Why Teenagers Sometimes Respond Unpredictably

Teenagers 'may process emotions differently than adults'. A team led by Dr. Deborah Yurgelun-Todd at Harvard's McLean Hospital scanned the brain activity of five young teenagers whilst they viewed pictures of faces and worked out what emotions were being felt by the people in the pictures. The study found that the teenagers' amygdala was activated when they did the task.  The amygdala is a brain centre that processes emotions and memories. Whereas when adults make these assessments they tend show activity in both the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. The pre-frontal cortex is involved in 'planning complex cognitive behaviors, personality expression, decision making and moderating correct social behavior'.


It is interesting to note that teenagers tend to be much worse than adults at identifying someone's emotion by looking at their face.


This is a small sample but I think what it is suggesting is important.    This study suggests that teenagers may be poor at identifying others' emotions because they interpret other people's emotions by noticing their own feelings and perhaps assuming that the other person is feeling the same as they are.


If you think back to what it was like as a teenager - how self-critical you were and how you assumed that others were just as critical of you - this finding makes sense of a lot of teenage behaviour.  


So how do we help our teenagers with this? I think we need to challenge the cultural belief that our thoughts and emotions control our behaviour.  Steve Hayes has written a great blog post on this.


We need to teach them something slightly different.  We need to teach them that thoughts and feelings aren't truth.  We need to teach them to notice their thoughts and feelings, notice the urge associated with those thoughts and feelings, and then pause and check in with who they want to be in the world.


And we need to be very, very kind and compassionate - it isn't easy being a teenager....or a parent.