Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy Earle
Hey, it's Andy from talking to teens, it would mean the world to us. If you could leave us a five star review. reviews on Apple and Spotify help other parents find the show. And that helps us keep the lights on. Thanks for being a listener.

And here's the show. You're listening to talking to teens where we speak with leading experts from a variety of disciplines about the art and science of parenting teenagers.

I'm your host, Andy Earle. We're here today with Tanith Carey, talking about feeling blasts, does your teenager ever seem to get into moods where everything is just kind of man, things are okay, it's fine. It's no big deal. Well, that might seem like a normal state for teenagers. But it also might be related to a condition known as Anhedonia. Anhedonia is a real thing that psychologists have been investigating. And it's what happens when the joy kind of gets sucked out of life. Unfortunately, as Tanach carry has found Anhedonia is becoming much more prevalent among teenagers today. This can make things really difficult for parents who just want our teenagers to be happy. It turns out that what we need to do as parents is actually teach our teens the skills that they need to be happy. This is especially difficult when we have teenagers who are avoidant, or who don't want our help. And Anhedonia can make this a lot more common. When things get really bad. It might seem like your teenager is struggling with some kind of a deep existential crisis. If you're in this situation, and you're looking for the right words to cheer your teenager up, the answer might not be about what to say. But really what to do as a parent to help your teenager learn the skills to manage their own emotional state. The key comes in understanding the three phases of the reward system. We're going to talk about all of that, and a whole lot more on today's episode with Tanith Carey, the author of the new book, feeling black. Tanith Carey is a writer who has written third teen books on psychology, mental health, adolescents, and many other exciting topics. And her works have been translated into 35 different languages. Her articles on health and psychology appear in media outlets around the world. And this is her second time coming on the talking to teens podcast, really excited to speak with tanot about all that and a whole lot more. Tanith, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

We have the book feeling blah, pretty excited to talk about that. We got a pretty JAM PACKED episode today. So I'm really excited. Thanks for coming on the show.

Tanith Carey
No problem. Good to be here.

Andy Earle
And and you bet on this show before this is a repeat you had a whole book about teenagers, as I recall, are on adolescents and adolescent psychology. And it was really beautifully illustrated. We have a whole previous episode. If you haven't checked that out. Check it out. Do it. Now. We are talking about your new book, which is healing black. So Wow. What a what a topic.

Tanith Carey
Time to bring into our mental health conversation.

Andy Earle
Well, I that is really interesting, because we talk a lot about teenagers on this podcast. I think a lot of what you talk about in the book is stuff that parents complain about their teenagers a lot that she you know, yeah. Yeah, school is okay. Yes. Okay. Yes. All right. I guess practice was fine. was cool. I don't know, whatever. And then just kind of this sort of everything is kind of okay. Sort of. I don't know, that's a lot of what you write about in this book, feeling the law? What what does that even mean? Or what does it mean to feel black? Right.

Tanith Carey
So, yeah, the book you're right. It's called feeling blah. And it's why Anhedonia has left you joyless, and how to recapture like, Fi. So in this context, feeling blah, blah, is about anhedonia, which is a state of loss of enjoyment and things you used to enjoy, and also a lack of motivation. So you can get very stuck in Anhedonia. And the reason I wrote this book was that I was amazed as a lot like the clinicians know about Anhedonia and it's well known as a symptom or major depression. But what there's more and more research that says that actually, you can have standalone Anhedonia Yeah, it's

Andy Earle
it's all alone thing. It's not just kind of a symptom of depression, but you can not be depressed, but still feel blessed. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, yeah, we know a lot of teenagers who seem to be feeling that way.

Tanith Carey
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a great shame across the first world, we're in a mental health freefall. And as only a blog can be a precursor to depression, and a waiting room in a purgatory, I think in relation to parenting. So see, that's what I also wrote about, I think it's really important that we show our teenagers how to flourish, and not to languish. Because I think what might be happening, there's many factors in the fact that teenagers don't seem to be as happy as they used to be. And that's been happening, really concurrent generation since the 50s. There are many factors, but one of the ones I'm going to talk about is the education system. You know, I think I think as a parent, you know, you have a child, and then they come into the world, and they're joyful, and there's a novelty and there's excitement. And there's something there is something about growing up, obviously. But I think that the joy is being squeezed out by young people bought too early. And some of that is the fact they are squeezed through pressure Cookie, cookie cutter education systems. Instead of seeing Orbeez as an expression of talent or interest. They're seen as extra curricular activities to do for college applicants

Andy Earle
zip your resume, as soon as you can apply to colleges, right. I thought that was the whole point of hobbies. Really? It's something Oh, well, that's another line item to put on there.

Tanith Carey
Yeah, but I wonder if we also our grandparents, you know, they probably have just more booze, you know?

Andy Earle
Can we just do things because we enjoy them? Can we have fun? No, no, no, no, really interesting topic that you have here. It because I just think that what you're writing about this feeling of Anhedonia that's really becoming more and more prevalent in the workplace, I think is also becoming really, really prevalent among teenagers. And we just hear this over and over from parents that their teens are just kind of whatever. It's okay. Don't care, I think, yeah, really, what you're, what you're hitting on here, is just just growing it more and more people kind of are experiencing. And it's interesting, you go into kind of the evolutionary history of Anhedonia. And why where maybe it comes from in terms of our psychology. Yeah,

Tanith Carey
absolutely. And I also talked about the neuroscience as well. And I'm looking exactly at that point, why are we feeling more blah? What is it about modern life, which means that we are finding it hard to stay in joy? And yeah, just enjoy it. All. Right. And I think it's a really, I think what I wanted to do is book and add some more nuance to our mental health discussion, because we talk a lot about depression and despair at one end. And we talk about this kind of unicorn state of joy and happiness at the other. But what about the middle, the middle gray area where a lot

Andy Earle
of VR is saying I'll see you day to day life.

Tanith Carey
So you know, they say, you know, less, you know, the word for it, it's more difficult to fix it, you know, name entertainment. So Anhedonia is a word that I just wanted to bring out into more into the public discourse, because, you know, when I discovered it, I was genuinely surprised. I was like, Oh, my God, there's like, so many 1000s of research papers on this, how come? I never heard about this? Because obviously, I, you know, I recognized I was in a state of law. And I think when you're under state law, like maybe as our teenagers are, they don't think it's something that you can do anything about. They just think it's a state of being. And I think that's a great shame. Because what we need in the world is people who are flourishing, who are making most of their potential. When people are in law, their focus tends to narrow when they come out of all that starts to widen. It's a lot of his works been done by Professor Barbara Fredrickson.

Andy Earle
Yeah, once you start to feel more positive emotions, you your whole mindset expands, and you start to see possibilities where there weren't possibilities before and start to make connections where you didn't see connections before. There's so much so much positive that happens when you start to feel more positive about what's going on in your life. I just think, really, yeah, a lot of what you're talking about is so endemic of the teenage years. And really, a lot of it is the fact that as teenagers, we're kind of kind of forced to do things that necessarily things we chose for ourselves or things that we want to study, or learn about or are interested in. It's just kind of put on our plate or handed to us. I don't know, especially after reading your book, I really feel like that. That's a big problems.

Tanith Carey
I mean, what I talked about in the book is also the concept of Spark. And that is the idea that every young person has an innate talent or something they're drawn to and they would do anyway without we're not getting involved. And you can see it in childhood, you know, the way kids play or the way they relate to their friends and stuff like that. And I just think the concept of Spark, again, it was actually a concepts have developed in America, but seems somehow to have been lost is that I think we need to introduce this back to our adolescents and our teenagers and just like, is it communicating with others? And his? Is it being a good listener? Is it being able to grow plants? Is it being great with animals? Is it being good with music? Is it everybody has one and that sounds a bit pines guy, but actually, if you think about it, you have one, I have one, and I, like, I think we need to give our adolescents permission to look inside themselves, do some interception and just go, Okay, what's yours? How'd you learn to develop it, even if it doesn't turn into a career, it will give them joy and fulfillment? Creativity, I think what I'm trying to say with this book is that the elephant in the room here is that we are facing a very uncertain future on this planet, in

Andy Earle
that we think it's normal, or we think it's okay, or acceptable to sort of not be that excited about what we're doing. Yeah,

Tanith Carey
absolutely. Yeah. And I think that what we need, like we have large challenges to face, we need motivated, flourishing young people who understand the pressure that modern life is having on our brain chemistry, and to understand some neuroscience and know that they are not stuck here. I think what I really enjoyed about the book was talking to some of America's top neurosciences about the new neuroscience of joy. Because if you ask the average young person, like, you know, they will, they'll say they want to be happy. But like, if you say to the average person, how do you what how is happiness formed in the brain? They don't know most grownups don't know either.

Andy Earle
What I think is interesting, because what I find is, when you ask parents, what do you what, what are your goals? What do you want for your child? By large? The most common thing they say is I want them to be happy, or be happy. But yet, what does that actually look like? neurological level,

Tanith Carey
kids happy, and the kids don't know how to make themselves happy, because they don't understand, like the work of the reward circuit, they didn't understand, in fact, that joy is not just one thing, it comes in three parts. And this was a wonderful thing that I heard from Professor Ken Berridge, who was really helpful to me on that in that brand chapter is like, you know, Joy is the anticipation. So the build of dope the building up of dopamine, it's the enjoyment in the moment, so then you get the release of that dopamine and some opiates and all the rest of it. And then after that, there is also the third stage, which is remembering that event, or what made you happy, so you want to do it again. So it's just a simple, like, some more understanding, oh, I want I want to be happy, but like, what makes you happy, what is gonna go on in your brain, that's gonna actually give you that experience. Because the fact is for like, adolescents, like Life is stressful, a lot of pressure, they have a lot of cortisol raising in their brains, they have to get this mark that mark, they have to achieve, they have to look good, they have to keep up on social media, they are overloaded with cortisol, you know, there are no psychological kind of issues which don't have raised cortisol implicated in them in some way. So we need to accept that modern life is difficult. And to give them the tools and the understanding to push back. And their entire lives. I think now is the right moment, like adolescence is a great time to kind of get these ideas in place. It

Andy Earle
totally is. It's such a time of kind of, like you're starting to gain perspective. And we talked about metacognition, this, this opening up of the prefrontal cortex and starting to understand to think about the way that you're thinking or to understand your own kind of problem solving abilities and see that hey, while I tend to kind of approach problems in this way, or in that way, and while that may be a little limited.

Tanith Carey
A good point about Mexico mission. Yeah, absolutely. The just the right time to introduce it. Yeah. Because it is you have a lot of people entering the workplace, and then people who I get reactions from the book, and it's not just the older people who've been in the workplace a while it's young people who get there and go, Oh, I'm really burnt out. I'm really the point first. So no wonder we have the great resignation. They wonder we have people like whistling on Tik Tok, because this stuff they've been told all their lives, you know, from this age, who you've got I had into this college, you have to wait for this grade, they get there, and they're just put into more competition and more pressure. And they just don't want any part of it. You know, so I think that we need to, we need young people who can think in a bigger way about what successes and what happiness is.

Andy Earle
We need to teach young people the skills to be happy. We think of happiness as this, this thing that hopefully you just kind of magically happens to you, if things are going well in your life, you'll be happy at your friends and us. But there is actually research on what what does it take, psychologically? What is what does it look like to be content with your life versus not to be content with your life? And we actually have some information about what that looks like.

Tanith Carey
Yep, absolutely. So the great thing is we know more about the workings of the brain at any point, at any point in history. So although Where Are We Living in more challenging, that

Andy Earle
pressure is on, you have no excuse not to be happy and propelled and excited about every day?

Tanith Carey
I'm gonna say like that. But like, you know, we can see joy being formed in the brain. So it's time to harness that knowledge and use it to push back because otherwise, are we going to continue in this mental health health three full day, it's time for a pivot, quite a radical pill that I think definitely.

Andy Earle
So what do you think that parents need to teach our teenagers? Or what do we need to change in the conversation with teenagers to really get them thinking about what what it is in our life that makes them happy, and how they can pursue that

Tanith Carey
in other first thing I would like parents to spend more time with is encouraging young people how to notice how they feel and not telling them how they feel, because it's only when we notice that we don't feel good, or why or we have some self awareness that we can actually do some steps. And I think parents need to be prepared to listen to uncomfortable emotions, sit with their kids, and just let them process. And I think that they need to give their kids a stronger emotional vocabulary. I know I think this is more challenging in boys than girls. You can you can speak. So sometimes I speak to adolescent boys, and they just simply don't have the words to describe how they feel. Last week, they had that interception that noticing of what makes them feel bad, how are they going to know what's going to make them feel good. So that's what I'd like, like to start with from parents. And then I would like them to bring a kind of growth mindset to happiness, you're having a bad day. It's kind of a cliche now, but like this feeling will pass like the clouds or this anger will settle like the glitter in a glitter dome. So you're actually giving a really good examples for parents about teaching their children how to manage their emotions. Because otherwise, what I think young people think it's all out of their control, and they can't do anything. And they think deeper. And I think it's just like giving them some sense and understanding of how their brain works, how their happiness, chemicals work. Obviously, the brain is a highly complex organ. And there's a lot we know, but like just some basic 100 Like what the main comm chemicals are, what the stress hormones are, what can affect it, for example, you can bring all sorts of stuff in so it's difficult talking to adolescents about diet, but maybe a value in your home that what what you eat is also feel good. You know, having a rainbow food also helps you produce serotonin in the gut. I know it's a bit of a cliche, but like exercise, like oh, don't we all know, we're supposed to exercise but like, you know, we now know that exercise is better than antidepressants, changing mood, and that's just incredible, isn't it? You know, all that kind of stuff. So I think that was it. I think we have baptize children and to like, you know, because I've also written about competitive parenting, and it's not actually the best, it's not the parents fault, the school system and educational league tables, globally, locally, you know, we've all been caught up in this massive machinery that's supposed to solve success, but, you know, the, our kids are not successful because they are struggling so much. I'm not sure how your stats are on the US but like in, in, in, in the UK, you know, it's not like something like one in six or one in eight children over 14 has some kind of, you know, mental health challenge. We have to kind of turn this around in a big picture way. So the book is really about more than Anhedonia it's more about facing up to the challenges and you know, also an example a we set us apart Why was to come out what example am I saying to my two children if I can't enjoy life, so we also had to overcome our own blog, so that we show that life is worth living, how to enjoy it set a good example make time for our hobbies, our self care. Yeah, like time was when we can be together, you know, so, yeah. reprioritize and I think is really important.

Andy Earle
And it feels like that really just all it all goes together just as parents were so concerned with trying to get our teens talking, and your parents so often, you know, how do I my team just says, Hey, my day was was fine. Good. Yeah.

Tanith Carey
Isn't it because it's that communication issue between the parents Do is the team, I'm just suggesting throwing out that all day just closing that conversation down because they don't want to throw anything outside there in case they're criticized. I think that sometimes, you know, obviously, we as a generation of parents, we tend to be intensely worried about our children. So we are watching and guiding, but like to the sensitive ears of a teen, they, they hear it as criticism. So you know that

Andy Earle
whenever I throw anything out, it's going to come back at me something I did wrong, so maybe I just shouldn't even just say anything. Yeah, just Yeah, it's fine. It's okay. It's whatever, it's not a big deal. Don't worry about it. I think that's so true. Yeah, obviously, if that's what we're getting from our teenager, it was okay, it was fine. So, whatever, then we've, we've trained them somehow, in some way to respond that way. We asked them, how was it? Or whatever? The The answer is not that your teenager is crazy, or that they're just not communicative. But I hear this from a lot of parents, you know, so it's something about the way that we're, we're conditioning them to not respond with a lot of words or to be really to just say, it was okay. I think that's, I think I think teenagers are really smart and savvy. I think that that, if that's the response you're getting from your team, then probably they've realized, that's the best way to respond. Low ask me, how was your day or whatever?

Tanith Carey
What did I narrow the target for? Like, comment or criticism? Why don't I just not get?

Andy Earle
Yeah, that's okay. That's fine. Given

Tanith Carey
as a something they could improve, also, like, if your kid comes home from school, they'd like being in a classroom with, I don't know, 2030 people they didn't choose, they've been more what to do by adults all day. It's just like, when you come home, from a long day at work, you don't want to be downloading what happened, because also, your parents wouldn't necessarily understand what the dynamics of your school life are like. So, you know, it's always start thing, as soon as kids as kids come home, don't instantly ask them what happens. You know,

Andy Earle
I also feel that that's a gendered thing. And I don't know, I don't know why it is, but it's always moms that I get that are saying, Hey, I can't get my team to talk to me, I can't get my team to open up to me. At the end of the day, I just want them to tell me what's happening. It's never dads, that dads are never like, hey, how do I get my team to talk to me and open up but but also think is because that, like, there's a gendered sort of way that we deal with stress? Where, where females are more conditioned to verbalize and talk about things that are happening, whereas males are more conditioned to internalize and not talk about? What's what we're struggling with? Or what's going on?

Tanith Carey
I also think it does instinctively know that just being together like, yeah, it's

Andy Earle
not that big a deal. Just yeah, just kind of just hanging out. And just saying, hey, hey, what's up? Hey, how's it? How's it going? Is it not? Sometimes it's all you got to do? Really, just, it was happening?

Tanith Carey
By me, let me go, let's play video game, let's go out into the garden and play with a dog, you know, go

Andy Earle
for a walk or and go do a thing or a roll of cigarette, you want to go Yeah, I'm gonna go for a walk and just you want to talk or whatever. It's not. It's not like that big a deal. But also there's not, there's not that much pressure or something. And, and I think that that's so important for parents is if you want your teenagers to talk to you about these blah, kind of feelings they're having or just kind of feeling in about life, there has to be a feeling that they can share that. And they can talk to you about that in that. You know, I don't know you're not going to necessarily pounce on it or make it into a big deal or something like that. It's just Yeah, okay. Yeah, sounds good. Yeah, let's feel feel like that. And you know, it. Let's keep talking about it. Let's keep checking in on it.

Tanith Carey
The last point, because I mean, I think that people don't speak about Anhedonia blah, because they think, Oh, they don't feel entitled to they felt not depressed, I'm functioning. I'm going to school. Well, I'm not not in my bed curled up in a ball crying I'm getting. I

Andy Earle
noticed that in your book a lot. It's on the way to depression, but it's not depression yet. So okay, so this isn't this isn't depression. Yeah. So what's so it's not that big a deal. Maybe it's easy to kind of sweep it under the carpet or something as as not that big a deal? Because, you know, we have we have terms for the more advanced stages of this. It's not there yet. Oh, yeah. I

Tanith Carey
mean, like some some people said, Oh, I'm pathologizing it I'm not pathologize it because the word is already out there. I bring it out into the open because I think that if we are living I don't think we should be accepting blocks as the status quo, as many of us do. Humans should be accepting it as the status quo, like what 15 1617 year old kids are like going oh, this is my life like no No, yeah,

Andy Earle
that's not what life is. Yeah, but but I think it's so easy. It's you get so normalized, and modern culture. And you talk a lot about all of the psychology behind that how technology is driving some of those feelings or ideas, but it seems like we really get this feeling like Yeah, so what? Yeah, okay. Yeah, you're not that excited about life. So what nobody is, you know, you're, you're gonna deal with it, not a big deal.

Tanith Carey
I really don't think blah, should become the new norm. But if you look at the stats, such that there are you can see that, you know, languishing, is, you know, as defined by Corey keys, he started doing some research this on the 2000s. And he saw it double, he saw the state of language shift, and I think I'll check that figure figures, but like, go from 12% in 2000. And, you know, by two decades later, it was up to 21%. Wow. Yeah. And it's even greater in the workplace. But obviously, the maybe the questioning was slightly different. But you know, when you look at that, there are some statistics that go like, you know, it's across the generations. So what there's one set of data I quote, in the book, it's got Millennials 30%, languishing, Gen Z 26%, Gen X 21%, of baby boomers at Blue, the nice 14%. But it started, I think, you know, I think you could understand blurred a little bit in the context of like, middle age where there are hormonal shifts, which where estrogen is affecting your dopamine and, or like testosterone is falling, and that's also affecting your happiness, chemicals, but I don't really feel that we should be accepting this and like, the adolescent years, because otherwise the kids are not like they are not in a good they're not they're not starting off life in a strong position. We have to have a next generation who's there to be so creative, so full of possibility, and you know, so full of hope, who really need some hope.

Andy Earle
We're here with TANF Carrie, talking about what to do when your teenager seems to have lost their joy for life. What can we do as parents when we have a teenager who may not be depressed, but they're definitely not happy and excited about life? This is a condition known as Anhedonia. And we've got the answers. On the back half of this episode, take a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Tanith Carey
Well, I mean, the Greeks got it right. Didn't they so long ago by saying that true happiness comes from a life of meaning, and you can have fun, but it can be frivolous, but like you know that all the good we feel today can be the happiness you feel tomorrow, oh, good, good you do, maybe we need to remind our kids that doing stuff for other people is not in a selfish way. But it's one of the best ways to make yourself feel good. If we accept that the brain is not a happiness machine, in that at least that gives us a more realistic baseline to work with the knowledge of how happiness works will mean that we can at least meet it, we can basically catch up with what modern life is doing to our brain, because at the moment, there's a big lag. And that's why so many of us are pressed. So we need to close that gap is what I'm saying. We tend to think that dopamine is the molecule of reward, but actually it's the molecule of anticipation, this patient basically dopamine is there not to make you happy it's there to make you get up and get your survival needs met. The brain is not a pleasure. The generator it was never supposed to be a pleasure generator is a survival machine. Compared to other primates. We have more dopamine circulating in our brains, and that is impossibly what made us the most successful species.

Andy Earle
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