Why Your Teen Is Not Overreacting: Their Nervous System Is Protecting Them

The moment your child says something cruel about your body can hit like a shock, even when you thought you’d built a kind, shame-free home. We start there: a real family story, a clear boundary, and the baffling aftermath where the child storms off, sulks, and seems to make it all about them. If you’ve ever thought, “Why is this so dramatic?” or “Am I getting it wrong?”, you’re not alone.

We unpack that reaction through nervous system regulation, not blame. A firm correction can land as a threat to belonging, approval, and identity, especially for pre-teens and teenagers who are wired for pack safety. We talk fight flight freeze in everyday language, why shutdown and “I don’t know” are protective responses, and how overwhelm from life factors like poor sleep, end-of-term pressure, and constant stimulation can make small feedback feel huge.

From there we zoom out into teenage brain development: the adolescent brain is literally being remodelled, with emotional intensity often arriving before planning, impulse control, and long-term decision making are fully online. We explore dopamine, novelty, and why modern life and screens can hook the reward system so easily, then bring it back to what actually helps at home: more movement, better sleep, real-world connection, and a compassionate, curious approach that supports safety and repair.

If you want a calmer way to understand teen behaviour and support wellbeing without quick fixes, press play, subscribe, and share this with a parent or caregiver who needs it. If it resonates, leave a review so more people can find their way back to trusting their body.

Transcript

Welcome And Core Message

Naomi Mills 0:01

Welcome to You Are the Answer, the podcast that helps you reconnect with the most powerful healer you know, your own body. I'm Naomi Mills, chiropractor, healthcare professional, and believer in the natural intelligence within us all. In this podcast, I explore what it means to trust your body, decode its signals, and take ownership of your well-being without quick fixes or health fads. Whether you're just beginning your journey or deep in transformation, I'm here to guide you back to the truth. You are not broken. You are the answer.

A Family Rule Against Body Shaming

Naomi Mills 0:51

We are delving into our teen arc, but really it's more of a family arc because we cannot think about our young people in isolation. They are very much experiencing a lot of the same challenges as we are, but they are experiencing it differently because of their biology and how they are wired, and that's what I want to talk about on today's podcast. But first, I want to share with you something that happened the other day because it really flummoxed me, and I had to go and look up why this was happening to understand it properly, and it really speaks to our topic today. So we have a rule in our family that we don't do body shaming, we don't speak negatively about our own bodies, about each other's bodies, and ideally not about anybody else's bodies online, on TV, anywhere else, because we like to be kind to ourselves and to our bodies, and quite frankly, because there's enough negativity in the world, and in my opinion, it really doesn't need to come from home. And also speaking from my own personal experience, I grew up with a lot of shame and issues around my body image that affected me and still affects me my entire life, and I am doing what I can to limit that for my child. And so last week, said lovely child, 10 and a half years old, made a couple of quite pointed and unkind comments about my body, and I will admit I was not very happy about it. Now I'm fine, I'm an adult, it's not you know hurting my feelings to a great extent, I'm not carrying it around with me. But they, as children can be, they were quite cutting, and it really just wasn't nice. And I kind of got through the first one or two, and then I think a third thing was said a day or two later, and I could was really like, Oh, you know, can you stop dogging on my body now? That's not a thing that we do in this family, and it was actually my husband sweeps in and says to our daughter, You don't say that about your mother, and really made it clear to her that what she was doing and saying wasn't okay, and that she had upset me. And I don't know if you've witnessed this yourself, this was you know, all set up in the family construct, and this is not how we say it, and you've done it a couple of times, and we've kind of pulled you up a couple of times, but now the third time in a row, very close together, we're we're gonna tell it was like for me as a mum, it's often like I feel like I'm back in the litter, and like daddy, like dog is like swiping the puppy that's been naughty, and it can be really hard to watch, but also really important to allow that to happen because actually in nature, sometimes it's okay to give them a nip back because it's showing them what you did wasn't comfortable, and now I'm going to make you uncomfortable. We've been, you know, we've talked about it twice, and now no, no, no, this is enough.

The Sulk After Being Corrected

Naomi Mills 4:00

So, anyway, he makes it clear in no uncertain terms that that was not okay. And what would our desired outcomes be as a parent? Them reflecting, them apologizing, them changing their behaviour. What was the reality? Her going off in a giant huff, sulking, being really sad and shutting down and making it all about her, which then further wound my husband up because he was like, Well, she's in the wrong, she knows this is unacceptable, we've told her, and now what we're supposed to feel sorry for her, why is she the one that's upset? She's been the one to cause the pain. And this is such a classic young person response. And I really wanted to understand why, because actually, as parents, we are not given a handbook, we are not given any expertise around this stuff, and I can think of it in like 500 different ways, and I'm never sure which way is right for our family or resonates most with me. And I know a lot of I felt comfortable that what we had done wasn't disproportionate. She kind of, like I say, with a little nip back, I felt like she needed to feel more uncomfortable about having done this, and I know some families, you know, feel uncomfortable with that and can think, well, maybe I overreacted, maybe it was a big overcorrection on my part, and I should apologize for how I parented her.

Threat To Belonging And Protection Mode

Naomi Mills 5:33

But actually, from a nervous system perspective, there might be something completely different going on here, and it might be that she didn't just hear the words from me and her dad, because actually I said very kindly to her, like, even as a grown-up 40-year-old woman, it still hurts my feelings when you say bad things about my body. We all have issues around our bodies, and it's not kind to bring them, you know, to make somebody feel bad, and she's still shut down. So I thought, well, it's not because somebody yelled at her. What we did was we offered her a threat, and it wasn't a verbal threat or a physical threat, but it was a threat to her belonging, it was a threat to our approval, to what she might perceive we were saying about her as a person, and about her sense of self-worth ultimately, potentially, because this is so poignant in adolescence, and when young people, we're gonna talk about this this week, but they're more prone to this sense of insecurity, and it's very threatening to their pack mentality, to how they are wired to survive these years, to be different, and so even though they hear this correction, it'll often then come out as a big emotional reaction, potentially some story making on their parts within seconds, and they're not consciously deciding, I'm going to be dramatic now, or I'm going to make this all about me. It's actually her body moving into protection mode, and it can look like arguing back, it can look like shouting, it can look like shutting down, walking away, crying, avoidance, and it might look like silence or saying, I don't know. And those are all elements of that fight, flight freeze response that we've talked about before. And actually, I can look at this scenario now through a different nervous system lens, and apart from everything I was feeling, and of course, as a parent, when you're in it, you're just in it, and I was just in it. But on reflection, her having made those comments in the first place, then combined with how everything sort of blew up, if you will, that's a sign that her nervous system is in a bit of overwhelm. And we're on half-term, so there've been less good food, less good quality sleep. There's a lot of things happening with the end of term, end of school year. She's got a music exam coming up. So now I'm like, oh, her nervous system is in a bit of overwhelm. And if you think about it yourself, if your partner said to you like, Oh, you forgot to pay that bill today, one day you're gonna shrug it off, the next day you'll be like, Oh, yeah, and I'll just I'll get on it now, or another day you're like, you're exploding, thinking, Well, I can never do anything right, why is it always on me? Blah blah blah blah blah. And it's not that the bill itself, that the consequence is what it is, it's how your nervous system is feeling in that moment, then dictates how you respond. And so that is why I think it's so important for us to take a look at how our young people are wired and what is going on so that we can better understand some of the ways in which they are responding to us and what's happening. They can seem overly emotional or like they just want to be on a screen. It seems like they're not good at thinking ahead, or maybe that they feel quite anxious and you know, overthinking things. Or perhaps where I was, why do I feel like I'm getting it wrong?

Teen Brain Development And Intense Emotions

Naomi Mills 9:29

So we need to start with something really important here, and that a young teenage person is not simply a small adult. Their teenage brain is going through one of the most significant periods of development and change it's ever going to experience. And during this adolescence phase, their brain is literally being remodeled. It's where connections are strengthened, other neural pathways are being pruned away, and the emotion center of the brain develops far sooner than the other parts that are responsible for things like planning and impulse control and long-term decision making. And unsurprisingly, typically, these things will also develop slightly earlier in females than males. So if you think about 16-year-old girls, can present much more adult and quote sensible than 16-year-old boys. And it's all because of how our brains are being developed at different stages and different ages. But what is true is that teenagers often experience emotions very, very intensely before they've developed their systems to regulate them. And let's be honest, many adults also struggle with this too. So it's not merely a fact of biology that you create the potential to do it, and automatically you will. This kind of behavior would be more that I was describing around my daughter would be more often described as manipulation when you get to adulthood because you should be able to see it, but it doesn't mean that people necessarily do or that they feel equipped with the tools to sit with their own emotions, and that's what the whole you are the answer series is about, right? The book, the podcast, the nervous system regulation cards. These are all tools because we all need to do this work to some degree ourselves.

Dopamine Reward And Risk Taking

Naomi Mills 11:29

And I've talked a lot about dopamine in the mind-body series, and just in the last episode, I talked about dopamine with why our brains love the idea of novelty and newness. And it's not a bad thing because wanting to experience dopamine is what motivates us to explore and to learn and to take risks, and without it, we'd probably never leave the house. And so the challenge we face is that adolescence is naturally a period where this brain becomes particularly sensitive to both reward and to novelty. And if you think about this in an evolutionary perspective, historically young people really needed to move away from their immediate family, to explore the wider world, and to gain new social connections for all kinds of reasons. And so curiosity and risk taking helps that to happen. And one of our challenges is that modern life is very good at tapping into this same system, and our teenage brain is especially responsive to it.

Belonging In A World Of Comparison

Naomi Mills 12:43

And so I really want to talk about belonging because I think belonging is one of the most misunderstood aspects of being a young person. We can inadvertently sometimes dismiss this idea of belonging when we say, like to our young person, it doesn't matter what people think, or you'll laugh about this one day, or this isn't gonna matter next week. But from a nervous system perspective, belonging has always mattered. And I love the work of Simon Sinek and the start with your why guy. He does a lot of stuff in his work, The Infinite Game. It's all about belonging. That actually, as humans, we are wired to connect and to feel part of the system. And our brains are still very much carrying some of that wiring. Historically, you know, in an evolutionary perspective, if you were excluded from the group, that could threaten your survival. And that's what, on a micro level, my daughter was experiencing when both her parents ganged up against her and said, You've been really you, you are not fitting into this group anymore. We're really unhappy with you. Massive threat to her belonging. And especially for teenagers, they are actively forming their identity and their independence during this time. And so social belonging is vital at this stage. Their friendships, being, you know, you'll see it. A lot of the young men have the same haircuts, the same outfits. Same with the girls. It's about feeling understood and part of the pack. Except these young people aren't just navigating that in their communities, they're also kind of navigating it on a massive scale across the internet, across the world, across other generations, because they have this massive evidence and comparison that we just didn't have access to before. Not only that, if we did, it wasn't constant. And it is really constant for them now. And so as a teenager, they can be comparing their appearance and their friendships and what they've achieved and where they've been and what they've done hundreds, if not thousands, of times a day. And so now it makes sense why they are feeling a bit overwhelmed and exhausted. And I'm also going to add a caveat here because I'm not just talking about whether or not your child is on the internet, because my child isn't. But yet society is fast, life is fast, just everything in our environments in terms of the types of food that we're putting into our body, environmental toxins, loads and loads of different angles and aspects coming in to really finely tune our nervous system into that state of constant slight overwhelm, coming from many, many angles and not simply one.

Overwhelm Anxiety And Learned Regulation

Naomi Mills 15:31

And it's all there. And so, what I'm seeing in practice a lot is that young people are really struggling to switch off. The idea that if you're young, you're carefree, and your body will simply kick you back into that parasympathetic state and you'll heal and you'll sleep and you'll be really well, it's not true anymore. Actually, regulation is a learned tool that has to be given to our young people. So you might look at a young person and see anxiety, anger, withdrawal, procrastination or perfectionism, low motivation, overthinking, dysregulated sleep patterns, emotional outbursts, a sense of them being flat and slumped. Underneath is the same question of do they feel safe? Are their nervous systems in a state of safety and regulation? And so I believe we need to stop asking, you know, what's wrong with young people? And start becoming curious about what are we asking young people to adapt to? Because those are very different questions. And once we understand what it is we're asking them to adapt to, we can come at it with far more compassion and creativity rather than judgment or blame. And as a chiropractor and a nervous system educator, I see it over and over again that at all ages and stages, we change better when we understand this in ourselves. So I don't want young people to think that they're broken, but I want them to realize that their body and brain are just trying to protect them all along. And where we can meet them with understanding and regulation and encouraging more movement, more sleep, more real-world experiences and moments where they can be accepted exactly as they are. These are the ways that we can help buffer the inevitable evolution and stresses and things that are going on in their life and in their environment that we cannot control whether we would like to or not.

Compassionate Parenting And What Helps

Naomi Mills 17:51

So if you are a parent or a caregiver who's listening to this, I really want to make it clear that you don't need all the answers. I certainly don't have them, and I've been studying this for years. You don't need to be perfect, and you don't need to be perfectly regulated. But if together we can try and approach this with some curiosity, with consistency, then we can help build and repair things as they happen. And hopefully by listening to these upcoming episodes and really delving into this teen brain series, we can just help some of this make a lot more sense because when you look at things through a nervous system perspective, a lot more becomes clear, and it's not about whether your child is good or bad or otherwise, it's actually about how threatened or not their nervous system is feeling. And when their nervous system starts to soften, that's where growth becomes possible. So, along with me, because I will be doing this too, the next time that you feel a bit flummoxed by your teen's response, especially where it feels disproportionate or out of place, let's ask ourselves what might their nervous system be trying to tell me.

Share Review And Where To Find Tools

Naomi Mills 19:21

Thank you for joining me on YouAre the Answer. If today's episode sparked something in you, share it with someone you care about and leave a review to help others find their way back to their body too. For more tools, inspiration, and resources to support your journey, head to www.uareanswer.co.uk. And until next time, stay connected, stay curious, and remember, you are the answer, and you always have been.