The emotional lives of teenagers Raising connected, capable, and compassionate adolescents

Review by Booklist Review

Recent world events have been challenging for everyone, but particularly for families with teenagers. Reports of increased rates of teen depression, anxiety, and delayed school progress make it clear that parents need guidance more than ever before. But as anyone who's ever tried to help a troubled teen knows, it isn't always easy. So often, well-meaning and well-informed parental efforts are greeted with eye rolls. Clinical psychologist Damour (Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls, 2019) addresses this dilemma by pairing authoritative advice with effective coaching. Her superpower is providing easy-to-follow, practical communication strategies that make it much more likely that teens will actually listen. Filled with relatable situations, examples, and suggestions for constructive conversations, this book will be welcomed by parents and anyone who works with adolescents. Parents looking for timely advice and reassurance will find it here in clear layman's language. Extensive notes and up-to-date suggestions for further reading are provided for those who want a more in-depth look.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this enlightening manual, psychologist Damour (Under Pressure) advises parents on how they can help their children navigate the emotional turmoil of their teenage years. Drawing on neuroscience and client stories from her practice, Damour provides psychological background on the changes that teens go through while dispensing guidance on how parents can best support them. She explains that during adolescence, the brain undergoes a "physiological renovation" that only reaches the prefrontal cortex--responsible for higher-order thinking--late in the process, meaning teenagers often struggle to "maintain a sense of perspective." Her sensitive approach for supporting teens who question their gender identity urges parents to "treat your teenager as the driver of their own gender car" and refrain from patronizing them or suggesting they're just "going through a phase." Client stories illuminate the advice, as when Damour recounts a session with parents concerned about their daughter's fixation on her fear that they might die early and suggests that for teens struggling to control their emotions, thinking about plans or playing a game can help get their mind off the subject. Damour's down-to-earth tone gives this the feel of a conversation with a friend, while the psychology offers valuable perspective into the scientific underpinnings of adolescence. Parents of teens will want to check this out. (Feb.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Increased concern about the direction of the United States, school shootings, and climate change have added fodder to the already overwhelmed teenage brain. Damour (Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls) is a well-known speaker in the mental health arena and the co-host of Ask Lisa, a parenting podcast. In this book, she dispels myths about adolescent mental health and provides a manual to help teens manage their emotions in the most beneficial way possible. She argues that "safe" medications may have decreased the tolerance for emotional discomfort, which can be a strength when channeled to promote growth. She gives guidelines for parents to help their children and also how to know when professional support is needed. She also addresses the unique challenges presented by both COVID and discrimination. A section on protecting the mental health of gender-questioning teens is also included. VERDICT Comprehensive and encompassing of the many of the struggles teens face today, this book is a must for libraries looking for mental health resources for parents of teens.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Solid reassurance for parents of teenagers. Psychologist Damour, author of two parenting books about raising girls, Untangled and Under Pressure, and mother of two teenage daughters, draws on 30 years of clinical experience to offer a practical, thoughtful guide for parents. From the beginning, the author asserts that uncomfortable feelings are not things that should be prevented or that need to be quickly banished. "Mental health," she explains, "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." Teenagers normally experience "pronounced highs and lows," resulting from profound neurological changes, and their efforts to separate from parents and develop their own identity can make them seem hostile and self-absorbed. Throughout the book, Damour offers examples of the problems that parents and teenagers bring to her practice and the strategies that she proposes to help parents cope with their own distress and to help teenagers find healthy ways to express and control their emotions. Biology and socialization account for differences in the ways children express emotions, with girls more likely encouraged "to express sadness and fear," repress anger, and "talk about feelings when they are upset." On the other hand, "we teach boys to suppress feelings of vulnerability, expect them to be aggressive, and, when they're distressed, encourage them to use distraction or to find other ways to tough it out." Both boys and girls, however, benefit from talking--even venting--naming their emotions, and having a parent actively listen: "By the time teens are telling us that they feel anxious or angry or sad or any other emotion they choose to put into words, they're already using an effective strategy for helping themselves cope with it." Damour offers advice on how to deal with a range of issues, including teens' risk-taking, experiencing harassment, feeling low self-esteem, and expressing a nontraditional gender identity. A calm, wise, and empathetic guide to a difficult period for both adolescents and parents. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter One Adolescent Emotion 101: Getting Past Three Big Myths "Dr. D," the text read, "can I come c you sometime this week? Tom." I didn't recognize the phone number it was coming from and had no one named Tom on my weekly practice schedule. As I stared curiously at my phone, three dots materialized, followed by a message that seemed to come from a mind reader: "It's me Tommy--I got your number from my mom." Tommy! Of course. I immediately remembered a sweet nine-year-old I'd first laid eyes on in my waiting room years earlier. When we met, he was standing anxiously next to his mother as she sat with one hand resting calmly in her lap and the other gently stroking her son's back. Any progress she'd made in trying to ease his nerves evaporated when I opened the waiting room door. Tommy took me in with wide-eyed dread. His dark hair stood up on one side--bedhead that had impressively survived an entire school day--seeming to underscore his overall sense of alarm. On the phone, Tommy's mother had explained that he was having nighttime fears that were keeping him and the rest of the family up late. At my office, Tommy and his mom followed me to my consulting room, and there we slowly began what would grow into a long and fruitful working relationship. Tommy was born tense. As a baby he startled easily and went on to have enormous difficulty separating from his parents when it was time to go to preschool. His worries morphed over the years into nighttime fears, which thankfully yielded to my efforts to be helpful and his parents' steady support. After those fears were resolved, nearly two years passed before I heard from his folks again. In the summer after seventh grade, Tommy bravely tried going to sleepaway camp but within two days was begging to come home. I had a few calls with Tommy at camp and several with his parents, and I also consulted by phone with the camp director. Together, we decided to pull the plug, with the hope of trying camp again the next year. Tommy met with me throughout that summer, both to address the anxiety that brought him home and to process his feelings of frustration and humiliation around being unable to stay. Remembering all of this as I looked at my phone, I realized that nearly four years had gone by since I'd last heard from Tommy--now Tom--or his parents, which would make him a high school senior. We set up a time to meet and I prepared myself for the likelihood that I'd hardly recognize the person in my waiting room. Sure enough, Tom was now tall and broad-shouldered. He was wearing long, loose shorts that were poorly suited to the chilly late-October temperatures in the suburbs of Greater Cleveland. At once awkward and friendly, he greeted me with a deep voice that I didn't recognize. After we settled into my office and caught up briefly, he turned to the reason for his text. "I'm working on my college applications and don't want to apply too far from home. I'm okay with this, and my parents are too, but my college counselor is kinda making a thing of it." Tom was at the top of his class, thanks, no doubt, to the fact that his anxious temperament also made him a highly conscientious student. He was a sought-after cross-country runner and had also developed into an accomplished oboist. Despite the many ways he had matured, Tom explained that although he had hoped to attend a five-week intensive music program in Michigan the previous summer, he could not bring himself to go. Based on that experience, he decided to apply only to colleges within a three-hour drive of home. Northeast Ohio has no shortage of excellent colleges and universities, but the college counselor at Tom's school still felt that Tom was limiting his opportunities. I wasn't sure what to think. From the gray couch in my office, Tom shared his reasoning with me. If he started to feel nervous or unsure when he was away at college, Tom wanted to be able to come home for a night or two without its being a big deal. He was sending applications to seven very fine area schools--he would certainly have excellent options when the admissions decisions came in. And he wasn't applying to any college within thirty minutes of his house, because he really did want to feel that he'd gone away to school. "I still get super anxious," Tom said. "It's better than it was, for sure, but I've never liked being away from my family. I'm just trying to come up with a solution that doesn't leave me feeling like my anxiety could mess up my freshman year. When I explained this to my college counselor, he said: 'Tom, your worries are clouding your thinking.' " Though I knew where the counselor was coming from, I didn't share his perspective. To me, it seemed to be grounded in an unhelpful but well-worn myth: that our feelings undermine our judgment. Myth #1: Emotion Is the Enemy of Reason Emotions and reason were cast as competitors long before Mr. Spock, with his reasoning unsullied by emotion, was showcased as Star Trek's model thinker. Indeed, the opposition between our thoughts and our feelings has seemed so apparent that philosophers have commented on it for ages. Plato imagined reason as a charioteer working to keep the horses of human emotion under control; René Descartes, a champion of rationality, idealized those who "are entirely masters of their passions," while David Hume, flipping Descartes's script, argued that "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." So how should we think about the place of emotions in decision making? Plato, Descartes, Hume--who has it right? Probably my friend Terry does. She's a fellow clinical psychologist who once shared a terrifically useful metaphor with me. According to Terry, 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. Terry's take finds support in psychological research. Studies show that, under the right conditions, our feelings can in fact improve the quality of our decision making. To examine how emotions influence reasoning, the psychologist Isabelle Blanchette asked British war veterans to solve logic problems on three different topics. One subset of the topics was combat-related (e.g., "Some chemical weapons are used in wars. All things used in wars are dangerous. Therefore, some chemical weapons are dangerous"); a second was emotionally loaded but not combatrelated (e.g., "Some cancers are hereditary . . ."); and the third was emotionally neutral (e.g., "Some teas are natural substances . . ."). The fascinating result? The veterans reasoned most soundly when given logic problems related to combat. Their emotional investment in war-related topics seemed to bolster their ability to make accurate deductions. Blanchette's war veteran study included a further wrinkle that sheds light on the interaction between emotion and logical thinking. In her study, half of the veterans suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is characterized by painful, disruptive thoughts and feelings related to a past traumatic event. Blanchette found that veterans who suffered from PTSD underperformed on every category of the logic problems as compared to those who did not. Having a degree of personal investment in a topic can improve reasoning, but too much emotion creates a cognitive drag that interferes with our thinking. Excerpted from The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate Adolescents by Lisa Damour All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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