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High school: The place to see and be seen. (Or, hide and be hidden.) It’s a place of extremes.
Highs and lows…
Wins and losses…
Glory and crushing blows...
We all remember the cliques and the feeling of needing to belong (or rebelling against it). The angst of wanting more freedom, yet being terrified of the future, which fed our anxiety or drove us to productivity.
Regardless of your experience in high school, our teenagers with ADHD are dealing with a whole new set of rules in a system that may not be set up to support them best. Nowadays, teens don’t have just a syllabus to check; they have a plethora of communication apps for grades, assignments, teams, and clubs. Socializing is a job in itself, with texting, snaps, twitter, insta, and online gaming…It’s a lot for even a neurotypical teen to juggle.
Navigating this new version of high school is the ultimate test of executive function, relationship management, and communication skills for any teen. Add ADHD into the mix, and life may feel completely overwhelming and unbearable. Emotional dysregulation has taken an ever-present role in the lives of ADHD teens. And it’s not going anywhere soon.
In this article, you’ll find insight and practical steps you can take today in order to support your teen with their strong emotions. These skills will not only help this week—the goal is for them to learn what will help for the rest of their lives.
🎭Understanding emotional dysregulation in teens with ADHD
Emotional dysregulation is a mental health symptom common in ADHD that makes it difficult to control emotions and reactions to those emotions. If your teen struggles with emotional dysregulation, the reactions you might see include:
- angry outbursts
- prolonged complaining or crying
- substance abuse
- self harm
- difficulty maintaining friendships and relationships
- aggressive or violent behavior
- Intense emotional reactions that seem disproportionate to the situation
- Staying in a negative mood longer than others might or having trouble de-escalating when upset
- Low frustration tolerance
- Difficulty handling criticism or rejection
- Challenges in delaying gratification
- Trouble maintaining motivation in the face of setbacks
- Difficulty separating emotions from rational thinking
- Struggles with emotional self-awareness
- Tendency to become easily overwhelmed by emotions
- Difficulty with unplanned changes or transitions
Many of these presentations of emotional dysregulation are easy to spot. However, there are also some ways that a teen’s emotional dysregulation may go unnoticed or dismissed. Quiet withdrawal from friends and usual activities, for instance, may be a sign of dysregulation that goes unnoticed for months or years.
⚠️ Recognizing the signs
As parents, our first step is to notice the signs of emotional dysregulation. You know your teen best. How do they act when they are regulated? These signs might look normal to a teacher, but if you know it’s different than their usual self, you’re probably right. Something is off. The most common signs are:
- Emotional Outbursts: This might manifest in sudden anger, tears, yelling, fighting or stomping out of a room. It could also just mean giving an angry look, raising their voice a bit or cutting someone off mid-sentence. It’s all relative to their emotionally regulated self.
- Withdrawal: Even on their best days, your teen may gravitate toward their room for hours. When you notice them doing this more than usual, something might be up. Often when feeling depressed, overwhelmed, and/or not heard, they might withdraw.
- Physical Symptoms: An anxious teen might have elevated signs of restlessness, fidgeting, or other physical responses to emotional stress. Teens may have very real stomach pains caused by stress. Downplaying these physical systems could make them worse. Take an emotionally triggered illness as seriously as if it had a physical cause.
🔬What causes emotional dysregulation in ADHD?
📌 The short version? Emotional dysregulation in ADHD is a matter of brain activity. The brain region responsible for emotion shows heightened activity in ADHD brains, while the brain region responsible for managing and filtering those reactions shows decreased activity. It’s a real double-whammy - and it’s not something your teen is able to control. But there are strategies they can learn to help!
💪A beefy amygdala
An ADHD brain’s go-to function is survival mode. The amygdala - the part of the brain responsible for many emotions, but especially those involved in survival - shows much more activity in ADHD brains than in neurotypical brains. That means it’s extra strong, and tends to take over when any sign of threat is nearby.
In a typical school day, a million little things could trigger this fight or flight response in a teen with ADHD. A snarky comment from a teacher or peer, a less than stellar grade on a paper, a pop quiz, or a terrible lunch option could spell disaster. Pile just one of these on top of an already grueling schedule and uninteresting classes, and you’ve got a teen who just can’t.
😓An understaffed prefrontal cortex
The Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) is the logical part of the brain. Sometimes nicknamed the “management center” of the brain, the PFC handles planning, organizing, focusing, and regulating emotions. The ADHD prefrontal cortex is often 2-3 years behind a neurotypical brain, sometimes never catching up. It’s also typically underactive in ADHD brains. That means in high school, a teen with ADHD is on high alert, with surrounding threats around every turn, all while their brain’s management center lacks the ability to take over and regulate in times of stress.
We often downplay a teen’s “attitude,” but let’s take a closer look. When our teen with ADHD is overwhelmed, disengaged, stressed, or feeling rejected, they are suffering. Their brain is not able to reconnect to the PFC until they feel safe enough to let go of their fight or flight instincts. And schools are not naturally an emotionally regulating place. In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite all day. There’s no obvious outlet or way for our teens to take a breather without very intentional conversation,
💁How to help your teen manage big emotions
The following are some of the best practical strategies for helping your ADHD teen regulate their emotions - both immediately and in the long term.
💞Connection, connection, connection
Create positive, ongoing connections with your teen. Enter their world or share an experience doing something you both enjoy. Watch a movie, listen to their favorite new band, get your mutually favorite take-out (food is often the way to a teen’s heart). Connection allows a teen’s brain to feel safe and secure throughout the day, not just the time you spend together. A little goes a long way here. Focus on quality vs quantity if you’re having a hard time making this happen. Sitting on the same couch with your phones may seem like nothing to you, but it could mean the world to your teen. Start there!
🧷Create a safe space to identify their triggers
Teens need to feel immensely safe before they share anything vulnerable with you. Even then, their instinct may be to handle things on their own as they are preparing for adulthood. It’s an important and natural developmental stage! But teens often overdo their autonomy with their feelings unless convinced otherwise. How do you create a safe space? Make time to talk whenever they’re ready, within reason (often at your bedtime), listen without judgment, and don’t try to fix the problem. Get curious. Ask non-leading questions. Validate their feelings and ask how you can support them.
👩🏫Working with school staff
As a parent of a teen, you walk a careful line of a supporting role and a direct role. Create a team vibe with your team and staff. Model seeking out the help you both deserve. A teen with ADHD is entitled to a 504 (for accommodations) or IEP (for adjusting the learning plan). Utilize these support systems now, as it will allow your teen to carry them over to their SAT, ACT, and and even college, if they choose to attend.
Make sure you focus on both your teen’s strengths and challenges in your meetings with staff. Accommodations for a teen with ADHD, and specifically emotional dysregulation, might include extra time on tests and assignments, a quiet room to work and/or eat, fidgets, headphones, and many more. An IEP might include one-on-one or small group learning with a teacher or modified assignments. If you know what helps your teen self-regulate, speak up! As a team, you will all be able to create the environment that works best for them.
🧘♀️Teaching Emotional Regulation Techniques
You can’t always make your teen practice strategies like deep breathing, mindfulness, or taking a break. But you can show them by doing it yourself and inviting your teen to try it with you or on their own!
- Download your favorite meditation and breathwork app on their phone and set it to “Always Allowed.”
- Create an account on “Better Help” for your teen and look through therapist options together.
- Narrate through tough times when you might feel dysregulated, and how you kept your actions in check (or didn’t).
- Apologize when your emotions get the best of you.
- Set healthy boundaries.
Your teens are definitely watching (whether they admit it or not). That doesn’t mean you have to be perfect! Sometimes the most powerful learning happens when we mess up.
🏃♀️Encouraging Physical Activity
Exercise floods our brain with all the happy hormones. And it’s much easier to connect to the prefrontal cortex when we feel happy. Even walking to school or the bus stop can create some positive thoughts. Again, modeling is often the best way to get teens off the couch.
- Create a family culture of movement by going for a walk after dinner and before screens turn back on for the evening.
- Cheer hard at their soccer game (no critiquing unless they ask, and even then be gentle.)
- Get a family membership to the climbing gym or the nearest YMCA (and use it 😉).
👥Building a Support Network
It takes a village to raise a child. Our teens go through seasons of feeling close to their parents and not. Great! They’re experiencing a very important developmental milestone. They’re practicing for adulthood. They need other good influences in their lives to help shape their experience. Guide teens in finding friends, mentors, or school staff they can turn to when they need help.
❓When to seek professional help
Mental health is paramount in this process of helping teens regulate emotions. Brain chemistry, genes, and the context of our lives all play a part in our teen’s mental health. Helping your teen understand their own mental health takes precedence over everything. Utilize the professional support available to you. Normalizing this effort now will be a gateway for your teen to do this on their own for the rest of their life. You don’t have to wait for these signs to get help. Every teen could certainly benefit from a good therapist. Trust your gut. You know your teen more than anyone, even if you don’t feel like you do right now.
🚦Signs that professional support is needed
- Seemingly small things create big reactions often
- Takes a long time to get back to a regulated state
- Getting reports of skipping school, disrupting class, or not participating at all in class
- Their dysregulated moods are affecting their relationships and grades
🔍Finding the right professional
Choose a therapist/counselor or ADHD coach experienced with managing emotional regulation issues. How?
- Involve your teen: Look through some provider’s info and have your teen choose a few that seem like a good fit.
- Be upfront with the provider: Send a message sharing your teen’s strengths, challenges, and what you see changing in their life right now. If you have an idea of what your teen needs, share that. Ask questions about their experience with teens, neurodivergence, LGBTQIA+, etc. Whatever is important to you, it’s completely worth it to share that now.
- Set expectations: Set up a time where you’ll evaluate to see if a provider is working for your teen. If not, find someone else. There are plenty of fish in the sea!
🌊Riding the wave together
****Parenting ADHD teens means parenting through emotional dysregulation. Our job is not to stop it completely; we are here to help our teens identify, name, and manage those strong waves. Sit alongside your teen while they are riding the wave. Let them know they’re amazing. Highlight their strengths and help them figure out how to support themselves with their challenges. Open doors that will help them seek out support, too.
We often think we need to do more, more, and then more. The biggest challenge in parenting teens through dysregulation is often letting go. Remember, first connection. Build trust, be patient, and ask to be let into their emotional world.
There is no shame or guilt in emotional dysregulation. Your teen is right where they are supposed to be, and so are you.
You’re the best parent for your teen—even if their main form of communication is eye rolling right now.
