What to Do if Your Teenager is Making You Feel Depressed

Understanding Why Your Teen is Making You Feel Depressed

The teenage years often feel like walking through a minefield where you’re trying to survive emotional and behavioral changes that are as unexpected as they are unpleasant. For parents, it’s easy to feel targeted. The shift in your teen’s attitude, actions, and approach toward you can make you feel depressed. Understanding the underlying reasons behind your teenager’s behavior is crucial to improving your own well-being and your relationship with your child. 

Hormonal changes and mood swings

Hormones and mood swings are virtually synonymous with the word “teenagers.” If your teen seems to have extreme mood swings, it’s likely due to the hormonal turbulence they’re experiencing. Research shows that rapidly fluctuating hormonal changes during adolescence can affect brain development, impacting everything from social cognition to peer relationships and teen behavior — they can even increase the risk for teenage depression symptoms and anxiety disorders. 

The biological changes happening throughout the teen years can lead to irritability, increased sadness, rage or anger, and unpredictable mood swings. It’s hard not to take their behavior personally. Still, as the parent, your job is to be empathetic and offer emotional stability for your child, even though that can be difficult. 

Increased independence and rebellion

As children enter their teen years, they have a natural drive and instinct to find independence. This often feels like a rebellion against your parental authority and parenting style — but their quest for autonomy is normal, even if it strains the parent-child relationship. 

It’s easy to feel rejected as your teen pushes boundaries and begins to assert their individuality. Understanding that this phase is a healthy and necessary step toward adulthood can help you support your teenager while still setting appropriate boundaries and limits.

Communication barriers

Communicating with a teen can be taxing, even if you’ve raised your children in a home where effective communication has always been part of your relationship. Your teenager might become secretive or share less with you, which can be hurtful and cause misunderstandings and frustration. It’s not uncommon to feel shut out of their life or helpless, which can intensify feelings of parental depression.

Learn to communicate with your teenager in ways that respect their growing need for privacy while ensuring they know open lines of communication are still open.

Academic and social pressures

Today’s teens face immense pressure on all fronts. They’re driven to excel academically yet find a way to fit in socially. This can be stressful for you as a parent, too. Watching your teenager struggle as they face the high-stakes pressures of adolescence can make you feel anxious and powerless. 

Make sure you’re providing a supportive — not judgmental — loving environment to help alleviate some of your teen’s anxiety.

Unresolved family conflicts

Family conflict can intensify during the teenage years. Issues that once seemed minor can escalate as teens begin to feel confident in asserting their opinions, wants, and needs more forcefully. 

Unresolved conflict in a household can make everybody in the family more susceptible to feelings of depression. For this reason, it’s important to address conflicts openly and in some cases, seek professional guidance to help improve the family dynamic and avoid parental or adolescent depression symptoms.

How to Cope if Dealing With Your Teenager is Making You Depressed

If the challenge of parenting your teenager is making you miserable, or you’re so overwhelmed that you’re feeling more depressed, the following strategies can be beneficial. Learning to manage your emotions and improve your relationship with your teen is possible.

Acknowledge your feelings

Before you can make any positive change, the first step in coping with depression is acknowledging your feelings. It’s vital to do this without judging yourself or your teen. Parenting a teenager is demanding, and feeling overwhelmed or depressed is understandable. Recognize that what you’re feeling is normal. Once you accept your feelings as valid, it becomes easier to identify, understand, and address the underlying issues.

Identify the causes

Learning what triggers your depression is critical to managing symptoms. The first step is to analyze any specific situations or behaviors your teen exhibits that may be exacerbating your feelings. Then, you can figure out what changes might help. Self-awareness is an essential part of developing effective coping strategies when dealing with depressive symptoms.

Connect with others

Parenting can be lonely, and research suggests that isolation can worsen feelings of depression. If you’ve been avoiding social situations because your teenager is making you feel depressed, try reaching out to friends, family, or support groups. 

You can also talk to a therapist about your feelings. Sharing your experience with others or a professional might help you feel less alone and provide different perspectives on how to deal with the emotions you have.

Make time for yourself

Self-care for parents is always important, but it’s especially crucial when dealing with stress and depression. If dealing with your teen is making you more depressed lately, make sure you’re setting aside time for activities you enjoy. Try focusing on hobbies, working out, or just relaxing. When you care for yourself, you will be a better parent. Prioritizing time for yourself can restore energy and enhance your stamina, so you have the motivation to care for your teen — and others — in your life. 

Improve communication with your teenager

Effective communication alleviates stress and conflict in the home that can cause depression. Strive for open and honest dialogue, and make sure your teenager knows they can come to you without being judged. 

Make every effort to express yourself in a calm, measured way, and encourage your teen to do the same. Healthy communication skills foster mutual understanding and respect between you and your teen while also modeling how a teenager can handle stress later in life. This also helps address any underlying teen mental health issue your child may be experiencing.

Avoid power struggles

Some power struggles are expected at this stage, but don’t let them escalate to the point that conflict is a normal part of daily life in your home, and you’re more depressed than ever. “Pick your battles” is one of the most relevant parenting adages you’ll hear as you navigate these challenging years. 

Sometimes, letting a minor issue go for the sake of peace in your home can go a long way toward building a better relationship with your teenager and improving your mental health.

Seek professional help

If your depression is getting worse or is prolonged, and your relationship with your teenager isn’t improving, seeking professional help can be a good idea. 

Individual therapy can ensure you have the tools you need to manage your depression, and family counseling can help improve broken family dynamics. Skilled professionals will provide expert guidance and support for your specific situation so you can make effective and positive changes.

Establish boundaries

Giving your teen boundaries can offer structure and lead to a less chaotic home environment — which can improve depression. Boundaries are vital for a healthy parent-child relationship. Even teens who are exploring their world and eager to gain their independence need boundaries and will thrive by having known, enforced expectations in place.

Discuss and set reasonable limits and consequences with your teenager, and be consistent in enforcing the boundaries you agree to. Keep in mind, though, that the most essential part of establishing boundaries is recognizing that they must be fluid and will change over time. Don’t get stuck in a cycle where your teen wants more freedom, but you’re unwilling to redefine what’s acceptable. They’re growing and maturing – what made sense when they were 14 will likely not be applicable when they’re 17. 

Learn coping mechanisms

Healthy coping mechanisms help you manage stress and symptoms of depression. Utilize coping skills for depression like mindfulness, meditation, deep breathing, or other stress management exercises. These are all excellent ways to maintain emotional stability. When you control your emotions, you can react calmly during challenging interactions. You’ll also be able to stay positive and model healthy conflict-resolution behavior for your teenager.

Get Professional Support for Depression

If your teenager is making you feel depressed, try to remember two things. First, it’s not their fault, and second, you’re not the only parent who feels this way. 

Raising teens is tough. It takes you through unfamiliar and complex terrain. The right strategies can be pivotal in managing your emotional challenges. Self-care, improving communication, and seeking support can be lifelines that help you maintain emotional health and a healthy relationship with your teen.

Some parents feel like they need more than a simple self-help approach when dealing with depression, and professional guidance can be invaluable. Therapy — either for yourself, your family, or your teen — can offer additional support and coping strategies to help you break the cycle you’re in so everyone in the family can move forward. 

Talkspace offers convenient, affordable, accessible online individual therapy that simplifies the process of getting mental health treatment. This time can be difficult for your family, but there is hope. With the right tools, information, and support, it’s possible to improve your mental health, your family life, and this challenging period you and your teen are going through.

Reach out to Talkspace today to learn more about online treatment for depression.