5 Myths About Teen Resilience (And What Builds It)

Are teens today really less resilient? Or have we misunderstood what resilience actually is?

In this episode, I break down 5 common myths about teen resilience that many parents believe. These myths can lead to more fear, more panic, and more stress at home.

You’ll learn:

• Why sadness is not an emergency
• Why emotional pain is not dangerous
• Why protecting your teen can actually make them weaker
• Why crying doesn’t mean your teen isn’t resilient
• And what truly builds emotional strength

Resilience is not about being happy all the time. It’s not about avoiding big feelings. It’s about learning how to feel hard emotions and still move forward.

I’ll also share simple, practical steps you can use to help your teen build real resilience — without rescuing, panicking, or overreacting.

If you want to raise a strong, emotionally healthy teen, this episode will give you perspective and tools you can use right away.

Are You Caught in the Parent Trap?

Discover the hidden patterns that are keeping you stuck—and how to break free.

Take this quick (and eye-opening) quiz to uncover which common parenting trap you’re falling into with your teen.
 Get a personalized roadmap to help you parent with more clarity, confidence, and connection—starting today.

https://benpughcoaching.com/parenttrapquiz

Transcript

Ben 0:00

I'm Ben Pugh and you're listening to IMPACT! Parenting with Perspective. This podcast is all about helping parents manage the mental and emotional drama that comes with parenting teens so they can focus on what's most important. Building rock solid relationships and having a powerful impact on their teen's life. Join me each week as I dive into real tools to help you and your teen turn struggles into strengths.

ben_1_02-17-2026_155945 0:35

All right everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I apologize Cortni couldn't make it today. she is a busy mom. I am a busy dad. We live multiple states apart and. Between me and my family and doing my stuff and her and her family, we can't always get together on these podcasts, okay because we are going to talk about something that. I have been feeling very passionate that I needed to talk about, and honestly, I have gotten messages from current clients, former clients, all saying, Hey, my teen is struggling with resilience. Can you help? And so today, even though Cortni's not here, we're just gonna dive into a really important. Topic and my goal for today's podcast is to help you better understand your teen's resilience and their innate emotional health. Now, just real quickly, I believe we've talked about, on this podcast, I talk about emotional health differently than most people out there. Just to help put things into perspective, I'm going to share some of my definitions with you just so that we can make sure that we're on the same page when it comes to. Emotional health and how it connects to resilience. So first I define emotional health as the ability to experience any and all emotions. That is probably different from the popular. Conception of emotional health, which is that you're kind of always happy and you're at least never really sad or depressed. My definition is different because if you want to be emotionally healthy. We can't have uncomfortable emotions that are off the table, so according to my definition, even teenagers who are depressed, sad, angry, super excited sometimes, or just blah. they're still. Emotionally healthy because part of being emotionally healthy is the ability to experience all of those emotions. The next thing I talk about is emotional. Intelligence and that is your ability to do two things. Number one, identify what you are feeling and number two, identify the thoughts and the beliefs that are making you feel that way. This is emotional intelligence. This is something that any teenager. Could develop. And then the last thing, just for your context, I don't know how much we'll talk about this specifically, but the last one that I typically refer to is Emotional intention, Emotional intention is your ability to manage. How you feel and or how you behave. And what that means is that, like, to give you an example, maybe a loved one died and you're like, man, I don't want to feel this sad. So maybe I'll focus on. All the good times that we had together. Or I'll focus on, hey, this person is in less pain right now. you have the power to manage how you feel by managing how you think. That's great. Well, guess what? Even if you can't manage how you feel, you're super sad, you're depressed, you're distraught, whatever, you still have the intentionality or the power to. Behave in a way with intention. So like maybe, yeah, I'm super depressed, but I'm still gonna get up out of bed, put on my clothes, go out and live my life throughout the day because I can act intentionally. And that is emotional intention. Now let's loop this together and let's connect it with resilience. A lot of parents. Do not understand what it means to be emotionally healthy. And because they don't want their teen to be disappointed or heartbroken, they try and protect their teenager from these big, uncomfortable emotions, and that takes away from your teens. Resilience. Now, just like I said, emotional health is your ability to experience any and all emotions. That's referring to the fact that, hey, if you're a human being and you can experience emotions, you are normal. Part of being normal is part of having the capacity to experience emotions. 99.999% of people are normal and they can experience all of the emotions. I believe something similar when it comes to resilience. I believe that resilience is basically a muscle and a skill that everyone has that you might just need to put a little bit more time and a little bit more effort and intention into developing more strength. More skill when it comes to resilience. So I wanted to just talk you through a few myths and truths when it comes to teens and their resilience. One of the biggest myths is that some teens just aren't resilient. I gotta have a loud voice on this one. I think that is garbage. I hear people in education, I hear people in the therapeutic world talk like this and it drives me nuts. Just like I was saying earlier, resilience is like muscle. Every teen has it. Some just haven't really trained it yet. And so. Your next job as a mom might be to help your teen practice resilience. Sometimes as a football coach, this is my job. Sometimes as a coach, this is my job, and just like football players don't build strength by avoiding the weight room. Teenagers do not build resilience by avoiding certain emotions. myth number two. Oftentimes I hear parents say that, Hey, if my teen were more resilient, they wouldn't be so emotional. I'll be honest, sometimes I hear that more from dads about their teenage daughters than I do from moms about their teenage sons. But I do hear variations about teenage boys like, man, if my son were more resilient, he wouldn't make such impulsive decisions, but the truth is resilient, teens can still feel deeply. They can experience extreme sadness or depression, or extreme excitement. The thing is, they don't simply let those emotions define who they are and who they. Or how they behave. And just like I said earlier, that is a skill. Now your teen can let their emotions define them and be out of emotional control. That's okay. They're still resilient. They just really haven't mastered the skill. Of being resilient in a way that works better for them. So I want to be really clear. Crying after a breakup isn't weakness. It is normal, I promise you. And it doesn't matter if it's your teenage daughter or your teenage son. It's okay to experience these extreme emotions. Your daughter might be more comfortable crying in front of you where your son. might be more comfortable avoiding you. That's okay. Let them go ahead and process it in their way. That is one of the steps to becoming more emotionally resilient. Now, myth number three that I want to talk about, I need to protect my teen from like some deep emotional pain. Like I hear parents all the time saying, no, I can't. If my teen gets too sad, I'm worried that they'll. Do something serious or I just don't want my teen to be disappointed. I don't want them to regret. Blank. Guess what? It is not your job to manage your teen's emotional state. You do not need to protect your teen from really heavy emotions. In fact, if we want our teens to be more resilient, we need to do a better job as parents of getting outta the way and letting them experience these heavy emotions. So the myth that you need to protect your teen, we busted that. The truth is deep emotional pain is the doorway to emotional maturity. They need to experience breakups, rejection, failure, all of those. They're nothing more than emotional reps that are required for increasing your resilience. And you don't get emotional strength. Like just think about going to the weight room. You're not gonna gain any strength. By avoiding resistance, you're going to gain more strength the more resistance you incorporate. So don't give your kids a free pass. Don't make all their uncomfortable feelings go away. All right, myth number four. If I don't step in something terrible will happen. Parents. I gotta be loud and clear. It is time that we stop catastrophizing about what our teens will do if they're not happy. Because being happy all the time is not emotional health. That is not the ability to experience any and all emotions. Being happy all the time is like, well, I'm gonna. Ignore everything but happiness. That is not emotional health. And as parents, we are making it worse when we worry that, oh my goodness, if my daughter is sad, she's gonna self-harm. Or if my teen is unhappy, he's just gonna fly off a handle and make stupid choices. That might be true. But also like this is this behavior I like to call catastrophizing. You are looking at the worst case scenario and you're like, well, what if the worst happens? Catastrophizing. destroys your resilience because you are so worried about what may or may not happen, and that has a negative impact on your teens resilience. I just want to be clear, and I don't know how to say this. In a way that won't get me, like hated, someone will reach out. That's okay. If you disagree, that's fine. Feel free to reach out. We have got to stop looking at emotions as if they're the most dangerous thing that our teens can experience. If you as a parent are treating your teen's sadness as an emergency. That is going to create more fragility, which is the opposite of resilience. And the truth is emotions are not dangerous. No one ever died from experiencing an emotion. The truth is the media is not gonna tell you this. The media has a bad habit of trying to scare the crap out of everybody and being like, oh my goodness. Look at all these sad teens that are self-harming and making dumb choices. That is actually statistically very, very low. If your teen hasn't given you a reason to worry about self harm, don't just automatically assume that, oh my goodness, my teen just got dumped. I hope they don't harm themselves. No. Statistically that is very unlikely to happen. Let's approach this with a little bit more confidence and let's stop catastrophizing. All right. This is the last myth that I'm gonna share. I shared more than I originally wanted to, but it's, I got in the flow. I can't help myself. Okay, This myth is huge. I hear this from moms of teenage boys all the time. If my teen won't talk to me, something is wrong. Now, the truth is every teen has different processing styles. They're at different stages when it comes to processing, and some teens love to talk it out. Some teens like to think it off and think through it. I don't know. Some teens like to just work it out like. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna work out. It is gonna go away. Some teens like to sleep it off, whatever it is. Silence does not mean that your teen is in crisis, I want to give you some practical tools to help you help your teen be more resilient. First one. If you've been with me for a while, you know exactly what I'm gonna say. Be the change You want to see if you want your teen to be more resilient. You gotta find ways to be the example of resilience. It's okay. Let your teens see you be frustrated. Let them see you be emotionally hurt and disappointed. It's okay. show them. Look, I can experience unpleasant emotions and I can still function. I can still be who I want to be. All right. So step one, be the change you wanna see. Be that example of emotional resilience. Step number two, separate emotional ownership. Too many parents think that it is their job to manage their teen's emotions, and unfortunately, too many times parents think it's their teen job to manage their own emotions. The truth is, it is your job to manage your emotions, and it is your teen's job to manage their emotions. Now, yes, you can still empathize with your teen. You can sit with them. You can love them, but you do not have to absorb their emotional state. Just because your teen is heartbroken doesn't mean you have to be heartbroken. Like, man, I'm really sad that you're going through a breakup. I liked her too, but I know you'll be okay. let's move on to step number three. I talked about this a little bit, but honestly it needs to be repeated. Stop catastrophizing, media inflates extreme outcomes.'cause they want your attention, they want an emotional response out of you. The reality is far less dramatic than what you see on TV and Facebook and Instagram. When a teen senses that you are petrified that you are panicking because of whatever they're experiencing emotionally, the teen starts to sense like, oh no, if I look sad, my mom spirals, or, oh my goodness, maybe this is worse than I even thought it was. You want to stop catastrophizing. That's one of the biggest things that you can do to help your teen be more resilient. Now let's move on to number four. Normalize. Struggle. Guys. I don't know why we think that life should be so freaking easy, like no one gets out of this thing alive. Like life can be hard. We need to stop using vocabulary that makes struggle, sound unwanted and unnatural. We need to start really recognizing and normalizing, no, it's okay for teens to be sad. It's okay for teens to be a little bit worried about things from time to time. It's okay for teens to be super excited and over the top. we need to bring back some of the old sayings like, you know what heartbreak is part of growing up, our parents knew that. How did we forget that? And why aren't we reminding our teens about that? We need to remind our kids, Hey, I promise you this is gonna hurt for a while and that sucks and it's okay. We need to remind our teens. This is not the hardest thing you are ever going to go through. I know it's hard right now. It is probably the hardest thing you have experienced up till this point. But unfortunately there are harder things in the future, and this is helping prepare for that. This reframes their pain as something that is expected and it's okay rather than as something that is catastrophic and scary. Okay, and the last little step, and then I'll let you guys go. We need to do better at offering presence. Rather than interrogation. Now, if you are the type of person that you've been with me for a while, you know that I love being curious. You know that I love asking empowering questions, and sometimes when it comes to resilience and helping our kids be emotionally resilient, it is important that you have some good questions that you can be curious. Today, I want to give you some options. Other than curiosity, I love curiosity. This pains me a little bit, but it is so important, and I've recently had to talk to two different moms about this rather than going into curiosity mode where you're just asking, Hey, are you okay? do you wanna talk about it? tell me what happened. Yes, those are good questions, but in this moment, like say your teen is going through a massive breakup, or they're going through the disappointment of not getting what they think they deserve. Sometimes it's okay to say, man, I hear you. That's sucks. Or Man, I know what you're talking about. Or, Hey, I'm here for you, or just playing. I love you. It's okay. Rather than being curious to just be the calm, stable, emotional anchor that your teen needs. Now, I want to be really clear. I don't want to be insensitive when I talk about self harm. I know teens out there are struggling. I know some of them struggle with self harm. I want to really be clear that you cannot control whether or not your teen has suicidal thoughts, but you can create a home where emotions are safe and where resilience is modeled. Even if your teen is struggling with some variation of self-harm, and I know it's really hard to go through that, I've had to go through that. And the truth is there's nothing more powerful that you can do than to model emotional health, emotional intelligence, and emotional intention. Let me leave you with this. Just one last thought. It's okay for your teen to struggle, it's okay for them to experience really painful emotions, and it is time that we stop protecting our teens from the very thing that they need. Remind yourself now. Resilience is built through heartache. Remind yourself that emotional pain is not the enemy. That's what helps you better appreciate when life is good. And if you need, just remind yourself, Hey, I have Ben's permission to stop catastrophizing. Just because you've seen it in the movies or on TV or on Facebook, doesn't mean it's true for your teen. And statistically speaking, I guarantee you, your teen is way more normal and emotionally healthy than the extreme of emotional fragility. All right? Okay. With that, I'm gonna let you guys go. Before I do though, I just want to ask. One quick favor. if this podcast has been beneficial for you, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave me a five star review. And the thing that helps even more is when you leave written reviews, and it has been a while since we've gotten a written review. Actually, I gotta start here. Thank you guys for all the positive reviews. I recently had someone ask me, they're like, Ben, how on earth do you have so many freaking five star reviews? And I'm like, I don't know. People are just so good to me. The thing that really helps in addition to the five star review is if you could just take a time short and sweet, let other parents know how this podcast has helped you, and I promise you. That in and of itself is helping other parents because one of the things we need to know as parents is that there are answers, there is support, and sometimes just the most simple phrase will help someone else be like, oh, hey, maybe I should try this. Maybe this will help me. So if this has been helpful, please feel free to go leave me a review on Apple Podcast. You can leave the review anywhere. I just happen to look at Apple Podcast data more than I do any of the other ones. also just thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here. I appreciate your ongoing support and I will see you next week.