What is Normal Teen Pain vs. Depression and Anxiety?

Your teen comes home in a stormy mood. Runs upstairs, throws themselves on the bed, sobbing. You go up and they won’t talk to you. Later, when they are calmer, they still don’t want to talk. It is just too painful. What do you do? First, you just offer them the opportunity- acknowledge the pain and tell them you see they are feeling overwhelmed. Tell them you are here to listen if their pain “wants a voice.” Promise them you will not offer solutions. 

They may or may not tell you. The next day, they may be in a great mood. Don’t forget to tell them you notice that and are glad they managed to solve things themselves. Or they may still be sullen and moody. 

Normal teen angst is temporary, and the mood may last a week, but not weeks on end, unremittingly. They won’t shut down on all their activities, and they won’t have drama every two days, or avoidance all the time. Feelings for teens are big; their hormones fluctuate, and for a moment when they are in crisis it feels like it will never end. A rejection by a boy/girlfriend, ostracization by a group of friends, an F on a paper, an argument with a best friend, are all part of the emotional landscape of being a teen. 

A parent’s role is to listen, validate, not feel their feelings as if they were your own (you don’t have to express feeling more angry than they are that that boy broke up with your teen), not offering solutions, is what is most effective. When a teen can trust you to dump their feelings on you and know you won’t run ahead of them because of your desire to fix, to get rid of your own anxiety over their situation, or send them messages of what they “should have done,” they will be able to regulate their own feelings. When you send them the message that you trust they will figure things out, while at the same time offering to give advice should they get stuck, they will more likely rise to the occasion.

If on the other hand, these moods are not temporary and they affect activities they normally would enjoy, then it could be more than angst. It could be depression. If they start to avoid, drop out, sleep all day, then it is time to have them get an evaluation to determine of medicine/therapy/or combo is the best course.