You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Katie K. May, a licensed therapist and author of the book You’re On Fire. It’s Fine: Effective Strategies for Parenting Teens With Self-Destructive Behaviors. We discussed children/teens who are “fire feelers”, why intense emotions can lead to risky behaviours, how to respond to self-ha...
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Katie K. May, a licensed therapist and author of the book You’re On Fire. It’s Fine: Effective Strategies for Parenting Teens With Self-Destructive Behaviors.
We discussed children/teens who are “fire feelers”, why intense emotions can lead to risky behaviours, how to respond to self-harm urges, how to stay connected or rebuild your connection with your teen, and what parents of younger children can do now to prevent challenges in their teen years.
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We talk about:
* 00:05 — What Is a Fire Feeler?
* 00:06 — What Emotional Dysregulation Really Means
* 00:07 — Fire Feelers Often Have Fire-Feeler Parents- Genetic and Environmental Components
* 00:10 — Why Teens Are So Easily Overwhelmed
* 00:12 — What Fire Feelers Do When Overwhelmed
* 00:20 — How Parents Should Respond to Self-Harm Urges
* 00:22 — When to Get Professional Help
* 00:24 — Why Depression Looks Different in Teens
* 00:25 — Teens Still Need Their Parents
* 00:26 — How to Stay Connected to Teens
* 00:28 — Judgment vs Validation
* 00:31 — How to Rebuild Connection When Things Are Broken- Katie’s Hierarchy of Connection
* 00:34 — Sensitivity & Impulsivity
* 00:35 — What Parents of Younger Kids Can Do Now
* 00:37 — Why Control Works When Kids Are Young — and Fails Later
* 00:38 — Why “Tough Love” Doesn’t Work
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Podcast Transcript:
Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Katie May. She’s a therapist and the author of You’re On Fire. It’s Fine: Effective Strategies for Parenting Teens With Self-Destructive Behaviors. We talked about why some teens are what she calls “fire feelers,” and about how best to support them—and ourselves—when emotional dysregulation is common, troubling, and can be destructive.
If you don’t have a teen yet, but you have a kiddo with big feelings, have a listen, because Katie also talks about what she wishes parents of younger kids knew so they didn’t end up with these sorts of challenges down the road. Let’s meet Katie.
Sarah: Hi, Katie. Welcome to the podcast.
Katie: Hey, Sarah. I’m glad to be here. Excited to talk about teens and parenting today—stuff I’m jazzed to share.
Sarah: Me too. Yeah. And I loved your book. I’ll ask you about that in a second—or maybe you can tell us who you are and what you do.
Katie: Yeah. My name is Katie K. May. I’m a licensed therapist in Pennsylvania, and I lead a team of other therapists. We all specialize in working with high-risk teens and their parents. So every day, we’re in the trenches working with teenagers who are suicidal, self-harming, have eating disorders, are not going to school, and we’re helping them learn skills while also teaching their parents how to respond effectively—so the whole family is working together as a system in harmony.
Sarah: And your book’s called You’re On Fire. It’s Fine. I like it. My book—
Katie: Go ahead.
Sarah: No, it’s a great title.
Katie: Yeah. So I came to that title from this idea of biologically sensitive teens—or very sensitive teens—often feeling like they’re on fire with their own emotions. And I can dig into any part of that. But the idea is that parents who are well-meaning will many times say things like, “You’re fine. It’s okay. Go take a nap. Go get a snack.” And it feels like a little squirt gun trying to put out this big fire of emotion. So I thought that title captured those two points initially, to bring people into the framework that I teach.
Sarah: I love that. And it’s funny—I had a different interpretation of the title, and my interpretation, now that you said what you meant it to be, I can totally see that. But my interpretation was more like, “You’re on fire. You can handle these big feelings. It’s fine.” Like, this is just—let’s get used to feeling the feelings. So I guess it could be read either way.
Katie: I like both interpretations, and I think your interpretation speaks to probably how you support and parent. It’s nurturing and supportive of the process.
Sarah: Yeah. So tell us: what is a fire feeler?
Katie: A fire feeler is someone who is biologically sensitive. And what I mean by that is this is a kid who feels things very deeply. Their emotions are big and oftentimes overwhelming for them. And not just that—these are your zero-to-sixty-in-ten-seconds-flat kind of kids. They’re reactive, they’re easy to trigger, and when they’re triggered and they’re feeling their emotions in these very big ways, it also takes them a very long time to calm down or get back to their baseline.
And this is important because if you think about that slow return to feeling settled or centered again, oftentimes they’re being triggered again before they get back to that place of calm. And so they have a nervous system that’s constantly in a state of dysregulation—constantly triggered and upset. And it is very hard to access safety or calm or feeling okay because of that.
Sarah: And you mentioned emotional dysregulation, and in your book you have a very specific definition of emotional dysregulation. I thought it was a little more helpful and also a little bit more unusual. Can you give us your definition of emotional dysregulation?
Katie: So when someone is emotionally dysregulated, when they are triggered, it sets off this chain of emotions for them. Again, we go back to this idea that they feel on fire with their emotions. They’re often at this skills-breakdown point where it’s difficult to access skills or to calm down. And when you’re feeling on fire with your emotions, it makes sense that your brain comes up with escape strategies—things like self-harm, suicidal ideation, substance use—because it’s so big and hard to hold that the brain would do anything to make those emotions go away.
Sarah: I love that. And you also mentioned that people are biologically predisposed to be fire feelers, so I’m guessing that usually a teen’s one or both parents are also fire feelers, which would add a complication to the mix.
Katie: I would say so. I often find myself telling parents: some kids are born naturally good at sports. Some kids are born naturally good at music or art. And some kids are born naturally good at emotions—which means they’re very attuned to emotional states or nuances in the emotions of others.
And when we think about that as a genetic trait or a biological trait, it also makes sense that at least one of their parents carries this trait and is passing it down. And I think when I start to describe fire feelers—who they are and what it looks like—I regularly have at least one parent saying, “Oh, that’s me,” or “That’s you, honey.” They recognize it.
Sarah: Totally. Yeah. So I guess that makes home more complicated too when you’ve got a fire feeler and a fire feeler trying to find their way together.
Katie: It’s almost like if you yawn and it’s contagious—and the other person catches it. So if you have two people that are both biologically sensitive and they’re in the same room, one of them is triggered, one of them has a high state of emotional activation, it’s hard in general for another person in the room not to respond to that.
So there’s something that I teach. It’s called the transactional model. So let’s say a teenager is boiling over with frustration, and they’re exhibiting it. They’re bawling their fists. They’re snapping back at their parent. The parent then absorbs that emotion and they’re snapping back: “Don’t talk to me like that,” or, “It’s not okay for you to say that,” or “Don’t walk away from me.” Which then influences how the teen responds. And then the teen will continue to push or yell back, which then influences how the parent responds.
So we’re always looking at: How is it that I am influencing how you respond? How is it that you are influencing how I respond? And if everybody feels their emotions in these very big ways, it’s going to make that escalation that much bigger or faster because everyone’s overwhelmed in their emotions.
Sarah: So hard. I’m sure a lot of people listening can relate even when their kids aren’t teenagers yet—because that happens with little kids too.
Katie: Absolutely. It applies to all ages. I just happen to work with teenagers and parents.
Sarah: Speaking of teens, you mentioned in your book that teenagers are more prone to overwhelm. Can you briefly explain why that is? Because I talk about that too. I always say, “The drama is real.”
Katie: The drama is real. Thank you for saying that. So the way I look at it: teens are in this developmental state when so much is happening for them. They have unfully formed frontal lobes, which helps to regulate their emotions. They’re also dealing with hormonal changes, developmental changes, social stressors, peer stressors. They’re in school six hours a day, five days a week. There’s so much stress that’s placed on our teens.
And so if we think about a stress cup holding stress, it’s oftentimes just this one little extra drop that makes them lose control or makes them feel overwhelmed in their emotions. And I would say that’s probably true for everyone—that we’re all holding a lot, and it only takes a little to push us over the edge—but I think it’s the brain development that makes it even more challenging.
And then I’ll add to that the lack of control or agency over their own lives. They don’t have a lot of choice about what they do each day or what they have to do or who’s telling them what to do. So there’s a lot that’s outside of their control, and that makes it even harder to control or manage their emotions.
Sarah: I’m so glad you work with teenagers. You have such an empathetic view of what it’s like to be a teenager, and I think a lot of people—just a little sidebar—teens get such a bad rap in our culture and they’re so wonderful. I love teenagers. And also, I would never in a million years choose to go back to those years.
Katie: I wouldn’t either, but I do feel like I have a strong connection with the teen population. It’s interesting—we run parent groups at my center, and that’s a question that we’ll ask: Do you remember being a teenager?
And I think it’s hard for a lot of adults to empathize with the teen experience. But being able to do so—being able to put yourself in a teenager’s shoes—is going to help you support them so much more. Which is one of the things that I talk about in my book and in my work often: acceptance or validation before change. We always want to be understanding of the experience before we’re trying to problem-solve or change that experience.
Sarah: I want to ask you about validation a little bit later in our conversation, but before we get to that: what are some common reactions of fire feelers to overwhelm?
Katie: Yeah. Some of those common reactions tend to be self-destructive because, again, if we think about this idea that fire feelers are overwhelmed with their emotions—the big, fiery, painful experience for them—it’s not a conscious decision, but they would do anything to make that fire go out.
So this could be self-harm. This could be thinking about suicide. This could also be lashing out at parents. It could be numbing out in front of the TV or scrolling on social media for hours because it hurts too much to feel and I need to numb myself from that. It could be cutting themselves off from friends because the experience of relationships is so painful.
So a fire feeler will have a strong attunement to nuance and facial expressions and tones of voice. And so what might feel okay for one person, for a fire feeler might be interpreted as rejection or might be interpreted as “I did something wrong,” or “There’s something wrong with me.” And so the natural response of a fire feeler is to do whatever it takes to protect themselves from being on fire.
Sarah: I don’t even know if I totally understand it—but how do, and I know a lot of people don’t, how does self-harm bring relief to those feelings of overwhelm?
Katie: So there’s a biological response to it: when you self-harm—when one engages in a self-harm or self-destructive behavior—there is short-term relief. So if you think about emotions rising, rising, rising, what happens is it either blocks the escalation of those emotions, or it makes the emotional state come down quickly. It’s body physiology.
In addition to that, there are two parts to it. The first part is that it’s called negative reinforcement, and that doesn’t mean that something negative happens; it means it’s the removal of something that’s difficult. So that’s what I just described. You self-harm, you start thinking about suicide—it becomes an escape. It helps you to feel a sense of relief.
The second part of that is positive reinforcement, and that’s the social piece. A parent finds out that I self-harmed, and all of a sudden I am given warmth. You’re sitting on my bed. We’re having a heart-to-heart. You’re emailing the teacher to say that I don’t have to go to school tomorrow.
So there’s this one-two stack of: I feel better in the moment because it brings my body physiology back into a state of balance or regulation. And then on top of that, I’m getting my social needs met. And therefore it makes it really hard to break that cycle because there are all of these—this chain reaction of things that happen—that make me go from feeling awful to okay, and sometimes even more supported than before.
Sarah: That was such an interesting thing to read about in your book because I thought, “Oh man.” If I were a parent and had a teen that was self-harming, it would be so hard not to do that second part—the positive, what you call the positive reinforcement. So how do you support a teen without making it, “I self-harm and then I get a lot of really lovely warmth and attention”?
Katie: Yeah. So it’s not about removing the warmth and attention. It’s about changing where you put that warmth and attention. Instead of it being directly after self-harm, maybe it’s in structured and measured doses throughout the day.
So maybe we’re having a heart-to-heart in the morning. Maybe we’re going out and spending time together or watching TV together just because—and not because I self-harmed.
The other thing that I like to make sure that parents are familiar with and practiced with is how they respond when a teen shares an urge to self-harm or an urge for suicide. Because the way that it typically plays out—at least the first time a parent finds out about urges or that a behavior has happened—they’re crushed. Of course. Their face falls. They’re hurt. It hurts them to see that their child is hurting. They might cry. They might feel really anxious or helpless.
But a teen that’s witnessing that is interpreting that as, “My parent can’t handle this information, and therefore I can’t go to them with this information again.”
And so the practice for parents is minding your tone—being calm—minding your face, being more like, “Thank you for trusting me,” than, “I’m going to fall apart right now,” and minding your pace—staying calm and regulated and not rushing forward or feeling frantic.
And when we do this, what we communicate to our teens is: “I can handle this information. Therefore, in the future, you can come to me when you’re having an urge and we can handle it together, rather than you taking care of it by acting on it—and then me finding out afterwards.”
So that’s how we change the cycle: structured and measured warmth, consistent support, ongoing—not just after an event—and also being able to handle the information, even if you’re falling apart inside, because that is completely valid. But showing to your teen: “You’re not going to freak me out. I’m not going to fall apart if you tell me the hard stuff. I’m here for you. Come to me and we’ll handle it together.”
Sarah: And find your own support elsewhere.
Katie: One hundred percent. Yeah. Parents—I think any parent is going to need support, whether that’s their village, their people, their partner, their friend, a therapist. Parenting alone is tough stuff, and I wouldn’t recommend it.
Sarah: And I should have asked you this earlier in the interview, but when—are there any signs? A parent finds out your kid is self-harming or telling you they have the urges—is it straightaway “get help,” or are there early stages you can handle it yourself as a parent? When is this 911 getting help, and when is it, “Okay, we’re going to figure this out”?
Katie: It’s somewhere in the middle of “911” and “we’re going to figure this out.” The stance would be: if your teen has already self-harmed, they need to be in therapy. It’s beyond the point of handling it on your own.
When you’re noticing—it’s such a tough line because on one hand there are these typical teen behaviors: “I’m going to spend more time in my room.” Teens are moodier. They’re more irritable. They want less to do with parents. They’re more private. They don’t want to talk to parents. And so I don’t want there to be an overreaction to typical teen behavior.
But if we’re starting to see a duration, intensity, and frequency of that behavior that’s beyond typical—which, again, is going to look different depending on the child—my measure is usually: if my teen for two weeks is more tearful, more self-critical, more hopeless, not enjoying or engaging in activities that they used to—these are signs of depression. And that would be the point when I would want to engage more professional help to support in the process, because that’s where we’re going to start being proactive and head off escalation of crisis.
What happens is—and especially for teenagers—the symptoms of depression can lead to self-harm because there’s an overwhelm of that emotion. There’s a sense of hopelessness. Suicidal thoughts are one of the descriptors of the diagnosis of depression. We don’t want it to get to that point. We want to put help in place sooner.
Sarah: That makes sense. I read something the other day that in teenagers depression can look different than adults and sometimes it looks like irritability.
Katie: It really depends on the person. So I always go back to—we’ve all heard “nature and nurture,” but I think of it as biology and environment. Same idea, different words. But for some people, their environment can feel really safe to be vulnerable. It can feel really natural to express emotions, to cry, to be in that more vulnerable state. And for others, it doesn’t.
Or for others, they’ve learned that being vulnerable isn’t safe for them. It isn’t manly enough for them. It really depends on the culture and environment. And so it can come across as irritability. It can come across as anger—different dispositions as to whether someone internalizes their emotions or externalizes them or sends them outward to others.
Sarah: That makes sense. I think it’s good for parents to have an eye on things that maybe look different than they expect, just to keep track.
Katie: Yeah. And parents and teens don’t always express emotions the same way. I’m a very expressive and emotional person. I’m a therapist. I’ve also spent my whole life figuring out how to express my emotions. And I would say that my child is probably the opposite of that and doesn’t like being vulnerable in front of other people. So what you think makes sense may not make sense to the brain of another person.
Sarah: You were talking before about warm connection with parents, and you mentioned that it is normal for teens to want to spend more time by themselves or with peers. But one thing I wonder—and I wonder if you come across this too—parents often think that means, “My kid doesn’t want to spend time with me anymore,” or, “My kid doesn’t need me.” And my experience with my kids as teenagers was that wasn’t true at all—that even as they were moving away and differentiating, they still did like to spend time with their parents, and they still did like to do stuff with us and be close to us. What are some ways that you find are helpful ways for parents to connect? And how do you assure them that, “Yeah, you still are important”?
Katie: Yeah. As a child is growing and gaining more independence, it is such a natural experience for parents to feel grief and loss in that process because the relationship is changing. Teens do need parents less. Teens are more independent. They don’t want as much time spent with parents.
And so it’s important, one, to recognize that as a developmental milestone, and two, to recognize that means the way that you interact and respond to your teen changes as well. And so you’re not expecting the same attention or response from them as you did before.
But this is a grief process because you’re grieving the relationship as it used to be. You’re grieving your teen as they used to be. But you’re also—and this is the part we don’t think about—grieving yourself as you used to be because you have to become a new version of yourself to show up for your teen in a new way.
And so all of that is to say that it requires a lot of flexibility, openness to evolving, willingness to change how you see, interact, and speak with your teen. And so in thinking about that, it’s helpful to think about: What is it that my teen needs from me now?
They might not need me to cut up their food or call their teacher for them or set up their playdate for them. They might need me to drive them somewhere and listen to the music that they like and not be the one leading the conversation. They might need me to sit on the couch with them while they watch The Office and notice the parts they laugh at and just be there with them.
And both of those examples really nicely illustrate that your teens need less from you, but they don’t not need you. They need you to be more of a partner and less of a doing-for.
Sarah: When my husband and I both had pretty stable teenage years, we also had parents who were working a lot and not home when we were home. And I’m not saying this to make anyone feel guilty who isn’t home after school, but we really tried to structure our lives so that somebody would be home after school even when the kids were teenagers. Because our joke was: even if it’s just somebody who’s there that they can ignore.
Katie: It’s so true. But they know that you’re there.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. So you talked a little bit about validation before. Can you talk a little bit about validation and its opposite—judgment—maybe starting with judgment: what to avoid when our teens are having big feelings? I mentioned before that I often say the drama is real. I think that’s where some of the judgment comes in with parents sometimes. Like, “Oh, come on, you can’t be that upset that the jeans you were hoping to wear are still wet in the washing machine.” Where do parents make mistakes in terms of that judgment?
Katie: For me, I see judgments as the fuel to the emotional fire. So when we are seeing our teen act in certain ways, judgments are our interpretation of their experience. One of those examples might be: a teen is having a hard time getting up and going to school because they’re really depressed, and they’ve been white-knuckling every single day, and today is just the day that they can’t. They can’t do it.
And so judgments from a parent might look like, “Why can’t you just go? Everyone else is going. Just get up. Here’s the list of coping skills that your therapist gave us. Use your coping skills.”
So it’s this judgment that they can, and they’re choosing not to.
Other judgments that I hear regularly are: “They’re manipulative. They’re doing this on purpose to upset me. They’re attention-seeking.”
Oftentimes our judgments are because if we weren’t judging and casting blame, we would be having to hold a really frustrating or painful reality. So if I’m not judging my teen and saying, “Why can’t you just get up and go to school? Just use your coping skills. It’s not this bad,” then what I’d be having to hold is: my teen is really struggling right now. My teen—the person that I love the most in the world—is thinking about wanting to die right now. And that’s awful for me.
And so judgments are a way of pulling ourselves out of this emotional pain, but also shifting that blame to the other person. And instead of being able to hold their experience.
And if we’re not judging, we’re able to first just notice and name and sit with the experience, which is kind of what I described: “My teen is in a lot of pain right now. They’re struggling to get out of bed and even function in their day, and that’s really hard.” And when I can name that, I can feel that for myself, and it feels really hard and painful and difficult.
And then the outward version of that is validating them: being able to say, “I see how hard you’re struggling right now. I see the pain on your face. I hear the lack of energy. This is really hard for you right now.”
So we can name the experience for ourselves with our notice-and-name, and then we can validate the experience for our teen by noticing and naming their experience.
And when we do this, it does often make the emotion feel more painful because we’re naming it. I think a common experience of that is: if you’ve ever been struggling and then someone in your life, in passing, says, “What’s wrong? You look like you’re going to cry right now,” and then all of a sudden the tears come because someone has named the experience. The experience was there all along, but having someone see it—having someone tell you, “This is real, this makes sense,” or “I notice what you’re going through”—it makes it come to the surface.
It’s actually a helpful experience, because if we don’t name what’s happening, we’re judging it, we’re stifling it, we’re ignoring it. And that’s like holding a beach ball under water. Eventually it’s going to pop out, but we can’t control what happens when it does. Someone’s going to get hit in the face.
So we want to take ownership, we want to validate, we want to notice and name what we’re experiencing, and these are the ways that we move toward acceptance of what is, so we have an ability to move toward problem-solving.
Sarah: Where would somebody start who’s listening to this and hearing all of the examples that you’re giving of communication—if they’re not even at a point where their teen is communicating with them? Like, things have gotten so fraught and feel so broken. Where would somebody start with that?
Katie: It’s what I call my hierarchy of connection. Oftentimes there is this big rift in the relationship because it’s not just one time that something has happened—it’s years or multiple experiences that have gotten them to this point, of this rift in the relationship.
So the hierarchy of connection is our blueprint and our path back to connection. It starts with parent and teen being in the same room together—not interacting, but also not criticizing, not having this tension or conflict happening.
The example I give often is: I’m in the kitchen putting groceries away. Teen is sitting on the couch scrolling social media or watching YouTube. But I’m not saying, “Hey, did you do your homework? Did you take your medicine? Did you do this?” I’m just existing and they’re just existing. And we need to practice being in the same space together without that criticism or nagging happening.
When that can happen, we can move into shared activities. This would be watching a movie together, watching TV together, driving somewhere, listening to music. Again: no tension, no conflict, no criticizing. Doing the same thing together without any of those things happening.
And this could take a very long time. It’s not one, two, three. It could be six months of doing the same thing at the same time before you’re moving on.
The final step is moving back to interactive activities. This could be something like playing a board game and talking to each other, having an actual conversation at the dinner table, or a deeper conversation about something that’s a bigger experience. It could be the ability to do this within the context of therapy, so you’re able to have some of those scarier conversations.
But there needs to be a level of trust, and an ability not to act on urges to criticize or lead the conversation to nag or check off the to-dos. You have to be able to hold the space—to be in the space with your teen—before that can happen.
Sarah: One thing that you mentioned in the book is that there’s a link between sensitivity and impulsivity. Can you talk about that? I found that really interesting. Why is that?
Katie: When someone is more biologically sensitive—again, there’s this urge to make those emotions go away. And so when you are more overwhelmed with emotions, the idea of impulsivity makes more sense, because the desire and need for short-term relief is higher than it may be in others.
And so when my emotions are really big, I also have really big urges to make those emotions go away, and it’s harder for me to hold these big emotions.
Sarah: That was really helpful. If you could have the parents and teens that you work with currently—if you could have had them ten years ago, because a lot of people who listen to the podcast have younger kids and they don’t have teenagers—what would you like them to be practicing or working on? Is there anything preventive that you’ve noticed, that if people had an awareness earlier on, when their kids were younger, they might not get to this point with teenagers?
Katie: Absolutely. What I find myself saying often is: parents go first. And what I mean by that is that it is a parent’s job to learn emotion regulation skills, to learn how to notice and name emotions, to learn how to validate—essentially to model all of the ways that we handle really big emotions.
So that when our teen is having this experience—or our child growing into our teen is having this experience—we have the skills to manage our own emotions and we know how to respond to their emotions, because that validation helps the emotion go down more quickly.
When I’m working with younger children—and I don’t anymore—but that is part of the process: we’re working with parents first for many weeks to give them the skills before we even start working with the child.
So that would be my biggest piece of advice for parents of younger children: practice the skills, know how to manage your own emotions, have your own support.
And I will add to that: if you had the experience of being parented in a way that was painful for you as a child, address those issues, because they’re going to show up in the teen years. In the opposite way, you’re going to feel like it’s karma, but it’s really just generational patterns continuing—and you want to be able to change those patterns and rewrite stories that were painful for you so they don’t repeat with your own teen.
Sarah: I love that. It’s interesting because I think when kids are little, fire feelers don’t develop as teenagers, right? Like a fire feeler is a fire feeler whether they’re five or whether they’re fifteen. But a five-year-old—you can put them in their room and hold the door shut. Not that I’m advocating that. You can pick them up and move them places. I think parents probably—unless they’re more aware of emotions and being, in my brand, a peaceful parent—they probably rely on things that then, as their kids get older, just don’t work. But they maybe have missed opportunities to practice all the things that are effective as teenagers because they were relying more on external control when their kids were younger.
Katie: I one hundred percent agree. I think coercive control is easier to implement when your child is younger. But practicing validation, direct communication, emotion regulation is going to pave the way for more success as a teen.
And what I would say is: I think most parents recognize, when I talk about this idea of fire feelers, when they have a three-year-old. I have a sister who has two toddler girls, and she’ll say, “I think they’re fire feelers,” and they are.
And so you know your kid. You know their disposition. You know when they’re more sensitive or they’re a deep feeler. And so knowing that now can help you pave the way for what’s to come.
Sarah: Can you speak briefly on—when I was a teenager in the eighties, there was a “tough love” approach for teens who were having a hard time: drugs and alcohol, not going to school. And the approach was like: crack down. Kick them out if they don’t follow your rules. I’m pretty sure that’s not what you would advocate for.
And I do think there has been a shift because people recognize that doesn’t work. So maybe if you could speak to that for a few minutes—why getting more strict and more controlling with a teenager who’s having a hard time isn’t going to be an effective strategy.
Katie: I have two thoughts on that: one is about the teen, and one is about the relationship.
So when we think about a teenager who’s struggling, who has these big emotions, if the message in the family is, “You’re too sensitive. Just suck it up. Just get it together. Why can’t you do this like your siblings can?”—what happens over time is they internalize that message as, “There must be something wrong with me, that everyone else around me can do this and I can’t.”
And so they begin to lose trust in their own emotional experience, in their own emotion meter. And that is one of the contributors to self-harm behaviors, because then when an emotion shows up for them, their brain thinks, “Well, this must be wrong.” Everyone keeps telling me that my emotional state is the wrong thing or it’s too intense, so let’s make that go away quickly so that I can continue to function in my life.
What I’ll say is: at my center, we see hundreds of kids every week—teens and families. A lot of them are these high-achieving, perfectionistic, private-school kids, and they’re self-harming and they’re suicidal. And one of the reasons is that that’s a strategy that keeps them going in this life that is expected of them.
So I want to be really intentional about broadening the picture that we may have of the type of teen who engages in self-harm.
The other side of that—the relational piece—is that when the parent is consistently giving this message of, “Just get it together. Suck it up and keep going,” it creates a rift in the relationship. The parent is no longer a safe person to come to when a teen is struggling, because they’re not going to get what they need.
And so if it’s important for a parent to have a strong relationship with a teen—and I think that is for most parents—we need to learn the strategies that welcome open communication, that are able to hold that struggle, so that teens come to us with the little stuff and the big stuff.
And I’ll add to that: so that teens want to stay connected to us after they leave home.
Sarah: Yeah, that makes so much sense. Before I let you go, there’s a question I ask all my guests, which is: if you could go back in time to your younger parent self, what advice would you give yourself?
Katie: To my younger parent self? I think what I would say is that it doesn’t have to be perfect. And that’s something that I learned through my own education and the theory of good-enough parenting: that you only really need to get it right twenty percent of the time, and the rest of the time it’s how you repair, how you respond, and how you keep moving forward in the most loving and compassionate way for both you and your child. So that would help take the pressure off—both for younger me and also for probably a lot of other parents out there—that you don’t have to get it right all the time. You just have to want to keep going and want to keep trying to get it right.
Sarah: Nice. Where’s the best place for folks to go and find out more about you and what you do?
Katie: Yeah. To grab a free chapter of my book, You’re On Fire. It’s Fine, you can go to youreonfireitsfine.com. And for a therapist or media listening, katiekmay.com has all of my other projects and my counseling center and endeavors there.
Sarah: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Katie.
Katie: Thank you
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