Growing Together: Finding the Middle Path Through Adolescence
- Mar 6
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 18
There is a particular kind of exhaustion and confusion that comes with parenting a struggling teenager. Most parents of dysregulated teenagers question themselves endlessly, losing confidence in a battle they never wanted to be in. There can be conflict, with slammed doors, arguments that seem to come from nowhere and the feeling that everything you say lands wrong, to withdrawal and isolation, where engaging at all seems like a risk, to both of you.
And on the other side of that wall or slammed door? A teenager who is just as lost. Overwhelmed by emotions that feel too big to name, desperate to be understood, and increasingly convinced that the people who love them most simply don’t get it.
Two people in the same home, in the same storm, each feeling alone in it.
The conflict cycle — and why it’s so hard to break
When a teenager is in emotional crisis, a parent’s nervous system responds. That’s not a failure of parenting, it’s biology. The problem is that the automatic responses that follow — reassuring, escalating, withdrawing, pleading — often do exactly the opposite of what the situation needs.
A parent who moves to reassure too quickly can inadvertently signal that the emotion is too big to sit with. A parent who meets escalation with escalation confirms to the teenager that relationships are unsafe. A parent who withdraws to preserve their own regulation leaves the teenager without an anchor. None of these responses come from a bad place. They come from a parent whose own emotional system is overwhelmed — and who has never been given a framework for what to do instead.
Providing a map for the adolescent nervous system
The teenager in that same moment is fighting their own battle in parallel. Without the skills to identify what they're feeling, tolerate the intensity of it, or communicate it in a way that makes sense to anyone else, they default to the tools they’ve learned to rely on. Shutting down, lashing out and pushing away the very people they need most. This is not defiance. It is a nervous system doing its best without a map.
This is the gap that Dialectical Behaviour Therapy for Adolescents (DBT-A) is designed to close. In small groups, young people learn to build exactly that map – developing the skills they need to navigate internal storms:
Mindfulness: Learning to notice what's happening inside before reacting.
Distress tolerance: Learning to survive the wave without being swept away.
Emotion regulation: Understanding and managing what they're feeling.
Interpersonal effectiveness: Asking for what they need without blowing up the relationship.
The parent hope framework: Shifting the focus
However, these skills cannot happen in a vacuum. They are only as durable as the environment in which they are tested. This is where the Parent Hope framework shifts the question from what can be done about the teenager, to what can the parent do about themselves. Moving from the anxious focus on the teenager, to honest curiosity about one's own reactions, patterns, and triggers; is where real parental confidence begins. Not confidence in controlling a teenager, but confidence in the one thing that was always within reach; themselves.
Two Groups, One Shared Direction
The Growing Together program at The Mind Clinic is designed by Khiarn Raymond, Amy Regan, Sue Daniel and clinic director, Dr Daniel Mullens. It is focused on finding a middle path for a family, to find their way from the extremes and begin to face toward each other.
Each week, two parallel groups run simultaneously. DBT-A for adolescents, with Khiarn Raymond and Amy Regan, and a parent group facilitated by Sue Daniel.
In the parent group, parents are building their own version of the same capacity. It’s not the same skills, but focused on the same underlying shift:
Learning to pause.
Learning to notice.
Learning to respond from a grounded place rather than react from a threatened one.
When both the adolescent and the parent invest in this process by reflecting, challenging their default patterns, and practising something new, the changes that happen inside the group begin to happen at home too. A shared language develops. The old conflict cycle starts to lose its grip.
Program Details
Format: Two parallel groups — adolescent and parent — running simultaneously
Duration: 9 weeks during the school term
When: Saturdays, 9:30am – 11:30am
Where: The Mind Clinic, Leichhardt
Facilitators: Khiarn Raymond and Amy Regan (DBT-A), and Sue Daniel (Parent)
2026 Commencement: Saturday 9 May 2026
Intake assessments: Commencing April 2026
Group size: Small, to ensure safety and genuine connection
About the facilitators
Khiarn is a thoughtful and creative clinical psychologist who enjoys working with young people across a variety of difficulties including anxiety, depression, academic stress, self-image, ADHD and Autism. Khiarn believes groups are a rich source of validation for young people to express themselves and support one another in trying new skills, in a focused and supported therapeutic environment. Khiarn has experience in facilitating a variety CBT and DBT-based skills groups and works part-time at The Children’s Hospital and Westmead.
Amy is a compassionate and open-minded clinician who enjoys helping people to realise their potential and find their "life worth living". Amy believes DBT groups are a great way for clients to learn essential life skills (from facilitators and one another), and practice these in a supported, safe way. Amy has experience facilitating DBT groups in private and public health facilities, including as part of a gold-standard, comprehensive DBT program in a community mental health setting.
Sue is passionate about the healing that happens in groups and witnessing parents move from the isolation of overwhelming feelings toward genuine connection with others who understand as they too learn to understand more about themselves. Sue believes that in a trusted space with shared experiences, shame can be alleviated and replace by hope, as people discover just how much there is to learn from one another.
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