How to Reconnect With Your Teen When Your Relationship Is Strained, According to DBT
Parents who are new to DBT often tell us that their relationship with their child isn’t their priority. Now, of course, parents don’t mean they don’t care about their relationships with their kids. What they’re saying is that they care so much about their kids, that they’re willing to sacrifice their own relationships with them in order to help them and especially, to keep them safe.
This is such a lovely sentiment. As a parent, I can really relate to it. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), that just isn’t how it works. As parents, our relationships with our kids are critically important. Allow me to opine:
Relationships are everything (aka relationships matter). Arguably, relationships and connections are a huge part of the human experience and what makes life meaningful. That is especially true for people who are very sensitive. Very sensitive people tend also to be highly affiliative, meaning they care a lot about connection.
You need a strong relationship to have influence. Are you likely to listen to someone you don’t like, resent, don’t respect, or otherwise don’t have a positive relationship with? Of course not. And teens aren’t any different (in fact, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, developmentally, teens kind of love to be contrary). If you want your teen to listen to you (whether it’s about chores, safety, or something else), you will be far more successful with a strong, positive, trusting relationship.
A strong relationship reduces dysregulation. Relationship strain can quickly become a part of the cycle of dysregulation. Dysregulation leads to conflict, conflict leads to dysregulation, and so on. When there’s a strong relationship, it reduces interpersonal dysregulation and intrapersonal dysregulation.
A strong relationship is critical for safety. Most importantly, the very best thing you can do to help support your teen or young adult’s safety is to facilitate a positive relationship with effective communication, so that you can trust your child’s accurate expression. In other words, if you have a strong relationship, you’ll be more able to count on your child to tell you if they are unsafe or if they need help or support. In the words of Armida Fruzzetti, “what’s going to keep them safest is if they can be 100% accurate with you.”
Hopefully I’ve convinced you that your relationship with your child is extremely important – both in and of itself, and for myriad other reasons that are extremely relevant to parenting.
So, what makes for a strong, healthy relationship?
When a relationship is going well, the good parts (and the neutral parts) outweigh the “bad” (i.e., painful) parts. There are always negatives (i.e., difficult experiences, painful emotions) in relationships. If you’re never having painful experiences in your relationship, it’s probably either a new relationship or a fairly superficial one. What matters is the ratio of positive to negative experiences. Of course, a given day may be full of painful experiences. But, on balance, a healthy relationship has more positive and neutral experiences than negative ones.
How does a healthy relationship get strained?
Negative emotions accumulate. To oversimplify a bit, over time, problems and difficulties can lead to an accumulation of negative emotions and experiences and a gradual increase in conflict. Dysregulation (from either person) can especially lead to this kind of build up. At a certain point, people begin to avoid one another (not necessarily consciously)to avoid the painful interactions.
Avoidance leads to fewer positive and neutral interactions. In the short term, avoidance provides relief from painful emotions and interactions. But, in the long-term, it takes away opportunities for positive and even neutral interactions. Ultimately, the negative interactions can’t really be avoided – parents still have to hold limits and expectations, maintain safety, etc. What you’re left with is very little in the way of positive experiences together, but a fair amount of lingering discord. The more this pattern continues, the more avoidance is reinforced, and very quickly you have a cycle of avoidance and aversive interactions.
You become an “aversive stimulus” (as Bunnies did to Little Albert). As you have more and more negative interactions and fewer and fewer positive ones, you become an “aversive stimulus,” meaning that your presence alone becomes associated with painful emotions and your child may become reactive to seeing or hearing from you – before you actually say or do anything.
Remember Little Albert, from intro psych? Little Albert was a baby (from before the time of ethical review boards) who didn’t have any obvious fears. Researchers showed him a fluffy white bunny (in some versions of the story it’s a mouse or a rat, but I was taught that it was a bunny) and every time they showed him the bunny, they played a loud noise. Babies don’t like loud noises, so Little Albert soon began to cry and show a fear response when the researchers brought in the bunny. The bunny became the conditioned (aversive) stimulus. When a relationship gets really strained, we may become an aversive stimulus to the other person, and they are likely to become one for us, as well.
The Solution: Reconditioning the Relationship
To change the balance of emotions and improve the relationship, you have to engage in a process we call “reconditioning.” The term comes from the idea that you became a conditioned aversive stimulus, so we need to recondition to give you (and the other person) a positive association.
Reconditioning is very simple in theory (and, of course, quite difficult in practice): to recondition the relationship, you need to increase the volume of neutral and positive interactions.
Reconditioning > conditioning. The good news is that because you have a history of a positive relationship (before things got strained), it’s not totally new learning. The architecture for a positive association is in your brain already, which makes it easier than starting from scratch.
Reconditioning = Opposite Action. Another way to think about reconditioning is that it is a form of “opposite action,” which is the DBT skill we use when we want to change how we feel. Opposite action refers to identifying your emotion and what it’s telling you to do (i.e., your action urge) and then doing the opposite of that. So, if feeling hurt and angry is leading you to want to avoid and yell at your child, opposite action would lead you to connect and be gentle with your child.
Pro Tips for Effective Reconditioning:
Start small. When the relationship has been strained, it can be hard to get started on having positive interactions again. Start small. Think of interactions as occurring along two dimensions:
Negative to positive: Aim for neutral interactions to start. Work up to more positive things over time. Doing work near each other (i.e., they work on homework, you work on your work) may not sound like it will be a game changer, but absolutely any non-conflictual interaction can help begin to change the balance of your relationship and the associations you have with each other.
Solitary to interactive: Focus on your own experience at first, rather than trying to involve your child. It can be tempting to try to spend lots of really fun time together, but you’re far more likely to be successful easing in. You can start by just paying attention to your child when they don’t even know you’re doing it. If they’re packing their lunch while you’re getting ready, just take a minute to notice them and your connection to them. Next, engage in some “parallel play”: do the same activity near each other, but necessarily with each other. Next, consider a structured activity that doesn’t require much casual conversation (e.g., watching a show together). Once that’s going well, you can gradually reduce the amount of structure (e.g., by going for ice cream, which typically involves a fair amount of unstructured chit chat).
Minimize Demands. Teens in general are sensitive to “demands” from their parents (really from anyone, but especially from their parents). By demands, we mean expectations, requests, tasks–anything your child has to do. Dysregulation and strained relationships can exacerbate the sensitivity to demands exponentially. To set yourself up for success, minimize demands when trying to recondition the relationship. How can you do this?
Don't ask, offer! Instead of asking your child to do something with you, invite them, with no attachment to the outcome, no pressure on them, and no expectation that they will say yes. For example, instead of asking if they want to watch a show, simply let them know that you will be watching a show and that you would love for them to join you if they want. I like to throw in a “no pressure” to really highlight that there is, in fact, no expectation that they participate. You wouldn’t believe what a difference this slight change in framing can make to your chances of getting a yes.
Do a “drive by.” If your child is sitting on the couch and you want to invite them for ice cream, approach them gently, let them know you’re going for ice cream and when you’ll be leaving, invite them to join (as above), and then get out of there as quickly as you can (e.g., go put your own shoes on). This takes the pressure off in a way that will prevent their emotions from rising and let them approachyou if they want to. If you’re not planning to go unless they want to go, you can still do this by driving by to share the idea (e.g., “I was thinking it might be fun to go for ice cream. Come find me if you want to do that. I’m free for the next hour. No pressure either way.”) If you linger, they’ll pick up that you’re expecting a response.