I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, and it’s about time I got started. So many of my clients semi-jokingly tell me that when they get into a bind, they ask themselves, “What would Lynn say?” Or their children or spouses ask the same question. Or they email me, asking what I would say about an issue they are struggling with. I think it’s time I share some of their questions and my answers on this blog. I don’t think of this as an advice column, but rather me sharing questions and answers because you may have many of the same ones. When I write books, I use a lot of vignettes which are a compilation of many different clients, yet when my clients read the books, they are always sure I am talking about them. I’ll do the same thing in these entries so that I can guard my clients’ privacy.
Here’s the first question: My pre-teen told me he feels angry a lot and wants to annoy people. He says he can’t control it and wonders if there’s something wrong with him. What would Lynn say?
It’s easy to chalk up angry feelings in adolescents to hormones and maybe miss something else important that is going on. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying adolescents aren’t hormonal, but often they have some very good reasons for being angry coupled with some very poor methods of expressing that anger. One of the questions I ask right off the bat is about what I call family constellation, because problems often make a lot more sense when seen in a context. For instance, if a child follows a “perfect” kid or a “good” kid and believes he or she can never be as good, that’s often cause for anger. Or if in a family one kid either perceives he is always getting in trouble while the other(s) are over-looked or treated like victim(s), or that is really happening, that’s also cause for anger.
In this case, there was a clear issue of good kid/bad kid stereotyping by the parents. My suggestion was to let the angry pre-teen know that it was okay for him to be angry and that anyone would be angry with that kind of favoritism going on and there was nothing wrong with him but he was making poor choices as to how he displayed his anger. He needed to know that he was loved and important and special and that his parents needed to stop putting him in the “bad guy” seat as a knee jerk response to problems. I also suggested that his parents ask him to say what was upsetting him without any judgments or defensiveness, expressing, “I hear you,” without trying to fix or improve the situation.
It’s not unusual for kids to think that parents love the other siblings more, especially if the other siblings never get in trouble and they always do. What kids don’t understand is that when these feelings aren’t validated or heard, they build up and are released with acting out behaviors.
It’s best not to make assumptions when people around you are expressing feelings. It’s really important not to label them, i.e. “He’s an angry person.” Rather, let the person know they are having a feeling, that a feeling won’t kill anyone, that you care how they feel, that you want to know why they feel the way they do, and that you understand. Understanding isn’t the same as agreeing that you feel the same way, but if you’ve ever felt understood, you know just how powerful that can be in helping you move forward in a more postive way.