Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Introduction to Talking to Teens
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Andy Earle: 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.

Understanding Teen Substance Use
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Andy Earle: We're talking today about how to help our teens heal from substance use.

Often the real issues that keep teenagers locked in patterns of substance use involve emotions and being able to understand and process emotions.

Another big problem is outlook, when you can't imagine a life without drugs or alcohol that's going to be fun.

Another crucial aspect of this comes down to parents and how we get into patterns with our teenagers where we're actually enabling their use in ways that we might not even realize.

When you start to notice some of these patterns of behavior, that's when you can start to change it.

Meet Claudia Black
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Andy Earle: Our guest today is Claudia Black. She's a speaker, trainer, and author of numerous books, and her newest book is Your Recovery, Your Life for Teens.

Claudia, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Claudia Black: Thank you, Andy.

Andy Earle: Yes, I'm really excited to dive in. I've been reading through your newest book and learning all about recovery for teens, super interested to talk more about where that came from.

Claudia's Journey and Expertise
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Andy Earle: Can you just share a little bit about your journey of getting here, how you got into this field, doing this work, and what led to this book?

Claudia Black: I've been around for a very long time, but I began my work as a young social worker, working in residential treatment programs with very angry girls.

I'm a real believer in the potential for people to make change, irrespective of how severe the issues are in their life. Over the course of a 45 year career, I've always had my hands in some kind of residential work. Early in my career, I did pioneering work around children from addictive family systems.

So, a lot of my work has been in the addictions field. Approximately 10 years ago, I've been consulting for a very large program in Arizona called the Meadows, and they have such a disproportionate number of young people that they decided to separate them out and put them in another program.

For the last 10 years I've been focused on working with young people between the ages of 18 and 26 years and their family members. About two years ago, Harbinger Press came to me and asked if I would write a workbook for young people, teens and young people who are struggling with various addictions.

I've done other workbooks, but it's interesting because for people to get sober, it's hard. It's quite the process to decide that's something you want to do for yourself. It is that much more difficult when you are 15, 16, 17 years of age, or even in your early 20s.

And so I took on the task with great robust. And I don't tell people they need to stop using or drinking. I don't tell them they're addicted. What I hope to do in this particular workbook is walk people through a process so they decide that's probably going to be the best decision for them.

But with people of any age, it isn't just that, I need to stop my using or my drinking, but I also want them to be able to think life can be really good sober. Life can be really good clean. And sometimes common sense says that when you're 45, 50 years of age, it's harder to believe that when you're 14, 15, 16 years of age.

Hopefully I do get them to that point, that life can be good and it can be fun. This isn't a doomsday prospect to think, I'm 15 or 16 and I'm not going to use again. It was a fun book to do.

Andy Earle: Okay, that's good to hear. It's called Your Recovery, Your Life for Teens. Almost every page has exercises to do.

There's information about how your brain works, how emotions work, and all kinds of things. But there also really, really leads you through a series of exercises to do and, get yourself thinking. How did you come up with all these?

Claudia Black: Well, I have a lot of hands on and I'm in group almost every week with young people, not just teenagers, but people in their young 20s as well.

The Importance of Emotional Literacy
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Claudia Black: One of the things that I'm impacted by when you work with this age group is how much shame they have for their behavior. And in that shame, how much they also don't want to be forthcoming because they don't want to disappoint their parents.

I think sometimes parents are astounded when I say that because it doesn't even look like they're thinking about their parents because they're so busy thinking about their peers and people their own age. But when it comes to being really honest about the things they're vulnerable about, that's where they have a lot of shame and fears that they're going to let down the people they care about the most, and that's their parents. One of the things I tried to do in the book is help them see that they made some decisions, and they're continuing to make some very poor decisions for themselves.

But they've got a lot of strengths. We're going to use those strengths to help them find a different way to be in this world and feel good about themselves. Because it isn't enough to just let go of something that's become, in many ways, a crutch.

In many ways an answer. For so many of these young people, using alcohol and drugs is an answer to a sense of belonging with their friends, feeling like they're accepted. It could be an answer to the pain, anesthetizing a lot of pain as a consequence of things that have happened in their life.

So as I said, in many cases it's been an answer, it's been a solution, but at the point people are addicted, it's no longer working for them and I want them to realize that there's other answers and they often have those answers within themselves. It's fascinating to me.

I think what's really important is, if they get into trouble in an area of their life, they try and handle it by themselves. They don't want to tell other people, they're embarrassed, they may be humiliated. So we try and handle it by ourselves.

But with addiction, the number one thing that my young people say to me, both males and females, about the most important part of therapy and treatment is their sense of community. Meeting other young people who are struggling with the same issues and would like to live their life differently. They're all starting at the same time to believe we can live our life differently and it's the power of that community that allows them to take those steps forward.

Andy Earle: Something that I noticed in going through your book is, surprisingly, a lot of the exercises and the material in here isn't directly related to drugs and alcohol, it's related to actually all kinds of other stuff that might be going in your life. So talk to me about that, because I'm opening the book expecting maybe all kinds of exercises about how to control your cravings or identify your triggers and eliminate people who are getting you to use.

It's not really like that. So what's going on?

Claudia Black: When I get toward the end of the book, we talk about various triggers and warning signs and putting time management around recovery practices. I did that really at the end of the book. As an author, and I also do a lot of speaking, flow is really important to me.

If you do that up front, it's a cognitive exercise. It's sort of a brainy kind of exercise. And so what I'm really trying to appeal to is one's inner self. Their emotional self. Because I think that's often what's getting in the way of their ability to get clean and to think that they could have a life if they are clean and sober.

I have one whole chapter that has to do with getting to know your emotional self. Really trying to help build some emotional literacy. A part of recovery is learning how to tolerate your feelings without the need to medicate or engage in self defeating behaviors.

And the kids I work with, they're scared silly. They're scared of their fear. They have a lot of embarrassment. They've had a lot of sadnesses. They don't know what to do with their anger. The only joy they experience is sometimes when they're under the influence. So I really want them to explore that relationship with that emotional self and also connect it to the role that alcohol or drugs is playing in their life.

And then you're going to see at the end of every chapter, various tips, as to, in this case, how to be present with those feelings without engaging in some kind of self harm. But I also have another chapter. It's one of my favorite ones.

Exploring Values and Recovery
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Claudia Black: It has to do with values. I don't care if you're 12 or 85 years of age, usually by the time we're young teenagers, we have a sense of knowing what our values are.

And so I have a chapter for most of the exercises on recognizing what you value, what's important to you in your life. Is it honesty? Friendship? Having a good time? Respect? And then walk through, and what's that relationship with alcohol and drugs? Because at this point, we're no longer living with our, in our values.

We're living outside of our value system. And that, those exercises in terms of looking at values is to recognize that I do place value in qualities that are important to me, but I'm not engaging in them anymore because the alcohol and drugs is interfering with that. And then it isn't about just insight because insight alone isn't enough.

It's about then how do I behave in a way that honors what I'm saying I value. And those are recovery steps. And one of the exercises I have toward the end of the book is, Am I abstaining or am I in recovery? And abstaining is avoiding every possibility that could present itself in terms of using alcohol or drugs, but not having this emotional literacy, not feeling good about what your values are, and not attending to promoting that as a part of your life.

Recovery includes accountability for self. And if I am abstinent, I'm probably still not being accountable for my stuff. I'm probably still blaming other people, seeing only the negative in life. All of these exercises ultimately lead to steps that aid somebody in recovery practice so they don't just end up in an abstinent place.

You can only stay abstinent so long and you're probably going to relapse. Now, abstinence is an important part of recovery. You know, it's the initial step to recovery, typically. But, if I don't have all this other emotional and mental health learning going on, then I won't stay clean and sober.

As I said, we want recovery to be exciting. I want someone to be able to live a clean and sober life and feel good about themselves, and there's no reason that can't happen.

Andy Earle: That's powerful.

Claudia Black: Even when you're 15. It's possible. I sat in a group the other day and there was a young man and he was 23 and we were reading something that another man had written in a book and the other man at the end said something about being 9 years sober and that man got sober at 18 years of age.

The young man in my group wistfully said, Boy, I would like to be nine years sober. I meet people all the time who got sober at sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty two. We can get sober at any age. We can get sober at fifteen. It's just harder for us if we're 15 or 16, because we feel like we're giving up so much.

"What am I going to do on my 21st birthday?" Is what so many of them say to me, and "isn't this a rite of passage?" It doesn't have to be the rite of passage. Once you're into recovery, you will find things to do on your 21st birthday to celebrate yourself, but you don't have to self sabotage.

Andy Earle: Kind of all these ideas we have about what we need to be doing or what we're supposed to be doing and these visions that we make up for our life, or kind of how we see ourselves doing in a year and two years and five years. And hard to even picture a life without substances.

Claudia Black: Andy, one of the difficulties we have too is even with parents. Sometimes it's really hard for parents, and not necessarily collectively, both of them, but one or the other of them, to think, you know, my son is only 17 years of age. I just don't want him to drink as much. I don't want him to use these other drugs, but it's okay if he drinks.

Okay, life's going to be better if he abstains for a little while, but, we're going to go on this vacation so I don't see what the problem is going to be because after all, they're fruity cocktails that we're going to have. What I'm really saying here is this recovery can get sabotaged by parents thinking that they're depriving their kids of some opportunity by saying you could have a clean and sober life.

And so we needed some attitude adjustment there as well. Sometimes it's about meeting other people who have a clean and sober life and they're not deprived. I mean, some people's lives are so narrow, we only know people who are using. And even the parents, only know people who are using. Again, the message is your kids aren't being deprived if this is a decision that can be made for them that betters their life.

You need to take a look at is their own modeling of behavior. Is every vacation a drinking vacation? Are you sitting in the ski lodge drinking versus out there on the hill? Now, what does that say to your son and to your daughter?

We can apply that to a lot of different issues. We can apply that to screens. If I'm sitting here on my screen all day, and then wanting to tell my daughter or son, they're not getting their homework done, they're not going to listen to me as readily.

Andy Earle: Yeah, or vice versa. If you're working all the time and you're trying to tell your kid to relax and not be so, anxious about their schoolwork or something, right?

Yeah, we don't like that. This is about the kids.

Claudia Black: The other thing we sometimes don't recognize is the traumatic stress that kids experience throughout their lives and the impact that has. I talk about that in the book. I think of this book as a trauma informed book. But I actually am into the fourth chapter before I talk about it, because I want them to be hooked.

I want them to say, okay, I'm getting something out of this book to keep reading.

The Role of Secrets in Addiction
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Claudia Black: One of the things I talk about are secrets. Every young person I work with, and I think everybody who's pretty much addicted to alcohol or other drugs, by the time they reach out for help, they've got secrets.

And usually those secrets are shame based. What I mean by shame based is a secret in which I feel horrible about myself. I feel like there's something wrong with me. Who I am is not good enough as a consequence of something that has happened to me or that I have been engaged in. We always say that recovery is about honesty.

There's another saying that we are only as sick as our secrets. Ultimately we want people to be able to disclose what those shame based secrets are about. Sometimes it's simply beliefs that I have about myself. You know, that I'm not okay. That I'm not good enough for my mother.

I'm not good enough for my father. Or I'm not lovable. Often with kids, the secrets could have to do with being severely bullied at school and your parents have no idea, how you're experiencing that. Maybe the secrets have to do with something that happened when you were under the influence.

Maybe it was sexual in nature, and you've not told anybody and it's something that you would not have had happen, had you've been not using. Secrets could, sometimes they're criminal in nature, sometimes they're financial in nature. And some of these secrets have to do with things that you've lied about.

Maybe you stole from your grandmother's medicine cabinet. Maybe you stole from a brother or sister. And then sometimes the secrets are even more impactful. Maybe you're the one who gave your brother the drugs when he overdosed that night. That kind of shame and guilt and holding it in will keep people from being able to have a recovery process. So a part of my message is helping people look at, what are your secrets?

And I actually say in the book, you do not have to write them down. But what I want to do is bring them into their consciousness. And then I talk about secrets in terms of the price we pay for having secrets, the gift that can come as we ultimately discern who we can share that with.

And discernment is really important. There are certain people with which I can share that part of my life, and there's other people that I'm not going to share that part of my life with. When I get into what I call those kinds of really heavy things in this book, I also say, there's a letter to the parents at the beginning of the book, and then there's a letter to the young person who's doing the book, and that this book isn't necessarily to be shared with parents.

In the beginning, you're going to want to share it probably with somebody else in recovery, or oftentimes it's a counselor or a therapist. And I say that because if we said, you're supposed to do this book and share it with your parents, you're not going to do it because, we don't want to disappoint our parents. We feel like that's what's going to happen. We're going to feel too exposed. Too vulnerable. It's just going to tap into our shame, which is the real reason.

And then the other is sometimes parents don't know what to do with that. They may respond in ways that are even more hurtful. I think parents do want to be there for their kids. I have absolutely no doubt about that. Parents want to be there for their kids. And many of them have been there for their kids.

This is a treacherous path to walk in terms of some of this disclosure.

Andy Earle: I felt that same way reading through a lot of the book that part of what's so valuable about doing these exercises and why this isn't something you could do as a parent with your kid or ask them these questions and try to, you know, talk through this stuff with them.

Because part of this is the idea that this is something you're doing for yourself, that your parents are not going to see. You feel like you can be really honest and go really deep that you're not going to be judged that, you're not going to be sort of, letting anybody down by exposing some of these things we're going through in the book.

That does seem really important.

Parental Support and Involvement
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Andy Earle: So that makes me wonder what can you do as a parent, if you're not going to be doing these kind of exercises with your teenager, what kind of conversations can you have or things can you do that would be supporting this?

Claudia Black: One is you need to support them getting help. And not buy into that they can handle this by themselves. As a parent, you need to use your leverage. I always say you need to be the parent. Not their best friend. Some of what you do may not seem very loving to them, but is coming from a place of love and coming from good parenting.

So, you do what you can to get them help and the appropriate help, somebody that truly understands addiction and working with people. You're going to follow the guidance of whoever it is that they're working with. You need to be willing to be involved in whatever kind of family program the therapist, counselor, or treatment program is offering.

I get a lot of parents who just want their kid to be fixed, but they're too busy. Or we're supposed to tell them what to do and say, versus for them to come and really participate. In the treatment process parents need a lot of education. Do whatever reading you can about addiction, so that you understand it isn't just an issue of willpower and self control.

Understand that a lot of your kid's behavior has to do with what's happening in their brain. As a teenager, they already lack judgment. They're not going to have impulse control. They're not as apt to see consequences to their behavior.

And they've got so much dopamine running around in that brain. But they're just looking for ways in which to build it all of the time. Then you put alcohol on top of that. You're even less apt to use that part of the brain in which you could reason, think through, possibly see consequences.

So, you know, we need to have some education. They can be a little bit more empathetic to what's happened to that child versus just angry. Parents have a lot of reasons to be angry. Kids have been lying, cheating, et cetera, oftentimes, and they'll look you right in the face and just lie right through their teeth.

So, the value of parents getting help for themselves is you know, the opportunity to talk about their anger, their guilt, and thinking that they caused this. We need them to talk about their fears, and their greatest fear is that my child's going to die, and sometimes there's already been somebody in the family who has died, so sometimes that's a very valid fear.

So one, the parents need support. So you need to be willing to get help for yourself. And the conversation isn't always about your son or your daughter, but it's for yourself.

Conclusion and Resources
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Andy Earle: Claudia, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing all this with us. It's been really fascinating and, really deep. You're doing some amazing work here.

Claudia Black: Thank you.

Andy Earle: Can you talk about where people can go to find out more about what you do, what you're up to, find your other books?

Claudia Black: This book is by Harbinger Press, and you can find it on Amazon. It's called Your Recovery, Your Life for Teens, but know that while it says for teens, it's also for young adults, and applicable for people up until about 25 years of age. Most of my other books are also on Amazon, Claudia Black, the author, not the sci fi actress. I get letters thinking I'm the Australian sci fi actress. I do have a website, claudiablack. com, and I oversee the Claudia Black Young Adult Center at the Meadows in Arizona. So the Claudia Black Young Adult Center or claudiablack. com or Amazon. If you struggle with finding me, put Claudia Black author in Google.

Andy Earle: We are so grateful to you for taking the time to be here and, excited to get this out and share what you're doing with more people.

Claudia Black: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Preview of the Next Episode
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Andy Earle: We're here today with Claudia Black, talking about how teens can heal from substance use, and we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Claudia Black: Parents need to be aligned. If there are two or more parents involved in this child's life, the parents need to be aligned in a healthy way, other than one parent is going to totally disrupt the other parent who is attempting to do some healthy things. You're feeding the disease, feeding the addiction by your enabling. You're really acting from a place of love as you set limits.

And that's the best parenting, not best friend. When a young person gets help and finds recovery, they have just given their family the greatest gift. And it often stops generational patterns that have been self defeating. When the whole family gets involved, it often stops a lot of generational patterns. Love is unconditional, but the relationship has conditions.

If I get in touch with the depth of my sadness, I feel like I'll fall onto the floor and curl up in a fetal position and never get up.

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