28 Sep Help for teenagers with signs of depression

Is your adolescent showing signs of depression or dysregulation?

Have you noticed a change in your adolescent child that is causing you to worry or perhaps make you think something is “not quite right?”.  Is your young person increasingly becoming withdrawn; perhaps activities that they used to enjoy no longer bring them joy? They’ve stopped their hobbies/ sports activities or whatever it was that they used to enjoy, and now it feels like they are a bit empty or lost? It’s important to remember that teenagers withdraw, spend time in their rooms, away from the family, but if you are concerned about their behaviour over time, it might be time to get some help for them.

Depression, problems with self-regulation and self-harm are, unfortunately, factors in adolescent development. You’ve got to remember that the adolescent brain is constantly taking in new information, maturing and preparing itself for adult life. This means adolescents often have to let go of beliefs they once held about themselves, or face realities that may be uncomfortable to bear. This unfamiliar discomfort can leave young people feeling distressed, and really — that’s what the therapy is about: helping them through that process.

It’s quite normal for teenagers to revert into themselves at this time, but it becomes a problem if the adolescent during the teen years. I recently did a three day training at Anna Freud in London, a training geared towards arming the therapist with really useful tools to bring which are proven to tackle feelings of depression, dysregulation and harmful behaviour- that’s where mentalizing can help.

What is mentalizing and how can it help my child?

MBT-A (mentalizing Based Therapy – Adolescent) essentially tackles the adolescent’s ability to think (or mentalise) themselves and others, particularly when they are in a heightened state of stress or dysregulation. When the therapist works on these skills with the young person, they become more grounded in themselves and the reality around them: thoughts go from: “everyone hates me, I don’t want to be here”, to a more manageable “I have fallen out with this person, it might not be the disaster my mind thinks it is, and how do I get my thinking back on track?”

MBT helps the troubled teenager to unpick a common thought that young people carry around with themselves (and adults too), and that is the notion of an “Alien Self”. Many young people I work with therapeutically have a destructive narrative that they believe to be true: they think they are somehow stupid, not good enough, always getting things wrong, or that nobody likes them. Adolescents over-identify with that narrative; it becomes a (shadow) part of themselves — an alien self — that isn’t an accurate account of who they are. MBT offers a way of debunking this unhelpful belief in a therapeutic setting, and the risk of self harm, suicide ideation and thinking about themselves as worthless can be lessoned, and a more happier life can become envisioned.  

If a young person you know is struggling with self-harm, cutting or depression that feels unmanageable, contact me for in-person sessions in Enfield or Hackney, or online sessions via Zoom, and see how I can help