Michelle: Alright Mark, pop quiz. Your teenager comes home, slams the door, and is sobbing because they got cut from the team. What's your first instinct? Mark: To fix it! To tell them it's okay, it's not the end of the world, maybe even call the coach... secretly. You know, just to "get some clarity." Michelle: Of course. And what if I told you that doing nothing—and letting them feel awful—is the best parenting you could do in that moment? Mark: Whoa, okay. That goes against every fiber of my being. That sounds like parental malpractice. Where is this radical idea coming from? Michelle: It's the core argument in The Emotional Lives of Teenagers by Lisa Damour. And Damour is the real deal—a clinical psychologist, she founded the Laurel School’s Center for Research on Girls, and even consulted on Pixar's brilliant movie Inside Out 2. She argues our whole culture has it backward. Mark: I can see that. We're obsessed with happiness. The idea of just letting a kid be miserable feels... wrong. Michelle: Exactly. Damour says we've become afraid of unhappiness. And that fear is distorting how we see our kids. She believes that for teenagers, powerful emotions are a feature, not a bug.

Mark: A feature, not a bug. I like that. It sounds good in theory, but in practice, when your kid is a mess, how do you not see it as a five-alarm fire? How do you tell the difference between 'healthy sad' and 'you-need-a-therapist sad'? Michelle: That is the million-dollar question, and Damour tackles it head-on with a great story. She talks about a friend whose son, Will, was about to be a high school senior. The family found out they had to move across the country, from Denver to Seattle. Mark: Oh, brutal. Right before senior year? That’s a teen's worst nightmare. Michelle: Precisely. And Will reacted accordingly. He was cranky, tearful, and just miserable. His mom, naturally, started to panic. She called Damour and said, "I'm worried he's getting depressed." Mark: I would have made the same call. That’s a classic sign, right? Michelle: That's what we're trained to think. But Damour asked a simple question: "Is he miserable all the time, or just when he's thinking about the move?" The mom thought about it and realized his mood lifted when he was with friends or distracted. The misery was specifically tied to the move. Mark: Ah, so the feeling had a clear source. It wasn't just a random cloud of doom. Michelle: Exactly. Damour’s response was profound. She told the mom, "That's fantastic news. It means his wiring is working perfectly. He's about to lose his home, his school, his friends right before senior year. He should be miserable. It would be weird if he weren't." Mark: Wow. So his intense sadness was actually a sign of good mental health. That completely flips the script. Michelle: It does. And it points to the bigger cultural problem Damour identifies. She says there are three major trends that have made us so terrified of normal emotional pain. First, the explosion of psychiatric medication. Mark: The "pill for every ill" mindset. Michelle: Right. Since the 90s, antidepressant use for depression has more than doubled, while psychotherapy has dropped. Meds are amazing and life-saving, but they’ve also subtly taught us that emotional discomfort is a medical condition to be eliminated, not a human experience to be navigated. Mark: And the second trend? Let me guess. The wellness industry. Michelle: You got it. The $131 billion mental wellness industry, which is bigger than the entire global entertainment industry. It sells us this fantasy of perpetual calm. Mark: The 'buy this scented candle and your anxiety will vanish' industrial complex. I'm a prime customer. Michelle: We all are! But Damour says this creates an impossible standard. It implies that if you feel bad, you're failing at wellness. You just haven't bought the right yoga mat or downloaded the right meditation app. Mark: And the third trend is the one that feels most real. Teens are actually struggling more. Michelle: Yes, and Damour is very clear about this. The statistics are staggering. Between 2009 and 2019, persistent sadness in high schoolers jumped from 26% to 37%. After the pandemic, ER visits for suspected suicide attempts among teenage girls shot up by 51%. The crisis is real. But our fear of it makes us over-correct, pathologizing even the healthy, normal pain, like Will's sadness about moving. Mark: So we're conflating the symptom with the disease. We see any negative emotion and immediately jump to the worst-case scenario. Michelle: Perfectly put. We've lost the ability to see a teen's distress as potentially productive. Which leads right into the biggest myth she wants to bust.

Mark: Okay, lay it on me. What's the myth? Michelle: The myth is that emotion is the enemy of reason. That our feelings cloud our judgment and lead to bad decisions. Mark: That feels less like a myth and more like a law of physics, especially with teenagers. Aren't their brains just emotion-fueled chaos machines? Michelle: Chaos machines, I like that. But Damour argues we've got it all wrong. She says we should think of emotions as data. They are information. A psychologist she cites, Isabelle Blanchette, did this fascinating study with war veterans. Mark: Okay, I'm listening. Michelle: They gave veterans logic problems. Some were combat-related, some were emotionally charged but not about combat, and some were neutral. The veterans, especially those without PTSD, reasoned most soundly on the combat-related problems. Their personal, emotional investment actually sharpened their logic. Mark: Huh. So a little bit of emotion makes you smarter, but too much—like with PTSD—jams the signal. Michelle: Exactly! And this is where the story of Tom comes in. Tom was a high school senior Damour had treated for anxiety years earlier. He comes back to her because he's in a bind. He's a top student, but he's only applying to colleges within a three-hour drive of home. Mark: Because of his anxiety? Michelle: Yep. He told her, "I’ve never liked being away from my family. I’m just trying to come up with a solution that doesn’t leave me feeling like my anxiety could mess up my freshman year." But his college counselor was pushing back hard, telling him, "Tom, your worries are clouding your thinking." Mark: The classic "emotion is the enemy of reason" argument. Michelle: The textbook definition of it. But Damour saw it differently. She told Tom, "It seems to me that you’ve really thought this through. Given that this will be the first time you’re truly going away, it makes sense that you’d want to do so with a safety net." She reframed his anxiety not as a cloud, but as a critical piece of data he was wisely incorporating into his decision. Mark: So his gut feeling wasn't a distraction, it was a memo from his subconscious. And it was a smart one. He was building his own support system. Michelle: He was! And it paid off. He ended up at a great school an hour from home, and when his anxiety did flare up that first semester, he was able to drive home for a weekend to recharge. He had his safety net, and because of it, he thrived. He didn't let his emotion dictate the decision, he let it inform the decision. Mark: Okay, that makes perfect sense for what Damour calls 'cold cognition'—when you're sitting calmly in a therapist's office. But what about 'hot cognition'? The moments when teens are with their friends and their brains just... leave the chat? Michelle: Ah, the perfect pivot. Damour is very clear that this is the other side of the coin. She tells a story about her own youth in Denver. After a big snowstorm, she and her friends would go "skitching." Mark: Skitching? What on earth is that? Michelle: It's grabbing onto the back bumper of a moving car and letting it pull you on the ice. Mark: That is the most terrifyingly stupid and awesome thing I've ever heard. That is pure 'hot cognition.' Michelle: One hundred percent. She knew it was dangerous. But in the moment, with her friends, with the adrenaline pumping, her rational brain was completely offline. That's the danger zone for teens. Their brains are wired for social connection and novelty, which can override the risk-assessment part. Mark: So it's like they have two different operating systems. The calm, thoughtful one, and the 'let's go skitching' one. This feels like a tightrope walk for parents. How do you know when to trust their gut and when to lock them in their room until they're 25? Michelle: It is a tightrope. And that brings us to the hardest part of the whole equation: the paradox of protection.

Mark: The paradox of protection. I feel that in my bones. You want to wrap them in bubble wrap, but you know they need to learn to fall. So where's the line? Michelle: Damour says the line is often much further away than we think. She attacks another huge myth: the idea that difficult emotions are bad for teens. In fact, she makes the provocative claim that "emotional pain promotes maturation." Mark: Okay, unpack that. Because my instinct is to shield my kid from all pain, always. Michelle: Think of it this way. A teen gets caught cheating on a test. They feel the gut-wrenching guilt, the shame of facing their parents, the embarrassment in front of their teacher. That painful experience forces them to reflect on who they want to be. It can be a major turning point for their character. Mark: Right, they learn a lesson the hard way. Michelle: But now imagine that same teen, instead of sitting with the guilt, gets high or drunk to numb the feeling. They might get through the punishment, but they miss the growth. Damour learned this from a supervisor in grad school who told her something that stuck with her forever: "People stop maturing at the point when they start abusing substances." Because drugs and alcohol are excellent at blocking the emotional pain that forces us to grow up. Mark: That is a chillingly accurate statement. So, some suffering is not just necessary, it's the main ingredient for growth. But there has to be a limit. You can't just let them get traumatized. Michelle: Absolutely. And this is where Damour draws a very sharp line. We have to distinguish between what is disquieting and what is traumatic. Trauma isn't the horrible event itself; it's the overwhelming emotional impact of that event. It's when the stress exceeds a person's capacity to cope. Mark: And that capacity is different for everyone. Michelle: Exactly. This is where parental judgment comes in. She tells the story of a friend whose 15-year-old son was desperate to make the high school soccer team. The mom was so terrified of his potential disappointment that she became a nightmare. Mark: Let me guess. Nagging him about practice at dinner every night? Michelle: Every single night. "Did you run today? Did you do your drills?" It created so much tension that the son just shut down. The mom's fear of his future pain was causing actual, present-day pain for the whole family. Mark: She was trying to protect him from a disquieting event—not making the team—but her hovering was making everything worse. Michelle: Precisely. Damour's advice was to step back. Let him manage his own preparation. Let him own the outcome, good or bad. Because a lesson learned the hard way is still a lesson learned. We need to let our kids swim in choppy emotional waters, but never let them feel like they're drowning.

Mark: So the big takeaway here isn't to make our teens happy. It's to help them get good at being unhappy. To see their feelings not as a verdict on their life, but as a compass pointing them toward what matters. Michelle: That's the perfect summary. It's about building emotional resilience, not an emotional fortress. And it's why I love Damour's definition of mental health. It’s not about feeling good. It’s about "having the right feelings at the right time and being able to manage those feelings effectively." Mark: Having the right feelings at the right time. That's a powerful lens. It's not about eliminating anger or sadness, but asking, "Is this anger justified? Is this sadness proportional to the situation?" Michelle: Exactly. So the next time your teen is upset, instead of asking "How can I fix this?", maybe the better question is, "Does this feeling make sense right now?" If it does, your job isn't to fix the feeling. It's to offer support, a listening ear, and the confidence that they have what it takes to get through it. Mark: That is a game-changer. It shifts the parent's role from frantic firefighter to steady, supportive coach. We'd love to hear from our listeners on this one. What's the hardest part about letting your teen navigate their own emotional storms? Let us know. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.