Communication Skills Examples in Parenting

If you are a parent of a teen who has suffered from depression, then it’s important to know what to do after the worst is behind you.  So much has been written about what to do for your depressed teen, how to help someone with depression, and tips to keep in mind while helping someone with depression.  But when a teenage boy or girl has wrestled with clinical depression symptoms for several months, and then begins to feel better during treatment, it’s easy for a parent to create unnecessary setbacks during a very delicate time.  Consider these these two communication skills examples of parents talking with their teens who are in treatment for depression but are now starting to recover well.

Communication Skills Examples:  The Key Elements to Notice

Teenage depression can be a formidable foe.  Helping someone with depression with suicidal tendencies is exhausting for most family members who take it seriously.  When that person is your own child, it is doubly stressful.  As a result, a parent can become quite exhausted and worn down by the ordeal of guidling their teenage son or daughter through darkest part of the tunnel.   This fatique makes it easy for a parent to become pushy when the teen begins to show signs of returning to normal.  Of course, it’s not spoken, but the attitude of the mom or dad can go something like this, “Finally you are getting better! I’m so burnt out that I want you to get back in the saddle ASAP and be of more help around here!”

But coming out of depression is often a very delicate time.  So what does a tired parent do?  First, you muster a little more patience.  Consider this: you have put enough of yourself to get your child through this dark depression that you don’t want the progress to unravel now.  Second, notice specific symptoms of depression that are changing.  Then, use what you observe to make encouraging remarks to your teen.  When you are able to pinpoint positive reversals of depression symptoms, you can make comments to your teen that help them see the progress for themselves.

More Communication Skills Examples of Parents

Let’s look at some communication skills examples of how to do this.  Each example pertains to parents who have been in the trenches battling teenage depression.

The first of our communication skills examples illustrates how a parent can encourage a teen by pointing out real evidence that things are getting better.  It also shows how to not push or move too quickly by suddenly increasing expectations.  Marie has a 15 year old daughter, Haley, who is a good student, loves sports, and makes friends easily.  During Haley’s first year of high school her grades suddenly began to drop.  She withdrew from friends and family so much that Marie wondered if Haley was getting into drugs.  She wasn’t.  She was sliding into a deep depression and exhibiting clinical depression symptoms such as sadness most of the day, hoplessness about the present and future, isolation from friends, and great difficulty getting started doing any activity such as homework.

Marie took her to therapy, got her medication treatment, and after 5 months, and several sleepless nights, Marie began to see her daughter coming back to life.  Haley was starting to get better at finishing assignments at school and was starting to talk postively about her goals for the future. She had a long way to go, but there were enough changes that Marie could see that the ice was beginning to melt.  The depression was lifting.

Each of these two changes are directly related to two common symptoms of depression:  difficulty getting started with work and hopelessness.  Because Marie knew this she could say to Haley, “Looks like things might be getting better for you, you have plans…you didn’t used to have any plans or anything to look forward to.”  Or, ”I’ve noticed you have been doing your homework lately and getting it done.  You just might be getting better.”

The second of our communication skills examples illustrates how a parent can mistakenly pile expectations to “get back to normal” too quickly.  Janice is concerned about her 13 year old son Jon who has been depressed ever since the divorce several months ago.  Janice is not only stressed out by her recent divorce, but she is overwhelmed by the additional challenges of parenting her boy through teenage depression with full-blown clinical depression symptoms.  He shows some of the same clinical depression symptoms that we saw in the first of our communication skills examples.  But in addition, he cannot concentrate very well, which affects his listening.  He resorts to acting like he listens and subsequently gets into trouble at school or at home.  After treatment and a few difficult months, Jon begins to show signs that he is feeling better.

Loss of the ability to concentrate is one of the “standard” clinical depression symptoms.  But Janice never had time or took the time to learn about depression.  When she saw a little improvement in his listening, she jumped to the conclusion that it was “high time” for Jon to resume all of his family responsibilities and “stop using the depression as an excuse.”  Janice never really grasped the fact that depression in a 13 year old boy is not simply a choice he made.  She tended to be hard on him and a result she triggered an unnecessary setback in Jon’s recovery.

These brief communication skills examples serve as reminders that teenage depression requires parenting that will go the who distance with a child.  For single parents, this is especially taxing.  As a result, it is important that parents of depressed teens monitor their own needs for social support, friendship, and encouragement.  This not only makes us stronger and more patient as parents, but also helps prevent resentment for just how much effort teenage depression can require from us.

OCD Disorder Has Great Diversity

Obsessive compulsive disorder symptoms are often undiagnosed by mental health professionals.  This is due to the nearly countless forms that OCD disorder can take.  The variety of ways that OCD disorder can present itself is enormous.  Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is sometimes referred to as OCD disorder, despite the redundancy of the letter “D” for Disorder and the word “disorder” itself.  Obsessive compulsive disorder symptoms most often show up as compulsive washing, cleaning, or checking.  But there are many other types of OCD disorder.  A hoarder whose house is a mess with clutter and the boy who washes 100 times per day and keeps his room immaculate can each suffer from the same OCD disorder.  How can such opposite behaviors stem from the same syndrome?

The answer is that all types of OCD disorder, despite the immense variety, contain the same underlying psychological mechanism which is driven by anxiety.

All Forms of OCD Disorder Share This Psychological Mechanism

All forms of OCD disorder share the same basic mechanism of anxious thoughts (obsessions) leading to driven behaviors (compulsions).

First, a person experiences obsessions.  These are thoughts that have a very repetitive nature and they are very insistant.  Obsessions raise a person’s anxiety level.  It’s crucial to understand this point if you wish to see how the differing presentations of OCD disorder share a common psychological mechanism.

By the way, we are all capable of obsessions in certain circumtances.  This is a good thing.  Consider, for example, people in a burning building.  They all have the same obsession:  “I have to get out of here to survive!”  It’s the obsessive quality of this thought that helps people push their own limits when they are in great danger.  So obsessions become a problem not because obsessive thinking is always dsyfunctional.  Rather, obsessions that stem from OCD disorder create  a lot of misery in their shear volume.  They also turn numerous daily activities into the high alert status of a burning building.

The second aspect of OCD disorder shared by the variety in obsessive compulsive disorder symptoms is compulsions.  While obsessions are always thoughts, compulsions are usually actions or behaviors.  I’m obssessed with the thought that germs may give me a terminal illness, so I wash for the 16th time “just to be sure.”  The thought raises the anxiety, the compulsive washing serves to bring down the anxiety..for the moment.   Compulsions are in response to obsessions whether or not obsessive thoughts are in a person’s conscious awareness at the time.

Now we are ready to see how the hoarder (ultra messy) and the washer (ultra clean) can be suffering from the same disorder.  The washer’s anxiety rises as he obsesses about the risk of germs.  He repeatedly washes to lower this anxiety.  The hoarder’s obsession is the thought that something useful might be wasted or discarded.  It might be useful to himself in the future or to someone else presently.  These obsessive thoughts raise his anxiety and the compulsion is a relieving behavior:  to save or store something.  For a severe case of OCD disorder, asking the hoarder to throw something away feels to him like being told to remain in a burning building.  It’s not hard to see how this grinding cycle of obsessions and compulsions robs a person of happiness.  The cycle is massively dsyruptive to life and relationships.

Many Forms of OCD Disorder Share Clinical Depression Symptoms

Clinical depression symptoms frequently fly under the radar everyday in offices, schools, businesses, and even physicians’ therapists’ offices.  The reason is that the lower intensity clinical depression symptoms are not as obvious. These mild symptoms are really not mild.  They have the power to turn a person’s colorful, wide-screen, HD life into a small black and white TV.   But they are called “mild” because the person can still go to work, fulfill responsibilities, and doesn’t ever think about suicide.

A major depressive disorder (MDD) that is “mild” can be a little like cancer, although very treatable.  A person may have cancer but no one notices.  Many sufferers of OCD carry the milder form of clinical depression and don’t know what it is.  So-called “mild” clinical depression symptoms fly free with obsessive compulsive disorder symptoms.

Clinical depression symptoms can arise in different combinations and they vary in intensity.  But the symptoms are clinical when they combine in a way that creates misery and noticeable problems with living.  What does this have to do with OCD disorder?  It has everything to do with it.  OCD disorder keeps the human brain in a state of nearly constant anxiety.  This chronic anxiety eventually pushes the brain into state where it is chemically locked in to a depressed mood.

There is another important reason that OCD disorder naturally leads to clinical depression.  Obsessive compulsive disorder symptoms are often very disruptive to personal growth, social relationships, and the ability to simply have a pleasant day.  Amazingly, this can be true even when a person’s obsessions and compulsions drive them to staggering success in a particular profession.

I find that most people with anxiety disorders believe their symptoms of anxiety are less dysruptive than is actually the case as observed by those who know them.  They think this because they have usually taught themselves to use avoidance as the main “tool” to bring relief from anxiety.  Over time, they learn what activates stir up their obsessive anxiety and they just avoid those particular situations.

Of course, the real problem here is that avoidance itself is a major–perhaps the strongest–symptom of anxiety.   In the case of OCD disorder, a man or a woman obessesses about ways to escape the stimulus to anxiety and then he or she compulsively avoids what is perceived as the cause of the anxiety.  Little do they know that that by practicing avoidance they are simply nailing the splintered board of an anxiety disorder more firmly upon every aspect of life.

In short, OCD disorder can morph into an almost infinate variety of obsessive compulsive disorder symptoms, all using the same basic mechanism of obsessive thinking leading to compulsive behavior.  Clinical depression symptoms, like obsessive compulsive disorder symptoms, are natural spinoffs from the obsessive compulsive syndrome that some call OCD disorder.

But I look at this as a strangely positive thing for many people.  Without the misery of depression many people with OCD might never stop, face the problem, and get treatment.

How to Develop Communication Skills Rule #1:  Take Responsibility for Your Own Anger

There really are ways to learn how to develop communication skills and some of the rules for effective communication are obvious.  For example, in order for a young child to learn to talk, he or she must be able to listen and speak. The little boy or girl must acquire a minimal amount of emotonal control. It’s really difficult for them to listen if they are thrashing about on the floor in a rage. It really doesn’t get much more simple than that.  So rule number 1 for how to develop communication skills is:  you must learn how to manage anger because your uncontrolled anger destroys listening (which, in turn, destroys communication).

Now, consider a couple having a conflict that is getting them nowhere fast. He doesn’t feel like he is really hearing what she is saying. She feels misunderstood. They are both beginning to boil with anger.  They each speak louder and louder to try to slam their own point home. They both get more and more defensive with each increase of the volume. Listening crashes and burns.

Misunderstandings come out in droves like bats exiting a cave en masse after sundown. The growing tension and anger spawns an irratioinal, frenzied thought process that pretty much nails the coffin shut on any hope of productive communication. That point you thought you made so well and so “passionately” turns out to be misunderstood as an insult that is not easily forgotten.  How does a couple make sense of all this the next day?  Rule Number One.

How to Develop Communications Skills Rule #2: Change the Question

Rule number 2 is:  change the question.  When couples later analyze together an exchange like I just described, they often see it in terms of blame. So the second rule for learning how to develop communication skills quickly is to change the question. Instead of, “Who is at fault here?” the question needs to become, “How can I calm myself down enough to listen?”  Rule #2 requires effort, but it also requires some thinking prior to the argument.  But the real benefit is that you change the feel of the entire conversation and begin to break out of fixed patterns of communication.  You are starting to learn how to manage your anger by changing the focus and holding it there.

Rule #3:  Practice Relaxation Exercises Ahead of Time

The third rule for how to develop communication skills quickly is to find a method for learning physical relaxation skills. Relaxation exercises involving slow, paced breathing allows your brain to see that your lungs are calming down, and so your brain will give orders to the rest of your body to become relaxed.  This is an important rule for learning quickly how to develop communication skills. You simply have to calm yourself if you are going to listen and you simply cannot have a productive conversation without listening.  I find that most people think they already know this and that self-deception becomes part of the problem.  Also, I find that people are often unwilling to set aside daily practice time for relaxation exercises perhaps because they think they already know how to do such a “simple” thing.

How to Develop Communications Skills in a Nutshell

But if you are serious about learning how to develop communication skills in marriage, it’s wise to start by paying some attention to these three rules:

1. Take responsibility for learning how to manage anger, for controlling your own boiling emotions, and for the volume of your own voice during an arguement.
2. Change the question. Instead of asking “Who is to blame here?,” focus on how you can calm yourself down enough to listen.
3. Find a method for learning physical relaxation skills and practice your method daily for 2 to 3 weeks.

I want to offer a follow-up thought to my last post about the how to cope with stress.  If you have ever suffered from stress headaches, you may be wondering how the two layer approach applies.  It’s difficult to imagine any living organism that doesn’t automatically change in some way in response to adverse conditions or strain.  If you work 70 hours per week for 3 months straight, you are going to experience physiological changes.   That’s Layer 1 stress and it is probably the prinicipal cause of stress headaches in that particular situation.

However, there almost always a second layer of stress that is in your power to do something about.   This second layer of stress is at least a factor in your stress headaches, however large or small.  Forcing yourself to take breaks, get out of the work area for lunch, use the stairs instead of the elevator, are but a few simple ways to address the Layer 2 stress of stress headaches.

But here is the interesting thing:  Layer 2 is not about little things you can do, it might include looking for a new job so that you don’t have to work 70 hourse per week for 3 months straight.  Or, perhaps switching jobs is unthinkable in the present job climate.  But your way of thinking about your supervisor’s expectations may be largely layer 2 stress.  You may have the erroneous assumption that the only way to keep your job or to be productive is to work hours that give you frequent stress headaches.  It may be that learning how to be more assertive (pleasantly) would allow you to negotiate less hours.  In other words, how much of your “requirement” to work 70 hours is due to your fear and weak negotiation skills (Layer 2) and how much is due to hard-and-fast demands of the job?

Why Learning How to Cope with Stress is Confusing

Learning how to cope with stress can be very confusing, but it doesn’t have to be.  It’s confusing primarily because we don’t become interested in learning until we are in the middle of stressful situations.  Who wants to learn about how to cope with stress if stress is not a problem?

So it goes.  We humans only want to learn how to cope with stress when we

1. Become overwhelmed with stress
2. We don’t have time to learn something new
3. When the stress makes it difficult to concentrate

Do you see a problem here? The lesson here is to take some time when you are not in crisis to learn a few things about how to cope with stress effectively.

How to Cope with Stress:  The Two Layer Framework

But here you are reading this article.  So I assume you would like to learn how to cope with stress or at least pick up a few tips on how to manage stress more effectively.

One of the problems with stress tips is they are often presented without any unifying perspective or framework.  This omission makes many tips for reducing stress less practical.

Here is where the Two Layer Approach comes in.

What is Layer 1 Stress?

Layer 1 stress involves challenges, problems, conficts, people, and annoyances that you have no power to change.  If your boss is a jerk you can’t fire him.  That’s Layer 1 stress.  Everyone has Layer 1 stress.  Life is messy and we all have stress and pressures that we cannot avoid.

What is Layer 2 Stress?

Layer 2 stress is the real pressure and strain that comes from how you are dealing with Layer 1 and how you are interpreting it’s meaning inside your head.

Your coffee spills all over your car on the way to work.  That’s a little example of Layer 1 stress.  A larger example of Layer 1 stress would be an earthquake or the electricity going out in your house.

Now Layer 2 stress is how you interpret the event. When your coffee spills do you think, “Figures.  This day already sucks!”  That thought in your head is Layer 2 stress:  it doesn’t have to be there.  You are inflicting it on yourself.  It’s a dysfunctional reaction that makes you suffer (and anyone else who is riding in the car with you!).

Layer 1 stress is what an event or circumstance or person does to you.  Layer 2 stress is what you do to the situation to make it worse.  The kicker here is that we often go through stressful situations completely clueless about how we ourselves are feeding the monster.  In fact, many of the the problems we face in our personal lives are primarily Layer 2 stress!

So the very first tip for how to cope with stress is to take some time to learn when you can actually concentrate and have time to think about it.  The second tip for how to cope with stress is to learn to distinguish between the layers stress in your life.  At first, it seems impossible.  Layer 1 and 2 seem completely mixed up together.  They are.  But if you keep at it, you can start to see where Layer 1 stress leaves off (“the coffee has spilled”) and Layer 2 begins (“This is another example of how screwed up my life is right now!”).

This layered framework for how to cope with stress can help you see the big picture of stress management and not beome bogged down in 100′s of tips for how to manage stress.

How to Cope with Stress:  Two Steps for Getting Started

Step 1:  Ask Yourself Questions about the Layers of Each Stressful Situation

One way to get started learning how to cope with stress and using this framework is to begin asking yourself a few question each time you feel stressed.  Here are some examples:

• Which parts of this situation are under my control and which ones do I just need to accept?
• How much of my negative emotion is due to how I am spinning this event in my head?
• What are observable facts of the situation that anyone watching would agree to?
• What interpretations of the facts am I injecting into the situation because I feel angry, tired, confused, or wronged?

Step 2:  Learn to Laugh at Yourself

Finally, it’s also good to to start learning how to laugh at your own bogus interpretations of what just happened:  ”Yes, the entire universe has conspired to make my coffee spill all over my car!”

Once you see the two layers of a challenge you can start conserving your energy.  Instead of needlessly straining to roll a gigantic boulder up a steep hill, you are free to focus on getting help, tools, and applying your efforts on things that are changeable.

The symptoms of depression in men often show up in ways that people do not expect.  For example, clinical depression is more frequent among women than men.   Women have more suicide attempts than men.  But among those who attempt suicide, men are more likely to die from their attempt at suicide.   Depression should always be taken seriously because it has the potential of being lethal.   Not all people die from cancer, but it is nevertheless true that cancer can kill.  Not all people die from depression, but it is nonetheless true that depression can kill (via suicide).

So taking the symptoms of depression in men seriously involves understanding some of the sublte and not-so-subtle differences from the symptoms of depression in women.  In an article on another website, I discuss the symptoms of depression in men.

What Can the 9 11 Survivors Teach Us About Traumatic Loss?

For the thousands of 9 11 survivors yesterday was a very big day.  It was the 10th anniversary of the 9 11 attacks. In the coming days those who participated in memorial events will be unpacking what it means for each of them personally.  But I believe that their experiences can be enlightening to those who are trying to figure out how to help someone with depression.

The 9 11 survivors include wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, coworkers, good friends, and even more relatives.   How many of these have suffered clinical depression in varying degrees?  The exact number doesn’t matter.  So many people’s lives plummeted into despair and traumatic loss.  And, indeed, this is what so many of them share in common:  the life-shattering experience of traumatic loss.  For the more fortunate 9 11 survivors, there has been an individual who cares.

It has a grief that is both indescribably sad and terrifying.  Many of them have been striving for 10 years with various causes to make sure that the death of their loved one was not in vain.  Many more have had their lives stalled by questions such as, “Why did 9 11 happen to me in this way?” or   “What is meaning of this awful event?”  But among the gifts they have given all of us are lessons about how to help someone with depression.  Both the public and shared nature of  the 9 11 tragedy contain a unique opportunity for us all to understand the hidden connection between trauma and depression as well as tips for how to help someone with depression.

Triggers:  The Devil is in the Details

One of these lessons has to do with notorious feature of traumatic experiences:  triggers.  Traumatic memories are stored in the brain in a way that makes frozen and fragmented while at the same time being saturated with intense emotions such as grief.  As people slowly find their footing during the stages of bereavement, a fragile ability to cope emerges.  But the intense, overwhelming emotions of grief remain just underneath the surface of every thought, conversations, and activity.  These soul-crushing emotions seem to collect in a kind of force-field that gathers around particular details.

Yes, the devil is in the details. It could be a sound, a smell, a memory of lamp, a piece of scratch paper, or even clear blue skies.  It’s often misunderstood because it is unique to each individual.  But the trigger mechanism is the same for all:  when daily events include a detail that resembles the original memory, the deep, overwhelming grief is unleashed.  Sometimes it happens as suddenly as a mousetrap responds to one soft, silent misstep of an unsuspecting mouse.  If we understand how this works, we have have taken a big step toward learning how to help someone with depression.

Two Lessons on Triggers for Learning  How to Help Someone with Depression Caused by Trauma

Actually, in order to learn how to help someone with depression triggers, one must learn two things.  First, it’s important to understand the power of spring-loaded emotions and the spinoff feelings of helplessness they provoke when someone is ambushed by a traumatic memory.  If you don’t understand this, then you may mistakenly conclude that the person you care about is just being dramatic.  But it’s not about drama; it’s about trauma.

Second, you must find out the specific triggers that are unique to that individual.  Was she standing in the checkout line of a grocery store when the call came?  Was the smell of roast beef coming from the kitchen when he realized that his son was gone?

Helping Someone with Depression by Becoming a Little Smarter

Anyone who has been involved helping someone with depression knows that it has moments of high anxiety, frustration, and helplessness.  But if we care enough to learn a little about triggers, we can be more understanding and less confused while helping someone with depression.

Treatment resistant depression nearly always requires fresh eyes to evaluate the current evaluation of a person’s diagnosis, the exact components of treatment, the history, and the perspectives of the man or woman being treated.  For example, many psychiatrists and physicians are not well-versed in psychological treatments for trauma such as EMDR.  As a result, sometimes depression is treated medically when the real cause of the depression is  a post traumatic stress syndrome.  Once the traumatic memories are resolved in therapy, the treatment resistant depression lifts.

Having said that, there are also cases of treatment resistant depression that stump everyone.  Our understanding of treatment resistant depression reflects our understanding of the human brain.  Today there is so much new and exciting brain research that it is tempting to be a little heady with all that we now know about the brain.  However, I believe we know very little compared to what is waiting to be discovered.

Imagine two young boys building sand castles at the beach.  They are having a serious discussion about what is under the surface of the ocean.  How much do they know about the ocean compared to what there is to know?  This is the picture that comes to my mind when I think about our current knowledge of the brain.

The upshot is that if you are suffering from a treatment resistant depression, keep looking for answers.  Get second and third opinions.  Sometimes a talented clinician will have a hunch that will only be validated by research years in the future.

It’s a good idea to know something about how to treat depression whether on not you are doctor.  The knowledge can assist you if you are depressed and it can be useful when helping someone with depression.  There is one question to ask that functions like a handle on a fairly complex subject. A key question is,” How severe is the clinical depression?”  This question has to be answered by a trained professional after thoroughly evaluating the depression. But you must understand the importance of this key question because your decisions regarding how to treat depression will yours to live with.

Knowing how to treat depression, for example, with or without medication often depends on the severity.  If a depression is truly beatable without medication it is often a good idea to make the necessary life changes without medication.  If it is more severe, then avoiding medication can be a bad idea because without it a person may not have the “umph” to make the real and lasting life changes that they need to make.  I find that when people consider how to treat depression as a strategy, they most often underestimate the extent to which the depression is impacting every area of life and relationships.

A single bout of depression can often be a person’s friend because it stops them in their tracks to consider some sorely needed changes.   Chronic depression and recurring depression requires a different perspective.  But if you want to know how to overcome depression in the best way possible, then take the lesson that it may be providing you.  Clearly, life is not working well for you in it’s present form, so take the opportunity to make positive changes, one at a time.

The steps for how to overcome depression deserve an entire book, but here I want to highlight the importance of changing your thought patterns as soon as possible.  In particular, if you tend to think in all-or-nothing terms, then you are a ticking time bomb for depression.  How can this be?  Life does contain black and white, but it has much more gray.  In fact, situations and relationships are filled with various shades of gray.  One of the first steps for how to overcome depression when it is just beginning is to catch yourself each and every time you make a negative, all-or-nothing conclusion about something.  The next step is engage in a mental exercise to answer the question, “How can I see this as a continuum instead of rigid categories?”  If you can’t do this then most of your life is like trying to force a square peg in a round hole:  frustration, disappointment, and depression.