Here we are: the final chapter. Before you close this book, let me share something with you: I discovered ACT in 2003, and my initial reactions were skepticism and frustration with an approach totally different from what I had learned as a therapist up to that point; it wasn’t an easy journey, and it took me hundreds of hours of reading, talking to people, listening to podcasts, attending workshops—you name it—but in that process, I found what truly matters to me as a clinician, a person, a daughter, a partner, and as a friend. I discovered that “creating intimacy” is a fundamental value in my relationships and, in particular, the relationship with my mom. Every week when I talked to my mom, I made the point of asking her questions about her daily struggles when teaching, hopes for her students, worries about her health, concerns about her cooking, and so on. I also made the point to share with her my fears about not being a good enough daughter, trips I want to take, recent movies I watched, new music I listened to do, worries about my career, and so on. It wasn’t easy, because every time I talked to my mom, my mind came up with hundreds of thoughts like: She doesn’t know who I am; she won’t understand me; she won’t get it; and Why does she need to be worried about the neighbor’s cat? Quite often I even had the urge to tell her “Everything is fine” and hang up the phone as quickly as possible.
Every values-based step we take comes with the inevitable sweetness and sourness of life, and I certainly made mistakes when moving toward creating intimacy in the relationship with my mom. It wasn’t easy, but the more I asked her questions and shared what was going on with me, the more it became very clear that my struggle was worth it.
Through living my personal values, I learned that there is no other way of living life. Once you savor a life with meaning, it just gets better, and then suddenly it not only becomes natural, but you also discover that there is no going back to other ways of living, because they are empty.
Parenting a teen struggling with emotion dysregulation has good and sweet moments, but it’s also a path full of frustration, stress, and sadness, because it’s full of emotional turmoil. Parenting your teen without having clarity about your values, it is as if you were just mechanically walking in a desert with no way to discern what direction to go.
You have learned all the different ACT skills to handle those moments when your teen’s emotional switch goes on and off, too much, too quick, too soon, and you have natural urges to use old unworkable emotional strategies, such as the pusher, the disconnector, the externalizer, or the surrenderer, or you’re getting fused with judgment thoughts, stories about yourself or your teen, rules, and past or future thoughts. Making a shift to be the best parent possibly you can be, take actions toward your parenting values, and improve the relationship with your teen for the long run is doable, but it requires an extra ingredient: willingness.
You may recall the importance of “willingness” from chapter 8, in which you identified your parenting values, specific actions to take in line with them, and potential blocks in your values path. Now that you are at the end of the book and have learned all the different ACT skills, it’s important to revisit this essential question about willingness.
Even when you’re committed to making a 180-degree turn in your parenting behavior, it’s to be expected that the dictator, judgment machine, time machine, or master author of your mind, along with painful emotions, impulses, and even physical sensations, will try to take you off the course of parenting using new ACT skills. It’s natural to be tempted, because your mind is simply doing its job: it’s attempting to use old tools that you learned before and are familiar with when dealing with your teen.
But what happens when you acted quickly, attempted to neutralize, or pushed away uncomfortable emotions? To answer this question, remember a time when you felt a sense of powerlessness when dealing with your teen and you tried to push down this feeling by quickly getting upset or disconnecting from her and abruptly removing yourself from the situation. Even though physically disconnecting from your teen reduced your feeling of powerlessness and worked for a moment, it’s really a matter of time before it shows up again and potentially with more intensity.
And what happens when you get hooked on those judgments, past or future thoughts, rules, or stories about yourself or your teen and quickly act on them in your parenting life? Can you recall the last time you saw your teen as selfish, unappreciative, or ungrateful, and you ended up yelling those names at her? Or what happened when you thought about yourself as a bad parent and ended up not showing up for the conversation with your teen because you were too busy paying attention to your mind-talk? Behaving quickly on those thoughts may seem to work in the short term, but in the long term, those thoughts don’t help to improve the relationship with your teen, and they take you far away from being the parent you want to be.
Now, imagine for a moment that those tricky thoughts, emotions, memories, and sensations are like a ball in a pool. The deeper you try to push the ball under the water, the more powerfully the ball pops out. In a similar way, the deeper you try to push down or replace your feelings of powerlessness, thoughts about yourself or your daughter, the more they’re going to pop out. But if you let the ball float on the surface of the water for a while, without trying to grab or push it under, it will likely drift to the other side of the pool; similarly, the more you’re willing to have those judgment thoughts along with those distressful emotions without responding to them or pretending you like them, but instead simply noticing them, the more manageable it’s going to be. For instance, to pursue her value of connection, Marilyn committed to drive her daughter every weekend to her girlfriend’s home one and a half hours each way; she was willing to make room for her feelings of frustration, impatience, and thoughts like This is a waste of my time; she will respond with monosyllabic responses as usual; she doesn’t even appreciate my efforts, because she really wanted to learn about her daughter. Her willingness enabled her to hear about some of her daughter’s struggles at school and to even learn the lines of one of her daughter’s favorite characters in an animated film.
Willingness is the only way to handle all those internal blocks that show up on a daily basis in your parenting life, whether those blocks are distressing feelings, physical sensations, thoughts, or impulses. Willingness is a personal choice you make to respond to those blocks every parenting moment you have with your teen. Every time there is an internal obstacle showing up under your skin, you can respond to it in one of two ways. One, you get hooked on it and do your best to get rid of, suppress, avoid, or quickly act on it; the challenge is that getting hooked on that internal obstacle, whatever form it has, is relying on old parenting behaviors that make things worse with your teen, hurt your relationship, and take you far away from the parent you really want to be.
The other way to respond to those internal obstacles is to notice them, even though you don’t like them, and willingly choose your response as a personal choice, by saying no to getting caught by those blocks and saying yes to your parenting behavior. Saying yes to your values-based parenting behavior is saying yes to you as the parent you strive to be for your teen. Here is a treasure: acting on your parenting values doesn’t guarantee a path free of conflict with your teen or that those challenging memories, images, feelings, and thoughts will go away. Parenting with willingness is about taking steps toward the parent you want to be while carrying those inner experiences and without even knowing the outcome. And you may be thinking right now, If it’s not about getting rid of my internal obstacle, what’s the treasure? The more you behave as the parent you want to be when relating to your teen, the more you will experience a sense of vitality, fulfillment, and resilience to handle those rocky moments. And the more you do it with openness, caring, and putting in practice all the ACT skills you’ve learned in this book, the better it’s going to be for you, your teen, and your relationship.
Here is the key willingness question to ask yourself moving forward: when dealing with your teen and feeling triggered by what she’s saying or doing, are you willing to have those thoughts, memories, sensations, feelings, and urges and still do what matters to you as a parent in that particular moment? Are you willing to have all that uncomfortable inner experience that emerges when dealing with your teen and still take steps toward the parent you want to be by using your ACT skills?
Once again, answering this question and practicing willingness is a personal choice you make. And while most parents I work with find that these ACT skills have been positive for them in so many ways, it’s important to remember that they’re not the Constitution of the United States of America. You will make your own choices when dealing with your teen. Checking your willingness meter and practicing willingness is something you are invited to do by choice.
The choice about how to behave when parenting your teen is yours, and it will always be yours. Every moment with your teen, not only a conflictive one, is a moment to ask and answer for yourself the willingness question.
Using your ACT skills when you’re not upset is one thing, but using them when feeling triggered when dealing with your teen is a different story. As one of my clients said once, “Dealing with my teen at home is one thing, but dealing with my teen when we’re at my in-laws, and I quickly see him making all those remarks while getting upset with his grandfather, is like using all my willpower to not explode in the moment.”
Within ACT you’re invited to choose from moment to moment; however, you cannot choose your parenting behavior unless you pause first. So let’s pause in this moment. How do you pause? By grounding yourself first, stomping your feet on the ground as if you were the trunk of a tree, and then choosing your values and your parenting behavior. This idea of pausing is not an easy one at the beginning of a potentially difficult situation, but it certainly gets more natural the more you do it. Being in your own shoes is not easy, and being in your teen’s shoes is not easy either. It’s hard for both of you. Keep in mind that life will bring many moments of distress, anxiety, sadness, and conflict to your teen, and who better than you to teach her those life skills so she can be the best person possible?
So, let’s start by practicing how to choose your parenting behaviors for a particular parenting value. If you have more than one parenting value, choose one you want to work with for the purposes of the exercise.
Exercise: Your Moments of Choice
This exercise is based on the choice point exercise developed by Ciarrochi, Bailey, and Harris (2014). Grab your parenting journal, recreate the chart below, and use it to describe a sticky situation with your teen, the internal barriers your face, your moment-of-choice question, and how you could choose to respond with old behaviors (or hooks) or new behaviors (or helpers) using your ACT skills.
| Moments-of-Choice Worksheet | |
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Parenting value: |
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Sticky situation: |
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Internal barriers (thoughts, images, sensations, urges): |
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Moment-of-choice question: Which path will take me toward the parent I want to be? |
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Old behaviors or “hooks” |
New behaviors or “helpers” |
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Consequences of the “hooks” |
Consequences of the “helpers” |
After completing this exercise, see which behaviors are more helpful to live your parenting values: your hooks or your helpers. For instance, when Suzanne completed this exercise, she came up with the following:
| Moments-of-Choice Worksheet | |
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Parenting value: Caring. |
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Sticky situation: Tell Catherine to stop calling her sister names if she doesn’t want to spend time with her. |
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Internal barriers (thoughts, images, sensations, urges): Thoughts: As soon as I tell her, she’s going to start screaming and denying that she calls her sister names; next thing I know, I’m going to be accused of “having a favorite daughter”; my whole day is going to be ruined. Emotions: fear, frustration, disappointment, guilt. Sensations: tightness in my chest. Urges: to not say anything to Catherine. |
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Moment-of-choice question: Which path will take me toward the parent I want to be? |
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Old behaviors or “hooks” Saying nothing to Catherine. Demanding that Catherine “behave nicely” with her sister. Asking Catherine’s Dad to talk to her. Sending notes to Catherine’s teacher, so she can talk to her. Threatening Catherine with sending her to therapy for the whole year. |
New behaviors or “helpers” Naming my future-oriented thoughts as “Suzanne the fortune-teller.” Breathing slowly when noticing the sensation of fear and recognizing my urges. Noticing my urges to disconnect from Catherine. |
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Consequences of the “hooks” Catherine will stop talking to me, will avoid me for a week, won’t talk at dinnertime. I’ll feel hurt and awful about the mom I am. |
Consequences of the “helpers” I know I’ll have done my best to be an assertive mom. |
You can make every moment a moment of choice in your parenting life. The choice is paying attention to what will move you toward or away from your parenting values, as Suzanne did when noticing her hooks and helpers when taking behavioral steps toward her parenting value of caring.
Perfection doesn’t exist; perfect parenting behaviors don’t exist either. You may have encountered a moment in which you were hanging out with your teen, and things seemed to be going well until your sweet teen suddenly told you how much she hates you because you don’t want her to smoke weed. Then you found yourself silently noticing all the inner noise in your head, and you asked yourself the willingness question, but the next thing you did was scream back at your teen. Everything seemed to be going well in your outing with your teen, and you were committed to handle the situation as you have learned in this book, but then it happened: your old parenting behaviors came back.
As Kelly Wilson and Troy Dufrene (2010) pointed out, sometimes things might go wrong, terribly wrong. Let’s go over one of those moments when things went wrong in your parenting job.
Exercise: When Things Went Wrong
Grab your parenting journal and write down a terrible situation you went through with your teen even though you were giving your best to use the ACT skills you learned throughout this book. Then complete this exercise:
Every moment is a new moment to start. Within ACT, you’re invited to commit to the process of living your parenting values, not to the process of becoming a perfect parent. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, things are going to be rocky; learning to notice your inner experience, name it, check its workability, defuse from it if it’s not helpful, and practice self-compassion is going to make your parenting job a more sustainable one for the better and for the long run.
At the end, every shift you choose to make in your parenting behavior is a new beginning. And every time things go wrong is a new moment to start again.
I was recently talking to my friend Geri about the natural discouragement we all go through when, even after putting our best intention to make a shift in our behavior, things fall apart or our old behaviors quickly fight for survival and take the moment. Geri reminded me of a dharma talk she listened to that highlighted something like this: “Every moment is a new moment, and every moment is a new moment to start.” Her words were a reminder of how I can choose to live my personal values from moment to moment; right now I’m reminding you of the same.
Living your parenting values is a choice you face, not only in the middle of a conflict with your teen but on a daily basis and, in reality, from moment to moment. You cannot choose what shows up under your skin; you cannot choose how your teen feels, thinks, or behaves. But you can choose how to respond to that moment. At times, even when you turn on 100 percent willingness, things may have a very different outcome. It’s natural; it’s part of parenting. It’s part of life: not everything goes as we want or hope for it to go. When things go wrong in a moment, it is not an indicator of you being a failure, that nothing is going to change, or that your teen is impossible, even though your mind may come up with thoughts along those lines. When things go wrong, it’s an invitation to pause, breathe, acknowledge the struggle of the moment, and check again your parenting values. Checking your values is like checking your true north again.
Have you ever been lost? Maybe when you were taking a hike in a large park or even when you were driving or visiting a new city? What do we do usually when we are lost? We find a map or, these days, we turn on the GPS in our cars or use the map apps in our cell phones. When things go wrong with your teen, and they simply go south, what’s your parenting task? To find your true north again.
How do you find your true north? You ask yourself What do I want to stand for as parent? What are my values as parent? Answering these questions will make it easier to figure out your next parenting step. Your parenting values are your true north, and as I often tell my clients, the rest is noise that comes in all forms, such as mind noise, body noise, and even feeling noise. Your parenting values are those parenting qualities that truly matter to you, even if no one knows about them, even if your teen doesn’t know about them, even if the outcome is not the ideal one. Checking your parenting values is also not a one-time deal but an ongoing process; the more you check where you’re walking as a parent, the more clarity you’re going to have about what to do and how to behave, and the stronger sense of fulfillment you’re going to have.
Parenting your teen struggling with emotional sensitivity can easily translate into a to-do list of responsibilities, errands, and multiple tasks, and it certainly has all types of moments: good ones, silly ones, tough ones, or absurd ones, to name a few. However, living your parenting life in a way that is driven by your values is ultimately a path that adds meaningful moments to your day. Every one of them, every memory, is a reflection of what matters to you, and every interaction with your teen is touched by meaning; living your parenting values is not pain-free, but it’s a way of living life in which you acknowledge that the pain you go through is worthy.
Exercise: Finding Your True North
Let’s find your true north by mapping your next values-based parenting behavior. Grab your parenting journal, and let’s recycle from the situation that didn’t go well that you wrote about in the previous exercise. Write down the value that you were pursuing, identify three new goals, potential hooks you may encounter, and ACT helpers you could use in the coming week when taking steps toward that particular parenting value.
When Suzanne did this last exercise, she chose to continue to focus on her parenting value of “caring.” The three specific behaviors she came up with were “Ask Catherine to go for a walk with the dog together on Sunday afternoon,” “Let Catherine know that I see how frustrating it could be for her when her sister upsets her,” and “Ask Catherine if there is anything she could do when she’s upset.”
Specific hooks for Suzanne were fortune-telling thoughts (She’s not going to listen to me; she may even make fun of me; I can totally see her face saying “This is cheesy, Mom.”), feelings of anxiety, and urges to do nothing at all and let Catherine continue calling her sister names. Suzanne will use a particular ACT helper, including naming her fortune-telling thoughts as “Suzanne the witch.” The more you take steps toward your parenting values, the more fulfillment you’re going to encounter; a values path is not a pain-free path, but certainly it’s a path of meaning.
You have reached the end of this book, and by now you have learned all the specialized skills you need to be the best parent possible for your highly sensitive teen.
Your parenting work is not over with this book. The important thing is to keep practicing all the ACT skills you’ve learned; if you’re not quite sure how to implement some of them, then go back to those chapters that cover them in the book, read again, and practice again. You can also choose to go over those skills that are very difficult or that you haven’t tried and see what happens if you practice them consistently.
Being an effective parent is accepting that you have challenges in your daily life; the more you allow yourself to choose instead of just react, the more skillful you’re going to be when dealing with your teen. The more you make of every moment of challenge a moment to grow, repair, and build a fulfilling relationship with your teen, the better it’s going to be. Learning to be the parent you want to be from moment to moment is a parenting life worth living.
Bon voyage to living a parenting life worth living!