Helping Your Angry Teen: How to Reduce Anger and Build Connection Using Mindfulness and Positive Psychology

Are you at your wits' end dealing with an angry teen? This important guide offers frustrated parents powerful mindfulness tips to navigate heated moments of interaction with their child, as well as skills based in positive psychology to foster compassion, caring, and lasting connection.

Does your teen get angry easily or act out? You aren't alone. Parenting a teen is hard enough, but parenting an angry teen is especially difficult. You might feel unable to keep your own cool during disagreements, or even worry that your relationship with your teen is doomed. So, how can you make sure you stay grounded when the drama rises and re-establish a sense of connection?

Written by a psychologist and teen expert, this book offers techniques based in mindfulness, compassion, and positive psychology to help you face the challenges that parenting an angry teen presents. You'll discover the clinical and psychological underlying conditions that can contribute to teen anger, skills for improving communication, and mindfulness tips for staying calm yourself. In addition, you'll learn skills for re-establishing a compassionate and connected relationship.

If you're ready to take control of your own reactions and start reconnecting with your angry teen, this book will help guide the way.

"Few challenges of parenting are more daunting than dealing with an angry teen. Having experienced moments like the ones that Mitch Abblett describes here, I can relate to the periodic clouds of utter hopelessness, despair, and frustration that arise when our deep love and devotion to our children is challenged by their behavior and their emotions. This book not only provides a rational and scientifically grounded framework for understanding the often mystifying and bewildering expression of teen anger, but it pairs that understanding with the deep and timeless wisdom of mindfulness practice that can allow us to step outside the anger cloud and maintain some presence to reconnect with ourselves. By practicing mindfulness, we can reclaim our compassion, our inner wisdom, and the practical skills that Abblett teaches here."
- Steven D. Hickman, PsyD, executive director of the University of California, San Diego's Center for Mindfulness; executive director of the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion; clinical psychologist; and associate clinical professor at the UC San Diego School of Medicine

"This gem of wisdom from Mitch Abblett is about way more than teen anger. Mitch wisely recognizes that the openhearted quality of your own unconditionally loving presence is the greatest gift that you can offer your teen. By starting with cultivating your own embodied mindfulness, this book guides you toward the kind of authentic and transformative relationship with your teen that every parent aspires to. "
- Dzung X. Vo, MD, pediatrician, adolescent medicine specialist, and author of The Mindful Teen

"A compassionate, easy-to-read book providing practical guidance while supporting parents who are almost certainly suffering along with their struggling teens. "
- Mark Bertin, MD, developmental pediatrics; author of Mindful Parenting for ADHD

"Helping Your Angry Teen offers clear, useful tools for parents, therapists, and other caregivers to help the angry teenagers in their lives. Adults new to mindfulness might find the tools developed by Mitch Ablett to help angry teens feel better will help them feel better, too. "
- Susan Kaiser Greenland, author of Mindful Games and The Mindful Child