Divine Download: Navigating Cyber Bullying and Counseling for Teens

Generations of parents have addressed hardship with familiar adages. These sayings may retain a kernel of truth but are often misguided platitudes that deny the value of our experiences and emotions. For example, consider the phrase “What doesn’t kill a person, makes him or her stronger.” While well-intentioned, it contributes to the problem. In keeping a “stiff upper lip,” we dismiss the severity of the mental and emotional health issues our teens face. This is why counseling for teens may be for you.

While we may have defended our younger selves with the assertion that sticks and stones may break bones, but words can never hurt, this is another myth. Words have the potential to deconstruct our teens’ worlds from the inside out. This is especially true when they populate feeds and comment threads in spaces where our teens spend substantial time online. Redlands Christian Counseling can help guide both teens and parents in navigating the emotional impact of online interactions and fostering healthier communication.

Bullying surfaces online in subtle ways parents wouldn’t always notice. Damaging cyber content such as pictures and videos may be lodged in a storage cloud, but these sound bites and their consequences can outlast the demolition of one’s social credibility among peers. They have the potential to attack one’s reputation, surfacing through college, scholarship, or even employment screenings, long after the immediate threat of the bully has come and gone.

While bullying isn’t a new problem, the methods, means, and results are met with depressive and deadly outcomes, sometimes resulting in youth suicide. Bullying isn’t limited to in-person contact but remains inclined toward stalking and harassment.

Its modern context is intensified and cruelly personalized. Social pressures compound on digital platforms. The viral nature of information spreads, often leveraging harmful consequences on our teens that may require additional interventions such as counseling.

Shaking off the effects of social pressure is not as easy as it might appear to parents and caregivers as school or community-based bullying doesn’t always show itself at home. Bullying’s effects may not have produced a noticeable disruption in behavior or mood, but the internal havoc is rather destructive. While that isn’t the case with all teens, some can be particularly vulnerable.

Our kids may be suffering in spaces where caring adults don’t always recognize the nuanced nature of hazing and modernized bullying. The issues plaguing their young minds and social circles are killing them, literally and figuratively. Counseling provides a viable remedy to help us and them.

The peer group remains one of the most powerful forces in a young person’s world. Denigration by one’s peers can bring shame, causing teens to feel that they should be able to dismiss a bully, yet paralyzed that they cannot. Teens express feelings of helplessness and hopelessness when they encounter the depressive effects of the trauma associated with sustained harassment.

Parents’ lack of familiarity with youth culture, its terms, or being conversant in current technologies masquerades as a disadvantage. It appears to widen the chasm between us and the ability to champion the teens we love.

We can prepare and respond to these pressures by fostering the sense of belonging that is attacked when our teen daughters and sons are bullied. Though we may be tempted to shield our teens from all adversity, parental and counseling support paired with empathy are key. They can be a catalyst to develop the strengths and skills to handle toxic behaviors and environments.

We can build our teens and boost their resilience by appropriately sharing strategies for navigating our own experiences. There may be adult bullies in our spheres of influence, but helping teens to understand the nature of a bully and his or her underlying insecurity is a teachable skill that can be gained through counseling.

Though we can’t necessarily run from them, we can have transparent dialogue with our teens, whether in joint or individual counseling, on how to navigate interactions, ensure self-care, and establish healthy boundaries.

Next steps in pursuing counseling for teens

When you invest attention in your teens’ lives, in person and online, with friends and strangers, they foster a growing ability to discern the obvious good as well as the gray areas. Though your teens may have experienced some negativity, their online presence can be transformed into a positive force to produce good outcomes.

Contact us at Redlands Christian Counseling today to schedule with a Christian counselor in Redlands, California. The licensed therapists in Redlands can help your teen process their experience and harness principles to move forward. As you arm them with spiritual and practical tools, your teens will grow in their relationship with Christ. Between your parenting and supportive counseling, your teens will access the divine download essential to leading healthy and productive lives.