When teens are doing badly — emotionally, behaviorally, or mental-health-wise, parents can easily fly into reactive states themselves and lose their own stability. They slip into states of frustration, fear, panic, or a sense of pressure to ‘fix their kid’ or their kid’s issue.

I went to a lecture by psychologist Dr. Rick Lavoie who described this chain reaction perfectly. He said that living with a struggling kid can feel like living on a waterbed together. Every time the kid flails around, it can throw everyone else around with them.

What I find fascinating is that most parents differ in their ‘flavor’ of reaction.

I’m working with a mom of a teen right now who’s overwhelmed by the pressure to try and solve her daughter’s depression.

The dad, however, is frustrated and thinks they’ve simply spoiled the daughter and now she’s being dramatic to get attention. As a result, when the daughter is emotionally down or withdrawn, he becomes impatient and apathetic.

What’s true for both parents is that when their daughter loses her well-being, they each react differently by going into a story of their own thinking.

For the parents, the biggest source of wear-and-tear is not the daughter’s struggles, but the parent’s reactions to her.

This is a very normal and common human response and something I’ve done myself thousands of times.

When someone we care about is doing badly, we can get insecure and start making up stories.

In our insecure moments, for some reason we tend to ask the question “Why is this happening?” And our imagination will run out and make up a theory that we see as true and complete.