Q&A: Psychologist John Walker on dealing with teen anxiety

Is it normal teen angst or real anxiety?

How do parents and caregivers break down barriers to having honest conversations with kids and help them build resilience?

Clinical Psychologist and University of Manitoba professor John Walker spoke with CBC News and offered his advice aimed at answering these questions. 

Why do some parents not believe their teens when they tell them how bad it is?

Sometimes I think the challenge parents face is they don't know how to approach the problem. They see a problem with their children and don't know the kind of active roles they can take in helping their children. Some of the programs around Winnipeg really focus on supporting parents to communicate effectively with their children to understand how to work on problem resolution and to help their children build up confidence.

Sometimes a parent, do they walk into it innocently where they think, 'I went through something similar, you should just be able to get out more and that will help you?'

Well the old advice about anxiety problems was, 'just hold on, you'll grow out of it.' And a lot of the problems people don't grow out of, they do learn their way out if they have some support. And my impression is that most parents are game to give support and try their best, often they don't know the best way to go. They're sort of perplexed by a problem their child is facing that's different than what they faced.

How can parents tell the difference between a teen phase, because those are legitimate as well – sleepiness, grumpiness – perhaps something of a friendship crisis – or something that runs much deeper?

I think you can see signs of trouble coming if a young person is showing more emotional distress than usual, and if you see changes in their behaviour from the typical. So, you've been with your child year after year and if you see dramatic and sudden changes in their behaviour, that's something to really become alert to, and get engaged in and see if you can work on some problem-solving. And get some outside help if that's what you think would fit.

So here's the hard part – they're really good at hiding it.

Absolutely – there's more risk for some children than others. So one of the areas we work on is prevention and promotion. So right at kindergarten age, Grade 1 age and so on, adults and parents and so on can work on good communication and helping their children express themselves and express emotions and to learn problem-solving about how to handle interpersonal problems.

How common is it for an outwardly high-achieving teen to be struggling internally?

This kind of struggle can happen to anyone. One thing that we encourage kids and parents to work on is sort of to let go of perfectionism, (it's) a real issue here. And really, you can't learn without making mistakes. So we encourage parents, kids (and) teachers – encourage people to take risks and make mistakes. And when you make a mistake there's something to be learned there, so it's not a bad thing.

How do you get the message across that mistakes are OK? That you don't have to fear not looking perfect to the parent?

The number one thing with parents is just encouragement to listen a lot, to have family time. There's a lot of things now crowding out family time – screen time, phones, a lot of things competing for resources – so making sure you spend time with your kids. Be a really good listener. Often it's good not to rush in with solutions but to actually listen, not push a solution on them that they're not going to accept anyway. Just … work with them on problem-solving and dealing with problems in friendships and other things.

How do you encourage resilience in your teenager?

You need to start very, very early. Kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 2. Working on independence, working on problem solving. That approach of listening a lot, encouraging your child to take on a lot, the independence that's right for their age level. When you do that kind of work you're really steeling them against future challenges.

What if you haven't done that work and now you have a teenager -- you're frustrated, you're sad, upset – but you also admittedly don't get it. What do you do in that relationship?

The key thing there is listen a lot. All of us, when we see a problem, we're tempted to offer a solution. Often people don't want to accept our solutions. So listen a lot, support them in problem-solving, encourage problem-solving and stick with it over the days and weeks and just hang in there.

Why are so many more teens seemingly struggling with anxiety and other issues today?

We can't be sure that there are more, actually. It's always been a problem and it used to get neglected in the past. I think awareness has increased a lot which is good. Also, our world has changed in many ways. The technology is just washing over us, so the life someone had 50 years ago and the life now are different. I'm not convinced it's more stressful now, it might be less stressful, but there's new challenges. Some of the challenges of social media and the expectations children have for success and prosperity may be hard to meet nowadays.

What's one of the worst things a parent or loved one can do to a teen who discloses they're suffering mentally?

I think that not wanting to listen, threatening they have to leave the family if they don't solve a problem – I just think hanging in there and listening a lot and encouraging that problem-solving makes a big difference.