendship or a romance. Healthy relationships are equitable, kind, and enjoyable; unhealthy relationships are lopsided, harsh, or stressful. More than anything, healthy relationships feel good. They are warm and energizing and bring out the best aspects of our personality. In contrast, unhealthy relationships leave us feeling anxious or uneasy, or bring to the surface the traits in ourselves that we like least. The parallels between healthy romances and healthy friendships can seem obvious once articulated, but teenagers often need adults to point them out. (100-1)

As parents we cannot prevent emotional pain in our teenagers. Rather, we should be in the business of helping them manage discomfort when it comes. Taking a management, not banishment, approach to unwanted feelings accomplishes exactly what parents of adolescents should be aiming for. We strengthen our connections to our teenagers when we come to notice and admire the very impressive work they are already doing to regulate their emotions. Further, we equip our teenagers for independent emotional lives by helping them learn to regulate their feelings effectively. And we set them up for full emotional lives as well, so they won’t live in fear of strong feelings. (113-4)

Given how intense, difficult, and even alarming teenage feelings can be, it would be easy enough to picture our teens’ emotions as erupting fires––ones that spark, blaze, and at times seem ready to burn the whole house down, best prevented altogether, or at least quickly doused. But instead of fire, what if we thought of our teens’ feelings as a flowing river, one that suddenly surges in adolescence? When the emotional waters get too high, we adults may need to help teenagers find healthy outlets for what they are feeling, to support them in expressing what is happening inside. At other times, we may be called upon to prevent emotional floods, to help our teens shore themselves up as they work to keep rising feelings within their banks and regain a sense of control. For the most part, though, we can let their emotional river run while appreciating the richness it adds and the growth it nourishes. (183)

Rating: 8/10