DEEP DIVE: Lisa Damour on the Emotional Lives of Teenagers

What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood | Parenting Tips From Funny Moms

What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood

Kids & Family, Comedy, Parenting

4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2026

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Based on a recent listener question about how to start to let go as our kids get older, this "Deep Dive" series highlights some of our past interview episodes on the topic. There's a mental health crisis among teens. Teens are also highly emotional creatures by design. Adolescent psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour thinks the two are starting to get conflated– and that means parents and educators can sometimes overcorrect in their responses to teens' emotional outbursts. ⁠⁠Dr. Lisa Damour⁠⁠ co-hosts the Ask Lisa podcast and writes about adolescents for the The New York Times, in addition to her clinical practice. Her book discussed in this episode is ⁠⁠The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate Adolescents⁠⁠. Amy and Lisa explore: Why good sleep is the first thing we need to help dysregulated teens solve What the pandemic actually revealed about teens' mental health Key myths and misconceptions about adolescent emotions Dr. Lisa says that we– and our teenagers– can gain much by asking if the strong emotion a teen may be feeling is uncomfortable or unmanageable. If it's uncomfortable, learning to sit with that is part of the process of healthy emotional maturation. Here's where you can find Lisa: Our ⁠⁠previous interview ⁠⁠with Dr. Lisa ⁠⁠https://drlisadamour.com/⁠⁠ @lisa.damour on IG ⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/lisadamourphd⁠⁠ Buy Lisa's book: ⁠⁠https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9780593500019⁠⁠ This episode originally aired on February 24, 2023. What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables. We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/⁠ What Fresh Hell podcast, mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent, teen mental health, adolescent emotions, letting go as kids grow up, parenting teenagers, Dr. Lisa Damour, Ask Lisa podcast, teen emotional regulation, teen anxiety and stress, pandemic teen mental health, parenting teens through big emotions, how to help dysregulated teens, teen sleep and mental health, emotional development in adolescence, teen mental health myths, supporting teen independence, raising emotionally healthy teens, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, Untangled, Under Pressure, connected and compassionate teens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:32.0	Hey everybody, welcome to Fresh Takes from What Fresh Hell Laughing in the Face of Motherhood.
0:36.4	This is Amy. And this week, we are thrilled to welcome back Dr. Lisa DeMore. She's a psychologist who co-hosts the Ask Lisa podcast and writes about adolescence for the New York Times in addition to her clinical practice. She's the author of two New York Times bestsellers, untangled, guiding teenage girls through the seven transitions
0:55.2	into adulthood, and under pressure confronting the epidemic of stress and anxiety in girls.
1:01.1	Lisa's latest book is called The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, Raising Connected, Capable,
1:06.7	and Compassionate Adolescence.
1:08.6	She and her husband have two daughters and live in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
1:12.1	Welcome, Dr. Lisa. Thank you. I am delighted to be back with you. Thank you so much. This is a dog-eared
1:18.6	copy of the emotional lives of teenagers that I have on my desk because I have three. Actually, I have a 20-year-old,
1:24.1	so I have a little teenager plus. But I'm soaking in it, as I like to say.
1:28.3	And you start with such a thunderbolt of realization, at least for me, which is for teenagers, powerful emotions are a feature, not a bug.
1:38.5	Can you tell us how you came to that understanding?
1:41.0	Well, it's one of those things.
1:42.2	And I'll say this is true in a lot of this book,
1:49.4	where I'm actually just laying out really well-established science. I think in some ways, trying to bring us back to a baseline understanding of adolescents that is pre-pandemic,
1:54.4	though informed by the pandemic, but really trying to level set again, because I think one of
1:59.0	the experiences so many of us had through
2:01.3	the pandemic was that we didn't know what was normal, what was not normal. Post-pandemic,
	...

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