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What If Your Teen Isn't
the Problem?
Here is the simplest road map to learning how to manage your fears and reactions around your teen’s behaviors so they stay open to you, and you can be the one guiding them. If parents have the energy of fear present when parenting, those emotions will affect the parent teen interaction in a negative manner. As parents our main goal is to raise our teens so become independent, self-assured, thriving young adult making good decisions.
When addressing typical issues like managing social media, boundaries, healthy limits and consequences, sex, drinking and addiction, and seeking resolution, it’s critical to be able to manage your own triggers and emotions to get your desired outcome.
What if Your Teen Isn’t the Problem? teaches parents how to explore and manage their emotions that gets activated while parenting and start going inward instead of projecting their fears onto their teen. When a parents emotions get projected onto their teen, the teen becomes resistant and defensive and won’t listen to what the parent is saying. If they don’t hear us, we won’t be guiding them, outside influences will be.
In this guide parents will learn how to:
- Manage their own triggers and emotions
- Reflect on past behaviors and mistakes
- Step into their teens reality and really see and hear their teen
- Understand the difference between responding and reacting
- Develop a healthier, loving teen/parent relationship
- Communicate in a more mature manner
- Be more respected by their teen, to earn respect
- Heal your guilt from past negative behaviors
- Set boundaries with consequences with little to no push back
What if Your Teen Isn’t the Problem? A Guide to Conscious Parenting will help you understand your behaviors and shift them to create a healthier relationship with your teen and everyone in your life. This guide is a completely different approach to parenting your kids through your heart and love instead of your fears.__________________________________________________
WHAT IF YOUR TEEN ISN'T THE PROBLEM?
A Guide to Conscious Parenting
by Debra Beck
Published by the author in association with Fearless Literary
112 pages, trade paperback • $14.95 print, $9.95 digital • ISBN 979-8-218-66791-7
Print and Kindle from Amazon, Nook from B&N — more print outlets coming soon!
All digital formats
__________________________________________________
Debra Beck is the founder of Empowered Teens and Parents. She is a dedicated mother/daughter and family retreat facilitator and mentor specializing in issues facing teens and parents. As a mother of two daughters, Debra understands the complexities and concerns of parenting firsthand. Her desire to equip parents with the tools needed to foster strong, harmonious connections with their teens was the impetus for her to write What if Your Teen Isn’t The Problem?
Debra is also the award-winning author of My Feet Aren’t Ugly: A Girl’s Guide to Loving Herself from the Inside Out. With over 30 years of experience in self-development and a deep understanding of the challenges of adolescence, she brings empathy and passion to her work, helping young people and their families navigate these formative years. Debra lives in Sedona, Arizona, where she continues
to inspire personal growth and healing. See her website here.__________________________________________________
I N T R O D U C T I O N
Her childhood and teen years were riddled with anxiety and feelings of separation. She felt disconnected, unsafe, confused, and very lonely. Growing up was a frightening experience, leaving her with a constant sense that something was wrong — that she wasn’t right. Because her parents were unable to deal with their own childhood traumas and were so disconnected from themselves, it was impossible for them to provide a safe home environment. Her teenage years and adulthood were full of trauma and misunderstanding, making success an uphill battle. That was me.
Life is difficult for teens, and without parental support, it can be excruciating. It is critical for teens to feel safe and connected to their parents in order to navigate the challenges of today’s world. Ninety percent of the teens I have spoken to say they don’t feel connected to their parents and wish they had a closer relationship with them.
What If Your Teen Isn’t the Problem? shows parents how important it is to work through their own childhood wounds before they can create a healthy environment where their children can blossom into self-assured, independent young adults who are able to follow their own passions and dreams. Parents who commit to working through their inner-child wounds will start responding to their teens instead of reacting out of fear.
Parents want to be connected with their teens so they can be the ones influencing and guiding them. The biggest concern for parents is that their teens are not talking to them. Instead, they seek guidance from their friends. This terrifies parents, as it should.
What If Your Teen Isn’t the Problem? provides clear, concise examples through real-life experiences and scenarios of how reacting versus responding plays out in different parent-teen interactions.
In my 30 years of mentoring teens, I have realized that a teen’s behavior will shift only when parents acknowledge how their own unresolved fears and wounds shape their reactions to their children. If parents have not addressed their own childhood issues, they will unknowingly project their fears onto their teens, leading to disconnection and shutdown.
When you were a child, how did you feel? Did you feel supported by your parents? Did you feel they truly saw you for who you were? Did they listen to you? Encourage you? Or were you ignored? Some of you may have been controlled so tightly that you couldn’t breathe, while others had to raise themselves. Perhaps you were one of the lucky few whose parents truly showed up for them.In my childhood I felt disconnected, separate, and deeply lonely. The anxiety that followed me through my adolescence was almost unbearable. Because my parents were so disconnected from themselves, I never felt safe or truly connected at home. Everyone pretended that everything was okay. But I knew it wasn’t.
My mother was very reclusive, just getting by in life — a shell of a person. As a child, I would look into her eyes and see the pain she carried. I saw the darkest parts of her soul, desperate for any sense of normalcy. She lost her mother at a young age and was raised by her father and a stepmother who treated her poorly.
My father was a tough man, hiding behind the pain of losing his own mother, who took her life when he was only two years old. His father, unable to cope, gave him up to foster care at four. As an adult, my sister once asked him to answer some genealogy questions, one of which was, “What was your biggest regret in life?” His answer: “Not having any love in my life as a child.” Reading that made my heart ache and gave me deep compassion for him.
I felt invisible to my parents, lost in their unresolved pain. I don’t blame them — I know they did the best they could. But because they had not done their own inner work, they could not be present for me.
I do know that my life would have been much easier and more nurturing if my parents had been able to show up for me. Instead, I faced the world feeling scared and unsure of myself. Making decisions was excruciating, and even now, remnants of those insecurities linger in certain situations.
I share my childhood story because it is a perfect example of how unhealed parental wounds affect children long into adulthood. Some parents may never do the inner work necessary to heal, simply because they lack awareness. My parents never had the consciousness to even recognize their emotional wounds. But these were my lessons to learn, so I could show up differently in the world.
If you yearn for a deeper, more connected relationship with your teen, this is a powerful path to get there. I have seen parent-child relationships shift in miraculous ways — including in my own life with my daughters.
When I became a parent, I knew that to show up for my girls the way they needed me to, I had to first understand myself. My journey of self-discovery was the key to connecting with my daughters in a profound way.
So began my journey through the depths of the pain and darkness I had carried for years — pain that had prevented me from showing up fully for myself, my children, and the world. There was no other path but through the pain of past wounds in order to reach a place of love within myself.My daughters are now in their late forties, each walking their own paths and learning their own lessons. Everything unfolded exactly as it was meant to traveling this journey together.
This is your opportunity to reflect on your own childhood, to see how your experiences have shaped you, and to recognize your role in your relationship with your teen. By healing what you can within yourself, you can create a more connected, fulfilling relationship with your teen — and with everyone in your life.
I wasn’t a perfect parent, but through my years of self-discovery, I have developed a deep connection with my daughters, and I know that without doing my own inner work, I wouldn’t be able to experience this closeness with them.
When I first started mentoring teens, I knew that real progress could only happen when their parents were willing to do their own emotional work. If parents react to their teens from a place of unhealed pain, there is no room for true connection and understanding.
Have you ever found yourself in an argument with your teen where nothing seems to get resolved? You just keep coming back to the same frustration. I call this the “spin class” of parenting — you’re pedaling fast but going nowhere. It’s great for endless quarreling but terrible for building connection.
Here’s what’s actually happening: Your teen does something they’re not supposed to. You get triggered, take it personally, and react. You believe they’ve let you down, and your disappointment is projected onto them. You think they are the cause of your disappointment. When you blame them for how you feel, you then feel the need to control their behavior to make yourself feel better. Instead of realizing that they are triggering an old wound from your own childhood, you react, and the cycle continues. The result? A shut-down teenager who feels unheard and misunderstood.
But when you recognize your trigger as your own and stop projecting it onto your teen, you free up the energy of blame. You can then show up differently in that moment, creating space for understanding and connection.
If you’re looking for a more conscious, loving, and authentic way to connect with your teen, I assure you that turning inward is the place to start. If you are ready to make this shift, know that your commitment to your own healing will benefit everyone in your life.
I commend you for being here. This journey is happening for you at the perfect time.
Many of the struggles between parents and teens stem from unexamined emotional triggers, past wounds, fears, or learned behaviors.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
– Carl Jung
