How to break the spell of powerful emotions | Lisa Damour: Full Interview

0:00 I'm Dr. Lisa Damour. I'm a clinical psychologist. I'm an author and I'm the co-host of Ask Lisa, the psychology of raising tweens and teens podcast. Today on Big Think, we're going to talk about a few different things. First, we're going to talk about why stress is actually a good thing. Then, we're going to talk about why uncomfortable emotions are not to be chased away. And then, we're going to talk about what it means to be a growing person. That especially vivid time of life that is adolescence, what it means to have one, what it means to have been one.

0:31 >> Thank you for watching Big Think. If you'd like to support our work, we encourage you to join our members community. As a member, you'll receive our quarterly print magazine, a beautifully designed collection of the ideas and interviews that matter most. Big Think is for curious people who want to take deep dives into big ideas. To support the media you want to see in the world, go to bigthink.com/membership. And now, back to the interview. Chapter 1, how to cope with stress.

0:59 >> So, stress is a big topic these days and for good reason. We, as a culture, as a generation, are dealing with some pretty stressful stuff. We have digital technology infusing every aspect of our lives. This means we are constantly exposed to a news stream of information that could be pretty upsetting. And we're also in a time where we talk about what I call sort of optimization. This sense of every minute should be put to the best possible use to make us the best possible people.

1:28 This is pretty stressful. So, the way that we should think about stress, it's like our personal hype squad, right? Stress shows up when we're faced with a challenge or something that's new or something that's different. And stress is our personal hype squad that shows up to get us ready to marshal our energy, to focus our attention. Stress is fundamentally helpful. It lets us rise to challenges. So, one of the problems we have right now is that stress has been given a bad name. People think you're not supposed to experience stress. That somewhere out there there is this Zen state you're supposed to get to and you're supposed to live there. That's not how this works. Stress is part of life. Stress will always come up when changes occur.

2:09 With this misunderstanding, this idea that stress is somehow bad, people have an unhelpful reaction to stress. They become stressed about being stressed. The hype squad shows up and they think, "Why is the hype squad here?" That is not a helpful way to think about stress. And when we get stressed about being stressed, we're more likely to avoid stress, we're more likely to become uncomfortable, unduly uncomfortable in the face of stress. We don't necessarily harness it to help us perform and manage our lives in the way that we want to.

2:38 We want to be really careful with this idea, this wrong idea, that stress is somehow bad. Because if we go with that idea, then we're going to move into a space of thinking, "Well, how can I reduce or eliminate stress in my life?" The only way to reduce or eliminate stress in your life is to narrow your life tremendously, to stop taking on new experiences, to stop doing hard things. Nobody wants that. We don't grow, life is uninteresting. We need to accept that reasonable levels of stress are actually part of life, that anytime we're going through a change, we're going to experience stress.

3:15 And stress is not only not bad, it's actually a sign that we are growing, and if we can embrace it as such, there's so much to be gained from it. So, stress is good and growth-giving within reasonable limits, and it's absolutely to be expected, and we should welcome it into our lives as a sign that we are doing new and interesting things. But, we can't be stressed all the time. So, if we go back to that idea of stress being like a hype squad, you don't want the hype squad around all the time. That becomes exhausting. That becomes tedious. That becomes really wearing on us.

3:49 So, So, we're stressed all the time, we become impatient. We become brittle. We become tired. And then, of course, if we're stressed all the time, we don't even sleep all that well. So, we're tired from feeling the stress of the day, and then we tend to sleep poorly at night, only compounding the problem. So, while we want to accept and welcome stress as a normal part of life, we also want to make sure that it's happening within limits, and that we get a chance to rest and recover.

4:19 So, when psychologists get concerned, is when people are faced with chronic stress, which is stress without the opportunity to recovery. They're stressed all the time. The hype squad never goes away. Under conditions of chronic stress, we start to see real wear and tear, both on the brain and on the body. Our brain becomes hypersensitized and overreactive to even minor changes in the environment. Our bodies are contending with an ongoing stream of cortisol and other stress hormones that elevate our blood pressure, that can interfere with sleep, that really start to break down essential functions in our body.

4:58 So, as much as stress is good in that it can help us rise to the occasion when we need to, we do not want to have stress and all of the hormones and all of the bodily changes that come with it, we don't want to have that happening all the time. At its extreme, stress becomes trauma. Now, trauma is a word that people use a lot, and they use it in different ways. The way that psychologists think about trauma is that it's any experience that overwhelms your ability to cope with it.

5:25 So, what's traumatic to you might not be traumatic to me. It depends on the context, the experience, our life histories. But, trauma is something we absolutely want to avoid at all costs. There's no benefit to becoming psychologically or physiologically overwhelmed. And one of the things we know from the research is that when people are traumatized, especially if they're traumatized repeatedly, it rewires the nervous system. They stay on high alert all the time. A door shuts loudly and they are reacting as though it's a gunshot.

5:58 So, trauma is enormously hard on the nervous system. It's hard on the person with that nervous system and it can be hard on the people around the traumatized person. Luckily, we're great at treating trauma if the reaction lasts over time, but trauma is something to be avoided at all costs. So, one of the ways that I love to think about psychological stress is that it's a lot like physical stress, namely strength training. Anytime you want to build muscle in the gym, you take yourself there and you pick up literally stressful weights. You know full well that if you pick up easy weights, you're just wasting your time.

6:32 You're not going to get anything out of it. You have to pick up weights that are actually uncomfortable in order to grow. Psychological stress is the exact same way. When we are going through emotionally or mentally taxing experiences, it does not feel good in the same way that strength training when you're doing it right does not feel good. But, that is how we grow. If we're comfortable all the time, nothing is changing. We are not expanding our capacities as humans.

7:00 So, thinking about stress that way, recognizing that discomfort, the strain of change, is actually how we develop ourselves as people, is not only accurate, it actually makes us less stressed when we feel stressed. Some of the coolest research out there has found that understanding the benefits of stress can actually improve your performance. So, studies have been done that show that if you teach people that stress is natural, that stress is helpful, that it helps you grow, that it helps you perform, when they're put in challenging situations, they feel less stressed and they perform better. In contrast, if people walk around with this idea that stress is bad for them, they get into a challenging situation, they become stressed, they become stressed about being stressed, and their performance degrades while their stress goes up.

7:50 So, embracing stress, recognizing that that sensation of wow, this is a lot. I'm up against something hard and new and difficult, embracing that experience is actually part of what helps us to meet that experience and bring our full capacities to it. So, there's also a line of research that falls into the category of what I would call social science proven common sense, which is basically what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Now, that probably overstates it, but it's not all wrong. Many of us know from personal experience that going through really hard things is unpleasant at the time, but actually makes us better able to manage new difficulties when they come up.

8:31 So, we have a line of research showing that people who have gone through hard things and found their way through actually build capacity and feel more resilient in the face of new difficulties. So, anytime we're going through something hard, as long as we have the resources around us, the support we need, we can recognize that that is something that we are going to have a payoff from. We don't necessarily enjoy difficult periods of our life, but if we find our way through, what the research shows is that we tend to feel more capable, less frightened, more able in the face of new difficulties when they inevitably arise.

9:11 One of the things I really like about being a clinical psychologist is that I get to help people, and I get to help people through very, very difficult times of their life. And it means that I'm often up against incredibly painful experiences that people are going through. You know, the death of a loved one, the loss of a child. I mean, terrible, terrible things. These are emotionally taxing for me, given that I'm trying to help somebody through them.

9:37 But I've also found that the net effect is that it's changed my overall stress levels. Being up against very challenging situations, helping people work their way through very challenging situations, has made me much more relaxed about the day-to-day things I deal with. I will often say to my own kids, "You know what? I know what constitutes a crisis. This is not a crisis." So, the mindset we adopt under stressful conditions changes everything. So, back to the gym. If we think about somebody who's decided they're going to build their muscles and they've taken themselves to the gym and they're lifting really heavy weights and they're doing lots of reps and they're coming to the end of their workout because their muscles are so tired, they're feeling two things. First, they're really uncomfortable because this is hard.

10:24 The other is there's a sense of achievement. There's a sense of I got myself to the place where growth and change happen. There can be a pride in that moment even as one is feeling like, "And I'm going to be pretty sore tomorrow." If we take that mindset to other types of stress in our life, really hard intellectual work, taking on a project at work that's way bigger than anything you've ever done before, we can have that double experience. Both the sense of like, "Oh, this is a lot. This is uncomfortable. This is hard."

10:56 And on top of that, the sense of "I am going to be so much more capable once I get myself through this. I am gaining as I go. This will be hard. I will be tired and once I've recovered, I'm going to have more capacity than I've ever had before." Recognizing that stress is actually a natural reaction and even a helpful reaction not only changes our mindset, it actually changes how our body reacts to stressful circumstances.

11:24 So, one thing we know is that when people have the sort of stresses healthy and good for you view of things, they are less physiologically reactive to stressful circumstances. Their heart rate doesn't go up as high as somebody who's frightened of stress. They actually have a better stress hormone response, a more moderated stress hormone response compared to somebody who is frightened of stress or is trying to avoid stress. So, accepting that stress is natural and not only natural, but healthy and growth giving helps us to meet it more effectively, to be less frightened of it, and to even let our bodies react to it in a more effective way.

12:03 So, the longer I have worked on stress, thought about stress, lived with stress myself, the more my attention has moved away from stress to the questions of recovery. Stress is a done deal. Let's just start there. It's better that we accept it and in fact embrace it. What really matters is how we recover after a period of stress. Another way to think about it is back to the gym, right? Anyone who's serious about strength training works out hard at the gym and then protects time for recovery because they know that that's what's going to help them grow over time.

12:34 So, my main interest these days is not so much in do people have hard times or experience painful feelings? They definitely do. It's what do they do next? And for me, there's a great divide. Some people use healthy coping, which is coping that brings relief and does no harm. And some people or sometimes people use unhealthy coping, which is coping that brings relief or always going to find relief, but comes with a cost attached. So, what makes for unhealthy coping?

13:06 What's the kind of coping that we want to be sure to avoid? To me, it's in four categories. Number one, turning to substances for relief. The problem with substances is that they work. If you get high, get drunk, you will feel better. But, they're a short-term solution that almost always sets up long-term problems, especially if they become a habit. The second thing we want to watch out for is taking it out on oneself. Talking badly about oneself, being unkind to oneself, beating oneself up.

13:35 It gives a sense of control, it gives a sense of I'm doing something about this, but again, short-term solution that leads to long-term problems. The third category we want to steer clear of is taking it out on other people, right? You have a bad day at the office and you come home and everybody in the home gets punished for this one way or another. There's some relief to be had. Needless to say, this is really going to do damage to our relationships.

14:00 And the fourth category that I'm always looking out for is using avoidance to manage anxiety. Anxiety's uncomfortable. It, like stress, is part of life. And our instinct is to avoid it. But what we know is that when you avoid the things that make you anxious, they actually get more scary because whatever you imagine remains true in your mind. And what we know instead is that if you're anxious about something and it's something you should be able to do, try to take moves towards it even if they're very small steps.

14:29 Moving towards the things we fear is always better than defaulting to avoidance. The key about unhealthy coping is that it is coping, right? We're trying to feel better. Humans don't work against their own interest. We're trying to get some relief. So if you notice that you're using unhealthy coping or someone you love is using unhealthy coping, start from the understanding that it's doing something for you. It's serving a purpose. And figure out what purpose it's serving. Do you need a better way to relax? Are you trying not to think about something? Are you too scared of something and don't know what to do?

15:06 Once you recognize that you're trying to solve a problem, then you can turn to the question of what's a better way to solve this problem that both brings me relief but doesn't come with a huge price tag attached. While the list of unhealthy coping is basically the four things I mentioned, The list of healthy coping is as long as you want it to be. The only thing that matters is that what you're doing brings relief and does no harm.

15:31 So, healthy coping looks like so many things and is incredibly personal. I like to cook. That's a way that I enjoy healthy coping. I also love to exercise. I especially love taking walks with my friends. But, what works for you is what works for you. All that matters is that there's no downsides for you or anybody else. That said, there are a couple things I want us all to know about about what looks like healthy coping but actually isn't working as well as we think. So, one example would be like multitasking. Sometimes we think like, "Oh, I'll cope by getting all of these things done and I'll get them all done at once."

16:00 Multitasking can seem like it's working, but here's the problem with multitasking. It actually stresses us out. The way to think about multitasking is actually to think about it as self-interruption. You know how it's so annoying when somebody interrupts you because you have your train of thought and then they move you off your train of thought? Well, we only really do have one train of thought. And so, when we multitask, we're actually self-interrupting constantly. And the frustration of being interrupted by somebody else, we're actually doing to ourselves.

16:29 So, one thing you could do if you're wanting to slow things down, recover, just do one thing at a time. You'll do it better and you'll feel better while doing it. Another thing I see all the time, especially in people who are really hard working and really driven, is that they get to the place where they finally let themselves recover after a period of stress. They turn to their forms of healthy whether they're just enjoying a TV show or spending time with friends.

16:56 But, while they're recovering, they feel kind of guilty about doing it. That they have this nagging sense of like, "Well, I could be getting this other thing done or maybe I should be using this time differently." This is not helpful. The way I think about it is that guilt-soaked recovery isn't really recovery. Okay, back to the gym. Someone who's serious about strength training doesn't feel bad about the days that they let their muscles recover. They know that's a key part of building capacity and muscle growth.

17:26 Same goes for you. You have worked hard. You have earned your rest. Take the rest. Savor the rest. I actually think savoring our favorite ways of coping is exactly the thing that gets us up and ready to go back and to keep growing. And in fact, we have research showing that if you feel like leisure is a waste of time, you don't enjoy it as much, and it's actually associated with higher rates of depression and anxiety.

17:55 On the other hand, if you welcome leisure, if you accept that recovery is not only something you should have, that you get to have, you have every right to have, that's associated with feeling better overall. Sometimes when we're going through something difficult, we can start to turn inward and beat ourselves up. And this tends not to help us feel better. One thing though I've noticed over years of clinical practice is that it happens almost automatically for some people, that they can't stop themselves. That as soon as something goes wrong, they think, "Oh, what's the matter with me?"

18:30 I realize in retrospect I've wasted a lot of people's time trying to get them to stop doing that. It's actually very hard to stop doing that. So what I say to people now is, "Okay, that's your first reaction. It's out of the gate before you even realize it's going to happen. Let's treat it as your first reaction, and then let's sit here for a minute and think, might there be a second reaction? Is there another way that you could see this?"

18:51 If my client is still struggling at that point, I will say, "What would you say to a friend? If a friend were in this exact same position, what would you say to them?" Invariably, people are so much kinder, so much more compassionate, and can come up with great guidance that they would offer this theoretical friend, and then usually they can turn that back around and use it for themselves. So, one of the things that is really wonderful about being 30 years into practicing as a psychologist is that my sense of what matters has gotten more and more clear.

19:23 And to me, it's relationships. We have so much research showing, but also so much common sense telling us that the quality of your life is going to be measured in the quality of your relationships. So, especially when we're stressed, but even when not, taking time to prioritize those relationships, protect those relationships, seek them out, cultivate them, >> >> is really what this is all about. The other thing I've really learned about keeping stress at healthy levels is that two things we know are important actually really do matter.

19:59 The first is exercise. Exercise is probably the best drug on the market when it comes to managing stress. When we're exercising, we actually tend to feel better while we're doing it. It can be an important form of leisure. It's also a time when we let our minds sometimes run and solve problems or clean up mental clutter, and often if we do a period of exercise without listening to a podcast or watching a TV show, we come to the end of it actually feeling more clear-headed in addition to having gotten our workout. We also know that exercise is tied to the other thing that really matters, which is sleep.

20:32 Sleep is the glue that holds human beings together. If you're not getting the sleep you need, you're going to be stressed. You're going to feel pretty uncomfortable. When we are exercising, we sleep better. We fall asleep faster, and we actually sleep more soundly. So, we should be getting all the sleep our bodies need no matter what, but if you're having any trouble with it, exercise is going to help make it happen. Here's what I can promise you.

20:56 Our lives are better when we're smart about stress. And being smart about stress comes down to three things. Number one, don't be afraid of it. It's part of life. We're supposed to have it. It helps us grow. So long as it's within normal limits, it's good for us. Number two, protect recovery. Stress without recovery is a problem. Stress plus adequate recovery equals growth. And number three, enjoy your recovery. When you are coping in healthy ways, when you have an opportunity for leisure, don't ruin it with guilt. Lean into it, enjoy it all the way. You've earned it, you deserve it, and savoring it is going to help you get back in there and do even more.

21:38 As much as I'm the PR team for distress and all of the value that it brings to our lives, there are lines that we don't want to cross. So, if the definition of being mentally healthy is having feelings that fit what's happening and managing them well, we know it's when to worry if we're struggling to manage feelings well. So, for example, in depression, people feel low or blank or irritable and they can't get their hands around it. Or in anxiety disorders, they are having a fear response that doesn't fit what's happening and that they cannot get under control.

22:11 So, we can actually lean into and value uncomfortable emotions so long as we know that they're healthy. And part of how we know they're healthy is that we know what's over the line. And what's over the line is if you are struggling to manage feelings well or if you're turning to unhealthy coping to try to get them under control. >> Chapter two, developing a better relationship with your emotions. >> So, there's a long-standing debate in psychology about where emotions fit into our lives. Are they in charge? Are we in charge? How does this work?

22:47 Well, the fact of the matter is, some people are ruled by their emotions. Their emotions are calling all the shots. This is not actually how we want our lives to be. The best version I've ever heard of this comes from a colleague of mine, Dr. Terry Tobias, who is a psychologist, has this great metaphor that she uses to talk about emotions. So, we all have a personal board of directors, and on it sits, you know, our priorities, our interests, our values, our you know, logistical considerations, and our emotions. That our emotions are informational, they can tell us about how things are going, they can give us guidance about what's working and what's not. But, the way my colleague talks about it is that she says, "Emotions have a seat on the board, but they're not the chair of the board, and they very rarely get a deciding vote."

23:35 So, if we think about our emotions, we can think about them as like the most ancient part of being human, right? That emotions have always been there to help guide us, right? Anxiety keeps us safe. Our ancestors who weren't anxious, they did not survive to pass their genes into the population. So, emotions are old, and they are powerful. And they tend to initiate in the ancient part of our brains, though older, lower parts of the brain, the amygdala being the major player here.

24:07 So, first, emotions arise in the older parts of our brain, and then the newer parts of our brain, the part sort of behind our forehead, starts to interpret that emotion and decide what to make of it. Then, we can act or not act, depending on what the higher-order part of our brain has decided that emotion means. One of the biggest challenges we have right now as a culture is we've landed on an understanding of mental health that's really not accurate. And what I mean by that is so often you'll hear people suggesting that you know you're mentally healthy if you feel good. Okay, I'm all for feeling good. I'm a psychologist. I want people to feel good. This has nothing to do with what makes for mental health.

24:46 So, the definition I like to use, and this comes from my field, is being mentally healthy is about two things. First, it's about having feelings that fit what's actually happening, even if they are unwanted emotions. And then second, and this is really where the rubber hits the road, it's about managing those feelings well. Not only is it untrue that mental health is about feeling good, sometimes it's true that mental health is about feeling bad. Okay, so for example, say you get fired at work, and it's a job you really cared about. If you feel nothing, that's weird. You should be upset. You should be worried about what's happening next.

25:25 You should be concerned about missing your old colleagues. Not feeling anything under those conditions, or feeling okay under those conditions, that would actually be grounds for concern. So, people have the idea that ideally we should feel good. And while it's nice to feel good, that's not really how life works. Instead, we want to recognize that emotions cut across a very wide range, from very pleasant to very unpleasant. And I like to think about all of them as information. They are a feedback system.

25:56 They tell us how our life is going. If we do something and we hate it, we should pay attention to that. If we hang out with somebody and we feel terrible when we're with them, we should pay attention to that. If we do something and it's terrific, we should be curious about that, too. They are there as data. They are there as information. Another way to think about unwanted emotions is the way we think about physical pain. Nobody likes physical pain, but we recognize that it's actually important. If you have your hand on a burner that's on, you should feel pain that gets you to pull your hand away. If you have an injury in your knee that is painful and you go running, that injury is going to tell you to stop running.

26:34 Pain tells us to notice that something's not right and to take steps to fix it. Emotional discomfort does the exact same job. It helps us notice when something isn't working, and ideally to take steps to improve things. Especially at a time when we've decided that you're supposed to feel good, calm, and at ease as much as you absolutely can, which is not really possible. We've also ended up with this idea that if you're emotional, that somehow means you're fragile, right? That you are not a sturdy person. But we know that's not true. That you can be very emotional, feel things incredibly deeply, while still being completely sturdy and able to function beautifully in the world.

27:20 And in fact, being very attuned to what's happening with other people, what's happening with yourself, is a superpower, right? It can help us to make great decisions, to treat other people well. There's no benefit to thinking that I know that I am okay or that that person's okay if we are somehow indifferent to or invulnerable to what's going on around us or inside us. Feelings aren't optional. You don't get to decide if you have them or not. Everybody has them.

27:52 So, the question then becomes, what do we do with them? Either you can go down the road of thinking, "Okay, this is information. What's it telling me? How do I use it to make my life better?" Or you can go down the road of, "How do I get rid of these, especially the uncomfortable ones?" Getting rid of uncomfortable emotions is a workout. It requires constant effort. It's not like they just go away. You're actually putting energy into keeping them at bay.

28:15 And the way I like to think about it is, well, that's a real drain on your system. Not only are you not getting the benefit of all that information that comes with knowing your feelings, you're also having to do the workout of like keeping your shoulder against the door that keeps all of those feelings away. Eventually, they find a way out or you just become exhausted and become overwhelmed by them. So, the more that we can turn and face and get to know even the emotions that we're not all that happy to have, the smarter we're going to be about ourselves, the smarter we're going to be about our lives, and frankly, the more energy we're going to have for dealing with whatever is in front of us.

28:52 So, there's this phrase that comes from the mindfulness world that I just love, which is we should think of our minds being like ponds full of fish. And the fish are feelings, and the goal is to try to be the pond. It's another way of sort of not pushing our emotions away, but kind of holding them at a little bit of a distance as opposed to feeling like they're in charge, they're running the show. If we need another metaphor, and I can always come up with another metaphor, it's great to think of emotions as being like in the passenger seat of our lives.

29:24 Like we have our hands on the wheel. We are driving this car, deciding where it goes and how fast. But emotions can give us information about where we might want to go and how quickly we might want to try to get there. It's not great when emotions actually are the ones with their hands on the wheel. We want there to be more parts of ourselves, more information from our lives weighing in when we're choosing our direction. So, having set aside the idea that we're not supposed to have uncomfortable emotions, we can move to the much more helpful idea that emotions are going to show up, even ones we don't really want, and we have to figure out what to do with them and how to handle that well. As soon as we are into the territory of handling emotions well, we're into a field that psychologists call emotion regulation. Okay, this is a really boring term for a really important and exciting idea.

30:11 And the idea is we don't banish emotions, we manage emotions. And when we're managing emotions, we actually work across two categories. Sometimes we manage emotions by expressing them. The teenagers I will care for will talk about like getting feelings out. And sometimes we manage emotions by quieting them, taming them, bringing them back down to size. Now, the thing that's really important here is that both of these categories are equally valuable. Psychologists are good with both. Sometimes it's good to express emotions, sometimes it's good to tame emotions.

30:44 You don't want to do all one or all the other. You actually want to work across both of these categories. So, this is the part of my job that's kind of magic. We don't really understand why it works this way, but we have enough science to tell us that when we come up with a label for a feeling, we feel that feeling less intensely. If I'm sad and I tell you I feel sad, I actually feel less sad. If I'm anxious and I say I'm feeling anxious, my anxiety goes down. Now, we have some theories about why this is true.

31:13 Once you take an uncomfortable emotion and put it into words, it goes from being abstract, emotions are highly abstract, to something concrete. Concrete is easier to work with. Another thing about putting words around our feelings is that now we can share them. We can tell other people what's going on inside of us. We don't have to carry it alone, and we may even get some really great support. So, there's huge value in being able to come up with words to describe what we're feeling.

31:39 And we even know that the more precise, the better. There is a line of research on emotional granularity. It's better to actually say, "I'm so disappointed." if that's what you're feeling, than just to say, "I'm sad." Or, "I'm so frustrated." if that's what you're feeling, instead of just saying, "I don't know, I'm kind of angry, I guess." So, not only is labeling emotions powerful, the more granular the labeling is, the more bang we get for that verbal buck.

32:06 There's something else to be said about talking about our feelings, if that's something you want to do. We know as psychologists that things are often much worse on the inside than on the outside. That when it's banging around in our own head, it seems worse than it when it's out on the table in front of us. And I think what's often at work there is the emotion of shame. This is an emotion that is enormously powerful, but we don't talk about all that much.

32:28 When we are holding emotions inside, when we feel like we can't talk about them, usually there's a sense of shame that this reflects badly on me, that there's something wrong with me, that I have this emotion. If we can get ourselves to a place of talking about it and sharing it, and putting it in the light, what we usually see is whoever we're sharing it with goes, "I get it. Of course you feel that way." And now the shame is dispelled. We're reminded, "Yeah, emotions are part of being human, even some pretty unpleasant emotions sometimes." And if we can talk about it and share it, not only do we get social support, which is really important when we're dealing with hard things, we also get something that helps us sweep away shame.

33:09 So, if we start with the category of expressing emotions, there's better and worse ways to do it. So, healthy expression can take a lot of different forms. It usually starts with talking, right? Just saying, "I feel this." Or "This just happened to me." Or "I need to process this and tell somebody what is on my mind. Being able to talk about our feelings is enormously valuable, both in terms of understanding them ourselves and making meaningful connections with other people.

33:32 But, healthy expression isn't just about talking. The art that moves us, those are all healthy expressions. Artists, creatives, are people who are channeling their emotions into something productive. Music, graphical arts, that is an expressive phenomenon, and it's a way that they are getting their emotions out into the world while making something. You also see healthy emotional expression in things like sports, right? If you've had a really rough day and you go take it out on the tennis court, that's a great way to express that discomfort.

34:04 There's also unhealthy forms of emotional expression. So, if you go to work and you have a bad day and you come home and you kick the dog, you're expressing that emotion in a terrible way. Same thing with yelling, being unkind to people. There's ways that we take our feelings out that give us relief, but they leave damage in our wake. So, this idea that expressing and taming are equally important is one that people are often surprised to hear, especially from psychologists. You think we're going to want you to talk about feelings endlessly all the time until you feel better. But, doesn't always work that way.

34:38 And in fact, one of the most valuable things that we can have in our repertoire as human beings is the ability to make feelings quiet down, to calm them down, to get them to go more quiet when we want to. This is what we call taming. All right, there's all of these fabulous strategies for taming emotions that we don't want to have. One, distraction, right? Say for example you had to have a medical test and you're awaiting results, right? And they could be really good or really bad and you don't know and there's nothing you can do.

35:08 Thinking and thinking and thinking about it, talking and talking and talking about it is actually not going to help you out. Watching a really good movie or losing yourself in a book is actually what you need. Distraction in these moments can be your best friend and it's a great strategy for taming discomfort. Another example of taming is problem solving, right? If the thing that is making you upset is something you can fix, you actually don't need to spend time worrying about it, talking about it. Just get going on the fixing. That will help you feel better.

35:36 Taming can also take the form of comforts, right? And this is something we do so naturally as humans, right? Taking a nice long shower, eating a food you love, right? Getting a hug is is a form of emotional taming. I really want people to know that psychologists do not put talking as the what end all be all of emotion management. It is one strategy. It is in the category of expression. There are other things in that category.

36:04 Taming is a whole other category and it is full of wonderful, wonderful options. What you will do is going to be unique to you, it's going to be what you like, but it is no less valuable than talking about emotions or finding other ways to express them. So, I'm a psychologist, we're all for talking about feelings to a point. So, what we know as psychologists is that talking about feelings should bring relief. The more you talk, the better you feel.

36:30 From time to time, it doesn't work that way. Instead, the more we talk, the worse we feel. And so then we keep talking and we keep feeling worse. Now, our technical term for this is rumination. But the best way to think about it is like getting stuck in an emotional rut, or frankly, it's kind of gross, but it's a really helpful metaphor, picking at an emotional wound, right? You won't leave it alone, it won't heal up, you're making it worse.

36:53 So, if you notice that you or someone you care about is ruminating, they're going around and around and around in on something, the more they think about it, the more they talk about it, the further they're digging themselves in, the solution is actually to stop expressing, to not keep going down that road. Now, the best way to make rumination stop is actually distraction, right? It's just to find something that is totally engrossing and put your mind on it. I think about it like a forced change of one's mental channel.

37:23 I have a dear friend who had a very, very taxing job, and she would call me at the end of the day and she'd be like, "Oh my gosh, I had such a day. There is no way I'm going to be able to get to sleep tonight unless I watch something really dumb and really absorbing on TV." She had it right. Thinking about our problems is great if it's helping us, but we can take it to a point that actually makes things worse.

37:45 So, as a psychologist, empathy is really important. I know that, you know that. And as a psychologist who cares for adolescents and the adults around them, I'm always telling the parents and caregivers of teenagers, "Be empathetic. Offer empathy." But I'm going to throw a little asterisk on this. We have research showing, and I'm not surprised by this, and you won't be either, that empathy is actually taxing to the person who's being empathetic, that it's a work out of its own to be the empathetic person.

38:15 So, this is why therapy is great, because you're actually paying somebody for their time and their empathy. That is the arrangement. It also means that we want to be mindful of how much we ask of other people or of any given individual. If day over day over day, we are seeking empathy from the same person, they may love us a lot, they may want to do it, they may have every investment in our well-being. We need to bear in mind that's hard and hard for them. And we want to make sure that we're not asking more than is fair.

38:50 Most of the time we're not. Most of the time people are happy to do it. But I also want to offer this, if you've ever felt that way while empathizing, like I want to be here for this person, but I'm also finding it hard. Well, science has your back. Being empathic is actually not a costless activity. So, here's the bottom line. You're going to feel everything. And you don't necessarily have say about what you're going to feel or when you're going to feel it.

39:14 And many of those feelings are going to be uncomfortable and unwanted. If you commit yourself to avoiding them, trying not to feel them, your life is going to get really narrow and you're going to lose touch with yourself and other people. If instead, you welcome the idea that emotions are here to stay, they are here to let us know how things are going, they are here to give us information, a whole lot of good things are going to happen even while you're contending with uncomfortable emotions.

39:42 You're going to learn more about yourself. You're going to become more emotionally durable with time as you get used to managing uncomfortable emotions. You will be more empathic to other people as they are going through hard things. And frankly, you're going to make better choices. Most of the time when we're making bad choices, is that we are ignoring uncomfortable emotions that we're either having because of those bad choices or that are trying to warn us away from those bad choices.

40:07 So, treating uncomfortable emotions as friends and allies is how this works. And doing so is going to make your life better. Chapter 3, the psychology of teenagers. >> So, I've been a clinical psychologist for more than 30 years, and most of that time has focused on caring for teenagers and the people around teenagers. My research and my work tends to look at what gets in the way of kids thriving, what adults can do to help kids thrive, and what I've learned along the way is so much of what is true for young people is also true for people of all ages.

40:48 So, adolescence is an extraordinary time of life, and when it begins and when it ends is sort of up for debate. I tend to think about it like 10 to 20 is sort of the big action for being an adolescent. And it is a transformational time of life. If you put a 10-year-old next to a 20-year-old, right? You're talking about two different creatures all together, right? They're so different. whereas, you know, I'm 55, me at 45, not that different from who I am now, right? A lot goes down in that time.

41:17 It's a time of life when young people figure out what they value in themselves and the kind of value they want to contribute to the world. And it can set people up for really rich and thriving adulthoods, or it can be a time where people lose their way for a little while. The beautiful thing about teenagers is that they get back on track pretty quickly, but sometimes it happens that somebody goes off course in adolescence and spends a long time going down a road they didn't want to be on.

41:45 One of my favorite things with teenagers is to talk with them about how they cope when they've had a rough day, and I'll tell you, they're often better at it than adults are. And by better, I mean they're more creative. So, I'll ask questions. I'll say, "If you've had a horrible day, let's picture you go home, you have 2 hours to help yourself feel better, what are you most likely to do?" The number one response that I get from teenagers, and I get this in conversation with them, and I get this in a Gallup poll that I did with them, is that they listen to music.

42:14 Teenagers, almost all of them have playlists that they've curated, and they curate these playlists that are mood-matching music. And the best part is they often have really great names for these playlists, like their grr playlist or their sad and peaceful playlist. And they go and they listen to music that matches the negative mood they're having. And you would think that this would make them feel worse, but actually teenagers know, and the science shows, that it actually helps them feel better. That if a teenager's angry, and they go listen to their grr playlist, they feel the emotion more intensely, and then they move through it more quickly, and they feel better faster. Same with being sad.

42:53 So, I love this about teenagers, right? That they have this really precise and portable and autonomous and actually quick solution for dealing with uncomfortable emotions, and a lot of them use it. They also turn to things like playing or playing with their friends when they're upset. Especially boys will turn to video games when they're upset. And this is often a much more social activity than we give boys credit for. They are having a good time. They may be distracting themselves from something they can't really fix. They're enjoying the company of their friends. There's often a lot of playful banter. So, they're great at this.

43:28 But, I really mean it when I say that teenagers are creative. One of the answers I got one time is I had a teenage girl say, "You know what? When I've had a really rough day, I go, I get a piece of paper, I rip it up into a bunch of pieces, and then I tape it back together like a puzzle." I was like, "Fantastic, right? Does no harm, brings relief, it's your thing, it works for you."

43:48 So, what I would say is as much as we worry about how teenagers are handling their emotions, I think adults also want to step back and admire that often the kid who comes home, has a good cry, crying is actually a very adaptive way to manage emotions, it brings relief, does no harm, and then cuddles the dog on the floor for a while is actually the picture of mental health. So, music is a really interesting category in terms of how people, but especially teenagers, manage their emotions, cuz it can be both expressing and taming.

44:18 So, if a teenager is sad and puts on her sad and peaceful playlist, it becomes a proxy form of expression. It's cathartic. It helps them to get that feeling out. Now, what's really common is that teenagers will often also have a happy playlist. one kid called it his ya-ya playlist. And after a period of getting the feeling out, they'll switch over to the mood-lifting playlist, and they'll use it to counter the unwanted mood. Now, they do this in all of these sophisticated ways. Some kids go straight for the ya-ya playlist, but the point being that teenagers have figured out how to use music to shift their mood in all sorts of ways, and to do so quickly.

45:01 When we think about where teenagers stand today, we actually have to hold two realities at once. On the one hand, today's teenagers have been through a lot. They have gone through a global pandemic. They are dealing with concerns about gun violence. They are dealing with concerns about the climate and where it's headed. They are dealing with achievement pressures like we never saw when we were teenagers, and they are working hard to manage this. As a result, we are seeing higher rates of anxiety and depression in teens than we've seen in the past, and we need to pay attention to those.

45:32 At the same time, most teenagers are thriving, and we need to pay attention to that, too. In fact, we are raising the best-behaved generation of teenagers on record. They are doing fewer drugs than previous generations. They wear their seatbelts. They wear their helmets. They are delaying sexual intimacy. They are having fewer partners. We want to pay attention to the fact that they are achieving more than we ever did as adolescents. They are behaving better than we ever did as adolescents. And side by side with that, there are a lot of kids who are suffering and deserve extra support.

46:07 Knowing this about teenagers, I used a Gallup poll of mine to try to tell a fuller story. So, I asked teenagers, "What did you feel a lot of yesterday?" And I gave them a whole range of emotions to consider. So, 45% of them said, "I felt a lot of stress." And 38% of them said, "I felt really anxious." And 23% said, "I felt sad." On top of that, 94% of them said they felt happy on the previous day as well.

46:34 You add those numbers up, it gets to way more than 100. Kids are feeling lots of things, and often lots of different kinds of emotions on the very same day. So, it matters that kids are telling us they're anxious. It matters that kids are telling us that they are sad. And it also matters that we don't take an overall negative view of adolescence and miss the fact that 94% of them are telling us that yesterday, they also felt happy.

46:59 So, we do see some differences when we look at gender and teenagers and how they're faring. But before I get into any gender differences, let me say this. Every time we look at gender differences, we always find that people of different genders are more like than they are different. And part of why that's true is that we're always talking about overlapping bell curves, right? So, if you think about bell curves, the difference is in the mean, the height of the curve. But those means could be pretty close together and still find a difference. And what that means, if you think about something like anxiety, is that girls may be more anxious than boys on anxiety, but there are a lot of boys who are more anxious than the average girl and a lot of girls who are less anxious than the average boy.

47:40 So, we do see these gender findings, but you always want to take them with a grain of salt. Okay, having said that, let me talk about the gender differences we see. So, one thing we know as psychologists is that when girls are distressed, they have been socialized to collapse in on themselves. They're more likely to become anxious, they're more likely to become depressed. Boys, on the other hand, have been socialized that when they are in distress, they act out. They're more likely to get themselves in trouble, they're more likely to be hard on other people.

48:09 So, when we do surveys that only ask about things like sadness and depression, girls are going to look like they're struggling and like they're struggling a lot more than boys. When we expand those surveys and ask questions about things like anger or irritability, we're going to hear a lot more boys telling us they have those feelings. And the most important thing we need to do as adults is to recognize that kid's upset. He's not being naughty, he's not being a bad kid. He's a kid in distress and he is showing that distress in the ways that our culture gives boys permission to be distressed.

48:40 This is something we need to be really careful about when we're talking about anyone and I think especially teenagers. We need to make sure we're asking the right questions. So, if we walk up to the question of are teenagers suffering and we only ask about anxiety and depression, we're going to find out more about what's happening for girls because we're not asking the right question that's going to pick up distress in boys. I think we may run into a similar problem with things like loneliness.

49:04 There may very well be a situation where boys are more lonely than girls, but we also might not be asking the right question. So, for example, if we're asking how much do you talk to your friends, how much do you share with your friends, we're going to get a lot of information that suggests that girls are way better at this and thus less lonely. But what we know is that companionship for a lot of boys isn't about talking, isn't about sharing, it's about doing things together, being on a team together, playing a game together, you know, doing a hobby together. So, when we're talking about distress or we're talking about loneliness, we want to be really careful that we're not asking questions that are going to tip the information one way or another, but miss what's really happening.

49:48 So, one of the hardest conversations happening between teenagers and adults right now has to do with technology, mostly phones. And this is a really tricky one because this has come to us like a tidal wave. We are all trying to figure out what to do with it. And one of the things I observe all the time is how quick some adults can be to say like, "Teens and their phones." All right, I don't love when we're doing this, and I'll tell you why.

50:12 Number one, I am 100% sure that if I had had these technologies when I was a teenager, I would be using them exactly as our teenagers do. And the reason I know this is I remember how excited I got about call waiting. So, I think the first thing we should do as adults is to recognize if we had had access to these phones and these technologies, we probably would have used them just as our kids are using them. And in fact, many of us actually are using our phones and our technologies the way our kids are.

50:40 So, we want to try to set aside that very negative stereotype, and also to recognize again how easily we negatively stereotype teens. Teenagers need us to help us navigate all of this. This is tremendously complex. Teenagers are being confronted by technologies that are wildly sophisticated and have a lot of information on those teenagers and are putting in front of them things that are totally irresistible. We are much better equipped to help young people manage this if we take a stance not of, "Ugh, you and your phone." But, "Hey kid, you and me, let's look at these technologies, let's look at where they're coming from, what they're about, and make sure that if you're using them, you're doing so in a way that is good for you."

51:24 So, because phones are new, and because phones absolutely are a big piece of what's happening with teenagers, it can be very easy to focus on them as the main, if not sole, cause of this rising rates of psychological distress that we're seeing in teenagers. We want to pay attention to digital technology. We want to pay attention to what it means for young people and their health and their thriving, but we don't want it to dominate the whole picture.

51:50 When I think about youth mental health and what affects it, I tend to think in like a pie chart. And what we know from the research is social media and digital technology is definitely a slice of that pie, but there's a lot of other things in that pie, too. So, another big slice is actually how much sleep teens are getting. Today's teens sleep way less than previous generations, and sleep and mental health are best friends. Okay, sleep and social media are connected, of course, especially if kids are up at night on their phones, which is not my favorite.

52:20 But there are other things in the pie chart as well. So, there are things like poverty and discrimination. There's worries about gun violence. There's achievement pressures. There's concerns about the climate. And also kids tell us they worry a lot about things like political polarization. There's things like family mental health, childhood trauma, and then there's also peer concerns, bullying, worries about friendship. All of that makes up the pie, and as the adults around teenagers, we want to pay attention to the big picture and not always get stuck on looking at one slice of the pie.

52:55 So, I love teenagers. And what I love about them is that they are vivid, right? Everything that's going on with them is intense and big, even if to adults it doesn't seem like that big a deal. Everything's a big deal to them, and that's what I love. What's hard about being a teenager is that there's so much change in a very short period of time. And as we know, change equals stress. So, all of that change that a young person is going through is stressful for them, and it's also stressful for the people around them.

53:25 I think that the fact that having a teenager is stressful has, over many generations, lent to a whole lot of negative stereotyping about teenagers. And what's interesting is the stereotype changes, right? So, you think back to like American Graffiti, 1950s, like they are so naughty, they're up to no good, right? And then we think about things like The Who and Baba O'Riley and Teenage Wasteland, you know, being the main theme of that song. So, the idea of teenagers as burnouts in some sort of way.

53:52 Today, our negative stereotype about teenagers is that they're fragile. Or maybe even damaged, right? And they have been through a lot. But we need to be mindful that we often cast a negative lens around adolescence. And maybe some of that has to do with how we think about being a teenager ourselves, especially if it wasn't that great of an experience. I think some of that has to do with the fact that teenagers can often look at adults in a way that's pretty askance. They can judge us, they can be skeptical, they're the first to catch our hypocrisies.

54:21 And I think some of that has to do with, as much as I love them, I'll be the first to say, teenagers can be stressful to raise. So, one of the best parts of my job is I get to ask teenagers like, "How can adults really be most helpful to you?" And what they tell me over and over again, both in my clinical practice and through surveys I conduct, is that more than anything, they just want us to listen, right? When they've had a hard day, when they're upset about something, they just want to be able to share it and have us just take it in.

54:50 Okay, what is behind this? Most of the time, I think a lot of us find that when we've gone through something hard, if we could just tell somebody, then we can lay it down and move on. And I think that's true for teenagers, too. It's also true for teenagers that they feel everything really intensely. And they sometimes worry like, is something wrong with me that I'm so upset about this thing? So, if our kid can come home and be like, "Oh my gosh, listen to what happened at school today." And they can tell us and we go, "Oh yeah, that stinks." Okay, two things are happening at once. First, they're getting empathy, they're getting to lay it down and move on. They're also getting our reassurance like, "You're having a reaction that makes sense.

55:27 There's nothing wrong with you. You're good to go." So, just listening is so much more powerful than I think adults often recognize. And because we think just listening isn't enough, we often leap in with advice. Okay. If you have done this with a teenager, you know most of the time it doesn't go all that well, right? They give you their problem and instead of just saying, "Oh man, that stinks." you say, "Well, did you try?" And invariably the kids like, "You don't get it. You don't understand." Very rarely is the kid like, "I'm awfully glad you made that suggestion. I hadn't thought of that myself."

55:59 So, what I know from both talking with kids in my practice and actually being a mom myself and conducting surveys on teenagers and ask teenagers, "What do you want adults to do when you're upset?" 62% of them said, "I just want you to listen." After that, 56% said, "I just want some space." And only 28% said they wanted advice. Now, let's come back to that space response. Here's what I usually hear from adults. My kid came home. They were clearly upset and they went in their room. How do I get them to open up?

56:34 And the parent or the caregiver in that moment feels like something's gone wrong. If we recognize that kids are actually asking for space as a way to deal with upset feelings, we can appreciate the kid is saying, "I want to try to fix this for myself. I want to see if I can get myself to feeling better all by myself." And we need to recognize this is what we want. We want our kids to develop autonomy and capacity around dealing with uncomfortable emotions.

57:06 And so often if they've had a hard day at school, they've held it together so well at school and they get home and maybe getting to their room if they've got a room to themselves is finally the time and the place that they can carry on with their own healthy coping, their own autonomous healthy coping and do all the things that actually get them ready to be able to thrive on their own. So, one One hardest things about raising teenagers is that there's an overnight shift. It feels like it's an overnight shift that has to do with how our kids regard us.

57:41 And the metaphor I like to use for this is that when they're younger, we're like jelly beans. They want as much of us as they can have. And then as they move into adolescence, and adolescence begins around 10 or 11, we're a little bit more like Brussels sprouts. Like they know that we're good for them, but they don't want to eat an endless supply. So, what does this look like in your home? What it looks like is maybe when your child is 9 or 10 or even 11, if they're upset, they want a hug, right? They want you to care for them. They want your warmth and your comfort.

58:13 And then as they move into the Brussels sprout phase, they come home and they know that your advice may be good, but they don't really want it. They want to figure out how to manage this themselves. I know this both from raising kids, caring for kids, and again, I also know it from my survey data. When I ask kids, "What helps you feel better?" or "What your parent to do to help you feel better?" younger twins were twice as likely as older teens to say that they wanted a hug.

58:40 All right. So, say your teenager's had a terrible day, and they come home and they're talking about it. I want you to think in terms of expressing and taming. If they're talking, they're already on the right path. Talking about what's making them upset is how most people get themselves to feeling better. Your job is to listen. If listening isn't enough, offer empathy. Listen and say, "Of course you're upset. Anyone in your shoes would be." You can validate what they're feeling, and I will tell you most of the time, teenagers feel better if we just listen, empathize, and validate. Now, if your kid's still upset, you're going to switch gears, and you're going to go towards taming so that they don't end up ruminating. So, you might say, "What would help you feel better?" or frankly, my favorite line in all of parenting, "Is there anything I can do that won't make this worse?

59:29 Being present, being available, but not leaping in to try to solve the problem, is almost always what teenagers are really looking for. So, when I was working on my book Untangled, I had to figure out how to organize all of the things that teenagers are going through. So, I came up with seven transitions that turn kids into adults. And the seven transitions are the chapter titles for the book. So, here they are. Parting with childhood, joining a new pack, harnessing emotions, contending with adult authority, planning for the future, entering the romantic world, caring for themselves.

60:04 And as I was working on the book, my editor kept saying, "Are these happening in an order, or are they happening all at once?" And I kept saying to her, "Yes. Yes." >> >> So, they do roughly map on to what's happening developmentally. Like, parting with childhood, fifth or sixth grade. Joining a new pack, sixth or seventh grade. Harnessing emotions, seventh or eighth grade. Contending with adult authority, eighth, ninth grade. Planning for the future, ninth, 10th grade.

60:30 Entering the romantic world can show up anywhere. It can even show up in grad school. And then learning to care for oneself is what we want to make sure kids can do before they leave home. So, it's helpful, I find, to think of what can look like the chaos of adolescence, and realize teenagers have all these jobs that they are trying to work their way through. And again, that's a lot of work, which means that's a lot of stress.

60:56 And our job, as the loving adults around them, is to not take any of it personally, and to try to help them on their way. So, my work in caring for teenagers also extends, importantly, to caring for the adults who are doing the work of raising teenagers, cuz it's not that easy. We adore our kids. We are aware that when they become adolescents, there's all these new risks on the horizon for them. And we don't have the same closeness with them that we may have enjoyed when they were younger. So, this is a pretty scary combination. They have more things they can get into trouble with, more things that can go wrong, and they don't want our guidance like they used to. I think the thing that I want adults to know as they are with and around teenagers is that none of this is personal. I think so often when it derails is that the adult takes it personally that the kid doesn't want the help in the same way.

61:46 The more that we can recognize that teenagers have a really hard job. They have to become independent while living with us. They have to get ready to leave home and live on their own at the exact same moment we still know what they last ate and what socks they're wearing. So, they do this by accomplishing a psychological distance in advance of accomplishing a physical distance. The more that we can stand back and admire that this is a pretty brilliant and elegant solution rather than feeling like they've broken up with us or pushed us away, the more that we can continue to make ourselves available for when they do want to connect.

62:23 And what I hear from teenagers all the time is that they do care very deeply about the adults in their lives. They want guidance. They want connection. The thing that we have to adjust to as adults is that they usually want it on their terms and their timing. So, I have a colleague who also cares for teenagers, and he said to me one day, "We get way too much credit for our work with teenagers. They get better so much faster than people of any other age." And this is true. In the vividness of adolescence is also this tremendous plasticity, this tremendous capacity to change routes.

63:00 I have cared for teenagers who were cutting school, not getting along with their friends, not getting along with their family, and then suddenly attached themselves to something, decided they wanted to move to New York, and decided that the path to do that involved going to school and getting along better with everybody, and within 3 months I was looking at a totally different kid. So, what I want adults to know as they support teenagers and care for teenagers is that even when teenagers seem to be struggling or even when teenagers are really off-putting, they are amenable to change.

63:34 If you want to make this change happen, here's what you need to do. You need to recognize that all teenagers have two sides. They have the side that might want to cut class or be impulsive or be snarky. And all teenagers have a side that is broad-minded, philosophical, forward-looking. And more than anything in the whole world, teenagers want to be taken seriously. So, even if teenagers are showing you the side that is annoying or impulsive or misbehaved, if you can speak to the second side, if you can say to them, "Hey, this isn't like you." Or "Hey, I know you want to have a lot of options at the end of high school."

64:12 What I have learned is that the side you talk to is the side that shows up for the conversation. So, as the adults around teenagers, whether they're your teenagers or somebody else's teenagers, take teenagers seriously, speak to the mature, growth-oriented side of the teenager, and you're going to see the very best of that kid, and you're going to see them move quickly in the right direction. Okay, let's think about what it really means to be a teenager.

64:37 You are changing, everyone around you is changing, your body is changing, you are setting yourself up for your adult life, and you're usually living with your folks who may or may not have expectations of you that you have for yourself. Okay, it's a lot. Against this backdrop, we also have to recognize that there's a lot of shade for teenagers. That adults will say things all the time like, "Teenagers." Sometimes like right in front of them. Now, think about it for a minute. If we were like, "Women." Right? That is totally socially unacceptable. And yet, it's considered okay to do that with and around teenagers.

65:13 Teenagers need us. Teenagers belong to all of us. It is critically important that we have their backs and that they know we are really there for them. So, what's the takeaway? The takeaway is stress is normal if uncomfortable. Uncomfortable feelings are helpful if unwanted. And development is hard. Being a person who's growing and changing is inherently stressful. Being around people who are growing and changing, I'm thinking teenagers, is inherently stressful. The fact that it's stressful doesn't mean that anybody's doing anything wrong.

65:48 It's just the nature of being a person. >> Four times a year, we print a magazine worth putting your phone down for. Big Think's premium print magazine is built with custom artwork and expert insight from the world's biggest thinkers. No AI slop, no rage bait, just big ideas for curious people. Support the media you want to see in the world. Go to bigthink.com/membership to join.