S05|13 - Social Skills, Social Media and Social Anxiety with Teen Life Coach Sami Halvorsen

Sami Halvorsen is the host of The Teen Life Coach Podcast. She runs coaching programs for teens all over the world and loves working with teens! Sami works with teens in teaching them how to be self-confident, overcome anxiety, and navigate relationships and social media, so that they can start to enjoy being a teen.  

What we dig into on this episode:

• The 3 biggest challenges facing teens today (as seen in Sami’s teen coaching practice)
• Social Media and screens- what influence they may have on mental and emotional health in teens
• How teens social skills and social anxiety have been affected since covid, and what to do about it if your teen is struggling
• When to seek outside help for your teen

Sami can be found here:

Website
IG: @theteenlifecoach
Podcast
Download for parents: The 10 most important ways a parent can help their teen with anxiety

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Coaching has changed my own life, and the lives of my clients. More connection, more healing, more harmony and peace in our most important relationships. It increases confidence in any parenting challenges and helps you be the guide to teach your children the family values that are important to you- in clear ways. If you feel called to integrate this work in a deeper way and become a parenting expert, that’s what I’m here for.

My coaching program: click here
Find me on the ‘gram: @the.parenting.coach
Work with me 1:1: click here
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Episode Transcript

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hi, I'm Crystal The Parenting Coach. Parenting is the thing that some of us just expected to know how to do. It's not like other areas of your life where you go to school to be taught, get on the job training, or have mentors to help you learn. Now, you can get that help here.

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Hi, and welcome to today's podcast episode, Social Skills, Social Media and Social Anxiety with Teen Life Coach Sami Halvorsen.

Sami is the host of The Teen Life Coach Podcast. She runs coaching programs for teens all over the world and loves working with teens! Sami works with teens in teaching them how to be self-confident, overcome anxiety, and navigate relationships and social media, so that they can start to enjoy being a teen.

What Sami Halvorsen does, and how she got started

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hi, Sami. Welcome to the podcast.

 

Sami Halvorsen: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. I am so excited. So, Sami and I met in real life in person, we're both coaches certified through The Life Coach School; and we were roommates at an event and met each other. 

And I love what she does, and I wanted to have her on today to talk more about that because I think that there's a lot of parents with teens out there that find it really challenging. 

I know there is…that find it challenging to parent their teens, that don't really know how to deal with the challenges that are coming up; and so, I want to have a conversation all about that. 

So, before we dig into that, Sami, why don't you just introduce yourself a little bit, tell people what you do and why you do it and how you got into doing this?

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. Okay. So, I'll try to make it short. I'm Sami Halvorsen. I am a life coach for teens. I run programs for teens who suffer with anxiety and social anxiety and self-confidence issues; and, you know, just really trying to make goals and please everyone around them, right? 

There's lots of expectations that we have of our teens. I suffered from anxiety and depression as a teen, as a young adult, as a mom. You know, I've never been able to-- I've always had it. 

And so, just, you know, going through this process; I have four kids, they all have anxiety in their own ways. I have a daughter with severe OCD; and I just kind of like saw my kids growing up and I was like, 'I don't want them to grow up the way that I did…I want them to grow up with self-confidence, I want them to grow up not having anxiety about every single thing.' 

And so, that's kind of how I got into this. But also finding work that has helped me so much where I'm like, "I need to teach this to teens…the teens need this, my life would've been so much different as a teen if I had these skills and resources and support and help." 

And just like so much unnecessary suffering that we put ourselves through as teens. And so, that's really why I was like, "I need-- I need to teach this to teens because I love the teens." I love them so much.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: I love that. I love that you love them so much. And I also love that you are such a good living example of it because you have gone through that, right? You've been-- It's been something that you've been working through your whole life. 

And I feel like those are always the best people to go for, for support – when they know it, they've done it, they've been through it, they know what works, they know it doesn't work for them – and they can help you, support you in that process too.

 

The 3 biggest challenges facing teens today (as seen in Sami’s teen coaching practice)

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, tell me a little bit about-- I think my biggest question would be; over the last couple of years, obviously during COVID there's been a lot of, you know, mental health-- I think a lot of people are talking about this mental health crisis that we're seeing. 

And I think it is, especially, affecting teens. I mean, I think it's affecting everybody, but I think we're talking a lot about it affecting teens. 

So, I would love to hear from you with your clients and your audience and the people that you interact with, what are kind of the top one or two or three challenges that you see facing teens right now?

 

1. Social skills

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. Oh, there's so many. But I would say across the board, like if I were to grab a huge group of teens and be like, "Okay, tell me what's your number one thing that you want help with, or your number one thing that you're struggling with." Probably like 90, 95% of them would be like; I wish I was more comfortable in social situations, I wish I could talk to people better, I wish I knew how to make friends better, I wish I knew how to talk to adults. 

Anything socially-related right now, that is a huge struggle for teens. I think COVID is like, really gave us a hard time with that. But also, just like, even if you did have a little anxiety before COVID, COVID just kind of really took it to the next level. So, we're trying to reteach our teens social skills. 

Also, for any teen that suffers with anxiety, like social skills…social skills can be hard, anyways. 

 

2. Social Media

Sami Halvorsen: Another thing that is creating a lot of anxiety in our teens right now is social media.

 

Social Media and screens- what influence they may have on mental and emotional health in teens 

And the statistics and the studies that are coming up now with teens and screen time really are showing us that it's not really about what your teen is doing on their screen – like it's not the Disney-plus, it's not the Netflix, it's not like texting friends or whatever – it's really the amount of time that they're spending on social media apps. That is the-- That is the number one thing that's affecting our teens with anxiety and depression. 

So, screen time, yes, screen time is high, usage is high in our teens…but really, it's more of; what are your teen, what apps your teen is spending their screen time on. 

And that's where we're seeing the correlation between the mental health of teens and time spent on social media. And there's a lot of reasons for social media causing, you know, I don't want to say 'causes', but being correlated with anxiety and depression just because there's a lot of comparison; and we can get into that if you want.

But I would say that those are probably the top two things that teens struggle with.

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. So, number one being like social skills in general around their friends, around adults… like being confident, whatever.

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. And at school, you know, like social skills at school…social skills, you know, trying out for new things, meeting people. Sometimes even teens, a lot of them that I work with, it's like they can't even go into a grocery store and buy something or talk to a person at the cash register. It's those skills we think that like, 'Oh yeah, everybody knows how to do that'…but no, not everybody knows how to do that.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Do you think it's directly correlated to anxiety? Like is it kids that struggle with anxiety that are also struggling with these social skills?

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. Yes and no. But yeah, I would-- I think COVID also just like really kind of hit every teen hard.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Mm-Hmm. Okay.

 

3. Lack of self-confidence 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: What would you say the number three is? So, we have social media, social skills. What's like the third thing that you see come up often?

 

Sami Halvorsen: I would say that the third thing come up often is like a lack of self-confidence for teens…a lack of believing that they're enough, a lack of believing that they have value, a lack of believing that they can do things, a lack of believing that they are amazing and awesome.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Which you all are, if you're listening to this. We'll just pause for a second;

And anybody, it doesn't matter who you are; you are amazing, you are loved, and you are valued. And if you don't hear that enough, then there you go…you can hear it from Sami and I because we believe that about you.

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. You don't know how many times I'll be coaching a teen and I'll be just be like, "If I could only let you borrow my belief in you – right – because you are, everybody is beautiful, and you all have so many amazing talents, and you're irreplaceable, and you have good things to offer the world." And we just have a hard time seeing that in our teens.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. I remember reading a quote one time, I don't remember exactly what it said, but it was something along the lines of like, "Every child is a genius…every child, every person, every human being is born a genius". 

And I think we just like forget that a little bit. And genius doesn't mean like I'm just the smartest person on the planet, but we all have like this unique gift and passion and purpose to bring to the world and to bring to others. 

And we forget oftentimes, right? Our brain can offer us a lot of, a lot of thoughts that are opposing to that. And teens are going through so much developmentally and hormonally and at school and just like all the things, it's like this giant like smog of all these issues happening at one time. And so, it can be really challenging. 

And again, my podcast is for, you know, is for parents; and I think a lot of parents find it challenging to parent their teens that are going through these challenges. So yeah. I'd love to talk about-- Yeah, go ahead.

 

Sami Halvorsen: Hold on, really quick. I think that if, as a parent, if we could just open our teen's brain up and look at all the things that are going on in their brain – all the thoughts, all the feelings – I think that we as parents would have so much compassion for the challenges and the trials and the insecurities that our teens are going through. 

Just like every time I meet with a group of teens or coached with a group of teens and they share with me their struggles, I have nothing but compassion and love for them. And I think if we knew that as parents or just, you know, kind of had some understanding of what they were going through, what they were facing, I think that we would parent them completely differently.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. I mean, I 100%, I agree with that. And I think that that's a lot of times when we talk about connection-based parenting on the podcast…it's all about us coming to a space of compassion, not only for us, but also for our kids in whatever way we can so that we just naturally parent different, right? It's going to-- It's going to be different how we interact with them.

And I totally agree. If we could look inside their brains and we could know what's happening in there, we'd look at that and be like, 'Oh my goodness, of course, this is a challenge for you…of course, you responded this way'…or 'Of course you're reactive right now because these are all the things happening in your brain'. So yes, self-compassion and compassion for our kids are just so huge.

I would love to dig into each of these three things; the self-confidence, the social skills, and the social media. And what I want to talk about is kind of like a little bit of why we think this problem is happening, maybe…but then also even more than that, like; what are some specific tools that parents can use or that they can teach their kids, or that teens can use – if teens happen to be listening to this – to help in those areas?

 

How teens social skills and social anxiety have been affected since COVID

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, let's start with the social skills. Like, what do you think is going on there? Why is it more challenging now?

 

Sami Halvorsen: I think now; it's easy to stay in your room, it's easy to isolate, it's easy to feel "connected" – I say "connected" with air quotes on it – it's easy to feel connected without actually being connected. And you get that false sense of connection; and yeah, I mean, if you don't have to go out and talk to people and meet friends, like, why would you, right? Like, you can-- you can have 10,000 friends online and you can be just fine.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. Totally. And I remember reading this book; I love it, by the way…if anybody wants to read, it's called Reclaiming Conversation. And it's all about how technology has changed our world, how it changes our social interactions, even if it's adults…but obviously, as teens too. 

That like, just like what you said…you can stay at home, you can feel like you have a lot of friends…you can feel like you're making connections and building relationships when you're just like at home, you know, clicking buttons on your phone. And again, I think COVID probably amplified that also when we're like, 'Now you have to stay at home and not interact with people'.

 

Sami Halvorsen: Right. You can't-- You don't go to school for two years. Like, I look at some of my nieces and nephews who were juniors and seniors during COVID; and they've gone to college and they just have not thrived at all because they haven't had those developmental things happen that are important for teens during that developmental time, and we're trying to play catch-up. 

And there's just-- There's so many things that need to happen in our teens to help us to be able to function and be a part of society. And when we miss out on those things, it causes a lot of damage.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: It's like, they're like pre-adults, right? They're practicing to be adults, and there's a lot of things that they need to learn there. And even with my son; I have a few kids that deal with anxiety also…and one of them has severe social anxiety, and so it's hard for us to get him really like out of the house to go anywhere where there's going to be people. 

And this has been a problem for a long time, but during COVID when everything got shut down, there was like nothing, he didn't have to leave, right? We didn't leave to go to church, we didn't leave to go to activities; like, everything was shut down for so long. So, when things started to open just a little bit by little bit, we couldn't get him to go anywhere…like even getting in the vehicle was like the biggest disaster ever. 

And it didn't occur to me how much it would affect him. Like, we didn't talk about it a ton. We weren't like thinking about it a lot. Like we tried not to like, you know, totally live in fear about it. But at the same time, like there was just an energy shift that everybody had, that the whole world kind of had that impacts them…and it hugely affected his sleep and his desire to ever leave. 

And like, I mean, he's obviously a little bit younger than a teen, but it was really interesting to see how much it affected his mental health in such a short time.

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. I mean, during those two years you're missing out on important peer-to-peer interactions. You're missing out on growing your self-confidence and your self-esteem. Like there's so much of that that happens in social situations and at school and with teachers and peers that like…yeah, you realize when you don't have it what effect it really does make on it just even your self-confidence.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. Because it seems so common; like it's all just happening kind of naturally, but then when it's taken away, you're like, 'Wait a second, this was actually a big deal that we didn't know.' 

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. 

 

What to do if your teen is struggling with social skills and social anxiety

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, tell me either like tools or ways that you would help support either a parent to support their teen or tools that maybe a teen could use – that maybe a parent could teach them or talk to them about – that would specifically help with this concept of social skills being difficult.

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. So, when it comes to anxiety, my first thing-- And I totally get this as a parent of teens who have anxiety is…when we're a parent of a child or teen that has anxiety, we accommodate so that the teen feels okay. 

So, for example, like I have done this a lot in my life; Like say if we're driving in the car and one of, let's say my younger daughter is like singing or making a noise or like tapping on the chair, right? And so, my other daughter who has anxiety, those kinds of things are very, very annoying to her and triggering to her. 

And so, as a mom, so let's say my other daughter's freaking out because my one daughter is making a noise…as a mom, I'm like, okay, I tell my little daughter, "Stop making-- stop making that noise." Right? Because my older daughter's freaking out. Right? 

And that is teaching the older daughter that, 'Yeah, I'm going to accommodate your anxiety so that everybody in the house can be happy and that we're going to accommodate your emotions, and we're going to make sure that you can stay happy and all of us will tiptoe around your anxiety.' Right? 

Which as a mom, I've learned that no, like making noise as a little girl or singing, those are very appropriate things – developmental appropriate things – to do in the car, right? 

And so, now, it's like, to my older daughter, "No, you need to put your headphones on if you can't handle the noises in the car…noises are a part of driving in the car, they're a part of being in a family, people singing that is normal social stuff that's going on…if you cannot control your emotions or your anxiety around that, then you need to have your headphones on." 

And so, it's learning how to parent differently so that you're not accommodating the anxiety where you're giving your child with anxiety challenges to overcome. So, like, if they are very anxious about going into a grocery store, maybe you have them just walk in and you're with them and you have them buy something…and then you continually do that until the anxiety calms down. 

We don't want to remove life from our kids with anxiety, we don't want to remove the discomfort; we want to teach them how to move through the discomfort. So, any accommodations that we make for our kids with anxiety, I would say, as much as possible, try to remove those accommodations within reason. Like, you don't want to tomorrow to like, "Okay, we're not going to do any of these accommodations", but slowly try to take them, try to take them out of your parenting.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. I have a good example of that actually, because the same child that I was talking about, we use that for him. So, his doctor had mentioned like, you know, 'Try to find situations that you can push him out of his comfort zone, but also you don't want them to be traumatizing.' Right? 

 

Sami Halvorsen: Exactly.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: That is not the goal here to like put them in--

 

Sami Halvorsen: There’s a balance.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: -a panic mode. And so, we typically homeschool, but I'd found this really cool alternative school…we had moved and we were in this new little place just for a while.

And so, I took him there just on like a little like welcome tour with his sister; and he really liked it and he wanted to go. So, I wouldn't make him go every single day, but I'd be like, "Okay, let's, you know, let's try it out…let's go for a few hours today, or let's go for a day today."

And then I would also find other situations that he liked. He loves the outdoors, so I would take him outside, but like places where people were going to be like at a playground or at a, you know, national park or something. And so, finding things that they also enjoy; and it's not just like pushing them entirely to do something that they hate doing, but that has really helped. 

Like over the time, he could only-- He only managed it for a few months, but it really did help. I noticed that it started helping, but I could also tell the point where it started not helping anymore. Like I knew like, "Okay, this isn't, this isn't doing what I want it to do anymore." 

And I think that we, as moms and as dads, have that intuition. And so, I think just like tap into like, okay, what's a gentle way that I could help push them out of their comfort zone? And what are some accommodations that I could kind of change or whatever here? Headphones is such a good one because we deal with that exact same issue that you talked about in our car all the time.

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. And there's always ways, like obviously, you don't want to cause trauma or panic, but there's always ways to like work up to it. So, like if your child can't go into the grocery store yet, then we work on just driving to the grocery store and sitting in the parking lot, and then driving home. 

Like there's always ways to like--  

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Totally.

Sami Halvorsen: -break it up and split it down, break it down, and to slowly challenge the anxiety to a point that's manageable. And the more you challenge the anxiety, the more it continues to complete that brain loop that, 'Oh my gosh, even though I have anxiety about this, I'm going to be okay.'

 

How to tell if a teen is negatively impacted by social media

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. Okay. So, let's pivot to social media. I think we already talked a little bit about the difficulties in social media, right? Like comparison and all of that. 

But what would you do to help teens that are dealing with this? What would-- If they're really struggling with social media or if it's in impacting their mental or emotional health…or even how, maybe even before that, how do you tell that it is?

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. So, I'll have parents come to me and be like, "She was totally fine, and then she started using social media, and she's not so fine." 

So, the whole thing with social media is when we-- Our brains love, and this is what our brains do, is they see things and they make meaning about them. So, if there's a donut on the counter, when I walk into the kitchen in the morning, my brain will see that donut and my brain will make meaning out of that donut. 

Whether it's like, "Oh my gosh, my husband loves me, he got me a donut." Or for me it'd be like, "I'm going to be sick if I eat that, whoever brought me a donut doesn't know me very well." 

So, our brains make meaning about our world and everything around us. So, when we are scrolling social media as we're seeing these images and we're being hit with this concentrated source of what our world should look like, essentially, we take those images and then we make them mean something about us. Right? 

And with teens, a lot of the times it's, 'Something's wrong with my body'…like, 'My body shouldn't look this way', or 'I must not be good enough because I wasn't invited to that' or 'Oh my gosh--' I could go on and on here.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Totally. Our brains are like, let's make a story about this. Oftentimes the story's negative, especially if we're dealing with anxiety.

 

Sami Halvorsen: Right. And, and the story is, is like, "Okay, something's wrong with me." Right? Or "I'm not the way that I should be because of whatever it is I'm seeing on social media." I can-- I can give you examples for like, when I view social media right now, my brain's like, "Oh my gosh, you need to make more money and you need to exercise more…and you definitely shouldn't have eaten that for lunch…and you're not pretty enough, and you're not cute enough." 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes.

 

Sami Halvorsen: And, "Why are you not always on vacation, everybody's always vacation."

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: "Always on vacation, and their life is better and there's something wrong with me." It totally just--

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. And, "Me and my husband have a horrible marriage."

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yep. I think it just adds to all of that comparison, because you're only seeing – people are only sharing the happy, lovely, wonderful parts, usually, most of the time. And so, it definitely, our brain filters that to mean like, 'There must be something wrong with me or my life or my family or my situation.'

 

Sami Halvorsen: Right. And also, the other part of that is that since we are only sharing like the highlight reel, it also tells us that the other part of what we experience in life isn't worthy of being shared. And it's also just kind of like, there's shame about it. Like if I am sad or if I am having a bad day, like we're supposed to keep those things quiet. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes. 

 

Sami Halvorsen: Like, nobody wants to hear about those things; and I think that's the--

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Or they shouldn't be happening or there's something wrong with them. Like nobody else is dealing with those things that we're dealing with.

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yes. And so, I think that part of it, it just, there's a lot of shame in, you know, being like, "Well, I'm not happy, I'm actually really sad right now." "I'm not on vacation all the time." And so, it just kind of sends that message that we should be happy all the time, we should look a certain way; and that's not actually how real life is. Right?

 

How to help teens that are negatively impacted by social media

Crystal The Parenting Coach: How do you help teens with that? Or how would you-- How would you encourage a parent to help their teen with it?

 

Sami Halvorsen: Well, yeah, there's a lot of-- A lot of that is like what we work on in my programs…but just for an example, one of the teens I was working with not too long ago, she was noticing that after she views social media then she looks at herself in the mirror and there's the thought like, "I'm not skinny enough", or just a bombardment of thoughts about everything that's wrong with her physically, and in so many ways. 

And so, one of the things that we worked on was, it's like, "Okay, so next time you look in the mirror, like we're going to try to work with our brain on this, where really, truly the way that you look is probably only like 90, 95% of actually who you are." Like the way that we look physically. 

And then, we went and we talked about all the other things that she is besides the way that she looks. Right? And there's like a lot of body image work there too in learning how to love her body and learning how to love the way that she looks. But really, you guys, we are so much more than our physical appearance, so much more.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Like all the way more. All of us…like, all of those things matter so much more.

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. And so, we went to-- We started talking about like what kind of friend she was; and she was an amazing pianist and golfer, and so many other things about who she really is rather than just the way that her body looks. And by the way, her body's adorable; her body's so cute.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah.

 

Sami Halvorsen: We just-- We just skew it. We just skew it and then, you know, we work on loving our body too. But she was darling. She had no reason to like--

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: To think that, but we do. Our brain does that, right?

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah, it does. It doesn't matter what you look like – how skinny you are – you can always find a way to beat yourself up.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. So, one thing I want to mention too about social media for the parents that are listening to this, because I get this question all the time, what do I do about this? 

Social media is something – and not even just social media – screens, in general, is something that we do need to learn to teach our kids. Like, we want them to develop that skill and develop that muscle of self-regulation, just like we want them to develop all the other muscles. So, we want them to figure out how to use it in what ways and what's appropriate there, just like we do with everything else. 

And so, it doesn't mean you can just be like, "Here, here, have a phone, do everything that you want on it and have all these apps." Like we can have boundaries around that. But just figuring out what healthy boundaries are for you and your child and your situation and all of that.

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. And that's one other thing, like in my social media program for teens, Connected & In Control, we work on still using social media because social media can be for good for so many things. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yes. 

 

Sami Halvorsen: And it's not going anywhere anytime soon. 

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Mm-Hmm.

 

Sami Halvorsen: So, just really, you know, training your brain how to think when you see those images and using social media to make your life better, not destroy yourself with.

 

When to seek outside help for your teen

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. Thank you so much. I think this has been super helpful. We're going to skip over self-confidence just because of time, but one last thing I do want to ask you is, how do you know if you have a teen or a tween that you're dealing with that are maybe suffering from anxiety or depression, maybe social skills, like what you talked about or screen challenges. 

How do you know when therapy for them is more supportive versus you know, coaching or what other ever, there's lots of modalities out there to help our teens, but how would you tell a parent how to just make that choice?

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. So, I think the most important thing here is to know when it's time to get your teen some help. And that really is when you see your teen isolating in their room, their grades are dropping; they're not doing the things that they love to do. 

Teens are all about their friends; they love their friends. And if you notice your teen's not hanging out with their best friends or avoiding their friends or if they're distracting themselves with things all the time, rather than like, kind of--  

I mean, as a parent, you can kind of tell like, "Wait, yeah, maybe they're spending more time in their room, or they're just feeling sad, or they're not their normal, usual happy self"…I would say, if that's kind of what's happening with your teen, then yeah, it's time to seek out some help, seek out help.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Okay. I love that, and I do--

 

Sami Halvorsen: The other-- Really quick, the other thing though too is like, our teens can be doing all the things typically that a normal teen does and they can still be suffering. And so, as a parent, it's important to keep an eye on your teen also, because there's a lot of teens that suffer with anxiety that still go through all the motions, and they don't feel good. And so, just, you know, making sure that you're checking in with your teen.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Yeah. And I think also it goes back to that intuition that we all have about our kids. So, even if everything seemed totally normal on the surface, if there's something inside of you that's like, "I just don't know, I feel like there's-- I feel like there's a difference, I feel like there's a change." You can hone into that – whatever that thought is – and dig into that, and find the support that you need.

 

How to connect with Sami Halvorsen

Crystal The Parenting Coach: So, on that note, Sami, will you tell people how they can connect with you?

 

Sami Halvorsen: Yeah. So, I am on Instagram @TheTeenLifeCoach; and I am the host of The Teen Life Coach Podcast. I have a freebie right now that I'm actually going to give you a link to; it's The 10 most important ways a parent can help their teen with anxiety.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Awesome.

 

Sami Halvorsen: And so, if you want to go to Crystal's show notes, there's lots of things there for parents to be able to do to help their teens if their teen is suffering with the anxiety.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Awesome. And if you are listening onto a device and you can't see the show notes or whatever, just send us a message on Instagram and we will find you the links there. Thanks so much, Sami.

 

Sami Halvorsen: You're welcome. Thanks for having me, Crystal.

 

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Thanks for listening. If you'd like to help spread this work to the world, share this episode on social media and tag me, send it to a friend, or leave a quick rating and review below so more people can find me. If you'd like more guidance on your own parenting journey, reach out.