Social media bullying, the effects are far reaching for everyone involved. What you can do to support your teenager Overwhelmed and panicked is the feeling both teenagers and their parents experience when bullying happens on social media. The themes that play out over the days and weeks of this harassment is: Intrusion Isolation Embarrassment Lack of control over events Repetitive Helplessness Fight or flight Frustrated A lack of voice A lack of autonomy Those themes are also used to describe PTSD and that is because being bullied on social media or real life bullying over time istrau ..read more

  One of the issues I work with frequently with teenagers is self-harm. Self-harm can feel complex and overwhelming to parents and school staff who see it as a destructive behaviour. It is extremely distressing for the young person and also for the parent that feel powerless to stop it. It is destructive in its nature but is also a coping strategy to regulate feelings that feel powerful and overwhelming. When I worked in a school counselling team, school staff used to describe it as attention-seeking, but in fact, it is attention needing. What do I mean by this? The teenager is trying ..read more

  Things could be hurting over time for your teenage boy and you may never know. Anyone who has different sex children reports feeling at a loss in navigating the differences when it comes to teenage years. It is true that there is a crisis in masculinity for teenage boys. They are expected to be sensitive, but not the group p***y. They are expected to be persistent but not overbearing. Caring but not needy. The language used by teenagers blurs these things and words that don’t suit a person’s characteristics are banded about and may have more sticking power than they should do. If we m ..read more

  There are three aspects that lead to us using emotive language and catastrophising with our teens…Worry, panic and anger. It is hard not to worry, worry is the ‘digital age’ parent default mode. Of course, parents have always worried about their children through the generations, but not to this level. It seems to permeate through our lives, as the mental health crisis grows within the child and adolescent population it makes sense that it travels upwards to the parents.   We are anxious and frustrated at being anxious, this leads to a less-than-ideal way of responding. We all do ..read more

  "Britain is sleepwalking into a mental health crisis as the government struggles to deal with the monumental effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.   Health experts and charities have told the Observer the coming winter will devastate the mental wellbeing of the nation as lockdown uncertainty, fear, isolation and loneliness are exacerbated by the colder and darker months ahead" That was the headline yesterday in the Guardian newspaper warning that 1.5 million children will need mental health support during this pandemic. What are we to do with longer waiting times and higher threshold ..read more

“Can you drop me off at …” “I’m hungry, why have we not got any ham” “where are the trainer socks” “what’s wrong with the internet, Mum can you reset the box” I keep reading lots of news articles about children’s mental health during the COVID pandemic, these articles are very rightly pointing out that our children are struggling during the lockdown. They are highlighting the very real danger of some children at home in abusive families. These articles are very important, but what is also important is highlighting the ever-increasing toll on parents, the parents that are holding their own wor ..read more

I only want to advise about one thing during this pandemic…I have refrained from posting about routine or helping your teen with anxiety, staying calm or being active outdoors. There is too much of this on Facebook and the internet generally. You see, the things mentioned above and also the other topics addressed by parenting blogs are all fundamentally supported/helped/improved by decent sleep quality. Get better sleep = feel more energetic Get better sleep = anxiety is lessened Get better sleep = make better food choices Get better sleep = better focus, stay on task Get better sl ..read more

When A.S.M.R first became popular on the internet, the press choice to sexualise it with descriptions such as brain-gasm within sexual language. This resulted in parents thinking it was maybe risky and weird. Lots of teenage clients I have seen over time report using it as a relaxation resource during times of increased stress and anxiety such as exams or returning to school after prolonged periods away such as holidays or illness. It doesn’t work for everyone, but if it does work for you it seems to be a game-changer in regards to sleep. I don’t fully understand when watching it ..read more

I wanted to write this short piece for people to gain a greater understanding of what the challenges may be for some people who have experienced developmental trauma or a traumatic episode. Why would this be so? One of the aims of therapy for the traumatised client is to try and live within a window of tolerance re emotions and sensations. This is a difficult thing for the client to master as they are frequently triggered by implicit and explicit memories that hijack the central nervous system. Early on in therapy clients either live in a state of hyperarousal or hypo-ar ..read more

It is difficult to know what the right thing is to do; we are the first generation as parents to experience addictions to technology. We are the first generation to tackle the use of Snapchat, TickTock and Instagram. Also, Facetime is a gamechanger, they can be connected to their friends in the privacy of there own homes, but that alters our levels of privacy within the family. How many parents have said ‘were you just on call when I was talking to your sister, were you just on call when I’m shouting for your brother to be ready?’ We are the second generation of parents where mental h ..read more