Parenting teenagers is great. Mostly.
They're funny, interesting, increasingly independent and, in the blink of an eye, capable of turning a perfectly normal conversation into an emotional obstacle course.
I'm a qualified hypnotherapist and I'm also a dad. Sometimes – okay, a lot of times – my teenagers can push my buttons without even trying. A tone, a smirk or the classic teenage “whatever” can have me feeling more wound up than I'd like.
It’s easy to blame them. But they're growing up, finding their place in the world, figuring life out, all under the shadow of relentless social media. The bit I can control is how I respond.
That's where I use a simple technique from hypnosis called anchoring.
I create a physical cue and associate it with a feeling of being calm, grounded and in control. With practice, that cue becomes an automatic shortcut to access the calm state when I need it.
So when I'm standing there thinking, “Is this really the hill we're going to die on and how did I get here?”, I can pause, use my anchor and give myself a moment before responding.
It doesn't magically turn me into the Dalai Lama. But that little pause is enough to stop me reacting and start responding. And let's be honest, parenting teenagers is probably one of the best places to practise emotional regulation.
I'm not trying to change my kids. I'm working on the only person in the room I can actually control - me.
That's one of the things I love about hypnotherapy. It’s not about pretending difficult emotions don’t exist or conducting a forensic investigation into every moment of your past to work out where it all went wrong. It’s about learning how to work with your emotions more effectively, right there in the moment.
If you'd like to learn more about how hypnotherapy can help you develop practical tools for managing your own responses, get in touch.
