The teenage years are a transformative time in a person’s life. During this time, individuals are developing mentally, physically, and emotionally. In addition, they are building habits that will dictate the choices they will make as adults. Therefore, when teens are empowered to learn the necessary skills, they are more likely to be successful in meeting their goals and caring for their needs. In particular, strategies that help improve emotional well-being help empower teens. They provide ways for teens to heal from addiction and mental health challenges by fostering self-love, emotional regulation, and resilience.

Tony Hoffman knows all too well how important these years are. As a teen, Tony Hoffman was well-established in the BMX Racing community. He and others expected him to be highly successful in his late teen years and as a young adult. However, under the surface, Tony was struggling with crippling anxiety and depression. Tony Hoffman did not learn to nurture his emotional well-being as a teenager and, as a result, found himself incarcerated, struggling with addiction, and with extremely poor mental health. Fortunately, teens and parents can recognize the signs early, helping teens build the skills to care for their emotional needs and their overall well-being.

Substance Use in Adolescents: Signs

The rate of substance use in adolescents is higher than parents or teens often realize. Research shows that adolescents get involved in illicit drug use as early as 6th grade or 12 years old, and adolescents are at a very high risk of beginning to use drugs, drink alcohol, and smoke tobacco. When teens use drugs or alcohol, it puts them at a higher risk of alcoholism, other addictions, mental health disorders, and crime in their lives as adults.

These statistics are informative and frightening. They point to the need for parents to see the early signs of adolescent substance use in order to help teens find a way forward that protects them and helps them build a life free from addiction and mental health challenges. One of the earlier signs of substance use in adolescents is change. Changes that often occur include:

• Change of friends

• Withdrawing from family

• Changes in behavior at school and school performance

• Emotional shifts and emotional stability

• Personality changes

• Changes in weight, sleep habits, or eating habits

While these changes are often associated with substance use, it can be difficult to decipher if they are due to substance use. This is because teens are in a time of development, which means they are changing. As teens develop, they go through periods of spending time with different friend groups, trying out new habits, and feeling emotional changes due to hormonal shifts. Therefore, it is important to know a teen well enough and watch for consistent signs of drug use. It is also helpful to have a working relationship with a teen to be able to discuss what you notice in a way that is helpful for them to learn how to best avoid substance use.

Lack of Emotional Well-Being and Substance Use

Many risk factors play a role in substance use in adolescents. One of these risk factors is a lack of emotional well-being. Emotional well-being refers to an individual’s ability to accept and manage their emotions. This means that when they experience stressors, they can control their emotions and heal from the negative emotions that they experience.

Accepting and managing emotions is a skill that teens need to learn. Research shows that educating teens on emotional skills helps decrease their substance use and lower the risk of future substance use. Therefore, the connection between the two is significant.

Emotional well-being and substance use are connected for several reasons. Having these emotional skills helps adolescents deal with peer pressure, see the long game and how to meet their goals, and cope with the inevitable stressors of life as a teen and an adult. Each teen’s experience is unique. Therefore, the challenges they face are unique. Emotional well-being helps teens to cope no matter what difficulties they meet.

Peer Pressure

Being a part of a social group is important for people of all ages, including adolescents. As a result, the habits of the peer group can impact a teen. Peer pressure is when an individual is pushed into doing something. It can be both negative and positive. Teens can be pressured into exercise because all of their friends are playing soccer that day. However, they can also be pressured into unhealthy behaviors such as substance use.

When teens struggle with emotional well-being, they lack the awareness and skills to know how they feel, share these feelings, and make a change. In a situation such as peer pressure, this often results in them not making choices that are ideal for them. Therefore, a lack of emotional well-being translates into teens being pressured into substance use.

Some teens may be able to use substances once and not have an issue. However, what starts with peer pressure can result in a quick downward spiral into substance abuse, addiction, and crime. Tony Hoffman started by using illegal substances one time and quickly slipped out of his life as a promising BMX Racer to homelessness and crime.

A Quick Fix

Challenges are a normal part of life, and tens are bound to run into difficult situations where they need to problem-solve, communicate, and cope. When teens have emotional skills, they can work through these challenges. They learn to recognize their own emotions, communicate them to loved ones, and find a way forward that is best for them.

However, this takes a significant amount of emotional skills. When teens lack emotional well-being, they are more likely to look for a quick and effective solution. This is due to the lack of skills they need to problem-solve effectively. Substance use is a quick fix. Depending on the substance, it can help a teen to feel less stressed and more energetic and improve their focus. Long-term substance use has the opposite effect. However, the immediacy and speed of the reaction can make a teen seek substances as a solution to their issue.

Stress and Emotional Well-Being

Experiencing stress is a normal part of life. When a teen has the emotional skills, stress is not problematic. Stress helps teens to learn new skills, push themselves, and grow. However, learning and growing from stress requires emotional skills, including emotional awareness and problem-solving. When a teen has these skills, stress can translate to growth.

However, when teens lack emotional well-being, they cannot cope with stress. Therefore, they become distressed and are negatively impacted emotionally, mentally, and physically. As a result, teens who lack emotional skills often find themselves overwhelmed and looking for a way to solve this feeling. Substance use is an easy way to feel better, leading teens to use substances as the solution to the stress they are experiencing.

Improving Emotional Well-Being in Teens

Fortunately, emotional well-being is based on emotional skills. As it says in the name, emotional skills can be learned. This means that if teens lack emotional skills, they can change and grow. By doing so, they decrease their risk of substance use both as an adolescent and an adult.

The emotional skills that help to improve emotional well-being include self-love, resilience, and emotional regulation. Fortunately, these skills not only help teens not to use substances but also to reach other goals. These skills help teens to build better relationships, meet academic goals, and care for their own needs throughout their lives.

Self-Love Fosters Emotional Well-Being

Many teens struggle with their self-esteem, feeling significant amounts of shame and negativity. While this is common, it is also harmful as adolescents develop and define their sense of self. Therefore, when a teen does not believe in their worth, it is common that they grow into an adult who has low self-esteem.

Tony Hoffman experiences this as a teen and as an adult. While he was struggling with his mental health, his self-esteem decreased. Being slated for success as a BMX Racer and still struggling with his mental health made it even more difficult for him. His lack of self-esteem impacted him in several ways, including his ability to believe in himself and get himself help.

Fortunately, teens can learn to love themselves, increasing their self-esteem. In doing so, they begin to believe that they can change and that they are worthy of help and assistance when they need it. Finally, self-esteem helps teens to see and feel that their thoughts and opinions matter. In a situation where they are being peer pressured into substance use, self-esteem helps them believe in their ability to say no and be ok.

Resilience

The term resilience speaks to an individual’s ability to bounce back from negative experiences. It is an emotional skill that requires a person to acknowledge, process, and reframe experiences. For example, let’s say a teen is bullied. If they are resilient, they are likely to acknowledge that their feelings have been hurt, seek help, and move forward. How they choose to move forward will vary for each individual and their unique situation. However, resilience helps them to not internalize the situation or shut down.

Resilience is an important skill in emotional well-being. There will always be stressors, but resilience allows individuals to meet these challenges, learn from them, and heal. Without it, every stressor causes a person to be left shut down or unable to move forward.

Adolescence is an ideal time to learn resilience as it is a time of growth and change. Parents can guide teens in learning to be more resilient by assisting them when they hit a stressful time. For example, if a teen is struggling with a friendship. Parents can support their teen by talking through their teen’s experience, offering suggestions, or simply listening to their teen. When a teen feels supported, they can release their initial emotions and think through their options to move forward.

Emotional Regulation

Being able to regulate emotions is highly important for emotional well-being. When an individual can regulate their emotions, they are more aware of how they feel, choose how they want to express their feelings and help themselves to reframe their emotions. Essentially, emotional regulation is what gives an individual the ability to control their feelings.

There are many ways to regulate emotions. A highly effective strategy is for individuals to question or reframe their feelings. For example, a person who is angry for being cut off in traffic can ask themselves if they have ever accidentally cut someone off, which helps them to separate themselves from their initial response.

Helping teens learn emotional regulation is very important. Teens can help themselves by recognizing their own emotions and taking steps to try different methods that help them to feel their emotions dissipate. Parents can help teens by talking through difficult emotions. They can also provide a framework to help. For example, parents can teach teens to take five deep breaths before responding when angry. This gives teens practical actions to take when experiencing challenging emotions.

Tony Hoffman’s Story: Improving Emotional Well-Being

When Tony Hoffman found himself incarcerated and struggling with addiction and mental health challenges, he had poor emotional well-being. He knew that learning to manage his emotions was important, and he began to take small steps to move forward. While it was not easy, Tony Hoffman was able to change. In prison, he set goals for himself that were deeply important to him. Improving his emotional well-being was important on the path to meeting these goals and ultimately helped him to succeed in every goal that he set.

Understanding Stigmas

There are many stigmas that surround mental health and emotional challenges. Teens see these stigmas in their daily lives manifested in teasing or bullying. Tony Hoffman faced stigmas as well. He was told he couldn’t ever change and that all the work he was doing was hopeless. However, Tony didn’t stop. He kept his head down and did the work he needed to do for himself. This included improving his emotional well-being.

Understanding stigmas was an important part of the healing process for Tony. The more he understood others’ stigmas, the more he understood his own stigmas that he defined himself by. Tony learned that he needed to believe that he was worthy of change and that he could take steps to live his life in a different way.

Daily Habits of Emotional Well-Being

When Tony Hoffman was first incarcerated, he knew it was time for him to make some changes. However, while being incarcerated there were only so many things he could do. One of the primary things he focused on was his emotional well-being. He asked himself what he could do every day to benefit his emotional well-being and compiled a list for himself.

For Tony, he found that small daily habits had a significant influence on his mood, state of mind, and emotional well-being. Therefore, he took steps to be consistent with these practices, which included improving his physical health, state of mind, and environment. Tony worked to make his bed every day, exercise regularly, and do mental exercises that helped him find peace and calm in a sea of stress.

Over time, Tony slowly changed. The more he changed, the more hope he had to continue to change. While Tony Hoffman did not know how he was going to meet his goals, he knew that action was better than inaction. Therefore, he did everything he could think of. When teens are learning to improve their emotional well-being, this is an important lesson. They may not know exactly how something will impact them, but continual work and effort toward emotional health will pay off when it is consistent.

Many teenagers struggle with their emotional health. Tony Hoffman was one of these adolescents. However, not all adolescents need to hit rock bottom to start making changes. As a teen or a parent of a teenager, you can start by taking steps today. By empowering your teen to make changes and improve their emotional health, you can improve their mental health, decrease their risk of addiction, and improve their satisfaction and happiness. Tony Hoffman offers motivational speaking that helps to address these issues. His work is centered around empowering teens to make changes, grow emotionally, and be aware of the risks they are taking. To learn more about Tony Hoffman and his work, call (559) 392-8897 today.