You’re Practicing the Future You Fear

Worrying about your teen may feel like part of being a good parent.

But worry doesn’t protect your teen. It doesn’t predict the future. And it rarely helps you prepare.

Instead, it can make you practice the future you’re most afraid of.

In this episode, Ben shares how he spent three days worrying about a hard conversation. He lost sleep, felt sick, and imagined everything that could go wrong. Then the conversation happened—and it was fine.

Parents often do the same thing.

Your teen misses an assignment, and your mind jumps to him failing school. He spends too much time playing video games, and you worry he’ll never become responsible.

Those thoughts change how you show up. You may remind more, lecture longer, react faster, or try harder to control your teen.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why worry isn’t the same as love
• How fear changes the way you parent
• Why you don’t need to suffer before something happens
• How to care deeply without expecting the worst
• How to practice hope, trust, and confidence instead

You can’t control everything that happens in your teen’s future. But you can choose which version of yourself you practice becoming today.

Take the free Parent Trap Quiz at benpughcoaching.com/quiz.

Are You Caught in the Parent Trap?

Discover the hidden patterns that are keeping you stuck—and how to break free.

Take this quick (and eye-opening) quiz to uncover which common parenting trap you’re falling into with your teen.
 Get a personalized roadmap to help you parent with more clarity, confidence, and connection—starting today.

https://benpughcoaching.com/parent-trap-quiz

Transcript

Ben 0:00

I'm Ben Pugh and you're listening to IMPACT! Parenting with Perspective. This podcast is all about helping parents manage the mental and emotional drama that comes with parenting teens so they can focus on what's most important. Building rock solid relationships and having a powerful impact on their teen's life. Join me each week as I dive into real tools to help you and your teen turn struggles into strengths.

0:31

Hello, and welcome back to today's episode. Thank you for being here. in today's episode, you're gonna learn why worrying about your teenager and their future doesn't actually benefit either you or your teen, and how, in most cases, it actually makes things a little bit harder because it's making you emotionally experience this thing that you're afraid of happening. and I'm gonna share with you a real-life scenario where I had to deal with worry. And looking back, honestly, for about three days, I was just completely focused that everything that could go wrong would go wrong, and I was busy focusing on things that are not in my control, and it just made that time miserable. And you're also going to learn how to practice hope, confidence, optimism without ignoring real problems and pretending that just everything is perfect and hunky-dory. So let's just dive into today's content, and, yeah, I- I'm gonna just start by sharing, I had to deal with an upset parent recently. And I don't wanna give too many details, but, This is something I don't think very many people like confrontation. I don't maybe shy away from it as much as some people because in football coaching, in being... I'm on a governing board for our local credit union. As a principal, I had to deal with a lot of confrontation, and yet I still don't like it. And this one came out of the blue, just completely shocked me. And for about three days, I lost sleep. I had more heartburn than normal. I was just stressing. And at one point I was like, "Why am I so worried about this?" And I realized I was worried about all these things that were outside of my control. Well, what if she yells at me? What if... Like, what's she gonna say? What's she gonna do? What are these other people involved going to think? What if I say the wrong thing? And I carried that around with me for three days leading up to this actual event, and I would feel it when I went to bed, I would feel it when I woke up, and oftentimes there was just a pit in my stomach throughout the day. And then the meeting happened, and it was fine. And all that fear, it didn't predict the future, and it didn't protect me. It didn't make the meeting go any better. It just wasted three days of my life. And the truth is, if you are anything like me, you have probably done this exact same thing. You mentally rehearse, well, what if our son fails a class, or what if he doesn't make the team, or what if he gets addicted, or what if he's living in our basement at age 35? And for some reason, we expect that this Worry beforehand is going to help, but the truth is, it doesn't really help. So, if you're worried about an argument that you might have with your son about video games or a cell phone, I promise you, it doesn't help. And if you don't believe me, go ahead, worry about it, and then observe the conversation. See if it helped or anything. The truth is, it probably makes it a little bit harder because now you're walking into the conversation, you're tense, you're afraid, your fight or flight has been triggered, and you're ready to go to battle. And so today, I wanna talk to you about what happens to you as a mom when you stop practicing this future fear, when you stop mentally and emotionally rehearsing the exact thing that you're afraid of, and then you just re-harness that energy and put it to work rehearsing being the mom that you want to be. So, let's talk about the problem that's easy to see. A lot of parents are stressed. I just read a study. They're like, "Man, we talked about teens having anxiety and having all this stress and worry in their lives." Their parents are just as bad. And my thing is, like, a lot of parents come to me and ask, "Well, how do I help my teen stress out less?" And the answer is, be the change that you want to see. You stress out less. You learn how to manage your mind and your emotions. And so if you are stressed about your teen's grades or their future or a possible argument, don't feel like you're alone in this. A lot of people struggle with this. But the truth is The worries, the fear, the anxiety, none of those are really serving you as a parent. And in fact, they're holding you back. These emotions of fear, stress, worry, they can lead to sleepless nights. They can lead to you reminding your teenager constantly so they don't forget, or turning into lecture mom or lecture dad, or just over-explaining. It can lead to you really locking down and trying to control your teen. And it can lead to emotionally reacting more negatively and more extreme. And it takes away your ability to enjoy your teenager. But I promise you, like, that's what we can see on the surface. There is a deeper pattern at play, and it isn't just simply negative thinking. A lot of people are like, "Oh, just stop thinking negatively." Yeah, that's nice. I watched something recently. It's like you can't just stop thinking negatively. You actually have to replace the negative thinking with something different. with more positive thinking. And so a lot of parents, they subconsciously believe that, "Man, I'm a good parent because I'm worried about it. me worrying, me stressing, that's just because I love my teen so much. I can't prevent it." And the truth is, your mind doesn't just think about the future, it starts to emotionally experience that future right now. And so you might think, "Oh, well, I'm just this stressed because I'm a good mom." But the truth is, that stress, your mind is like, "Okay, well, let's emotionally prepare for this right now." Your mind subconsciously starts to believe that that's the reality, and then you start to respond to that mentally, emotionally, and behaviorally. This happens in movies. Like, you can go watch a horror show and you know that it's not real. You know that you are in a movie theater with a bunch of people eating popcorn and drinking soda, and there's no such thing as the monsters that are up on the screen, and yet you jump, your heart races. Because what we perceive subconsciously, we start to believe. And a lot of times, when parents start to believe that, "Man, my teen missed one assignment, he's never gonna graduate now," or, "He's arguing with me. He's just disrespectful." Or a teen who plays video games for several hours, like, "Man, oh, he will never learn responsibility." And the truth is, these are thoughts. These are ways that you are choosing to perceive your reality, which leads to how you interact with reality emotionally. And oftentimes, the parents stop being the parents that they want to be because they are so busy focusing on, "How do I avoid this disaster that I'm sure is gonna happen?" Even though it only exists in their mind. The good news is we can change this aspect of parenting. The old belief is like, "Hey, no, worrying, it helps me prepare for what could go wrong. It shows that I'm a good mom. It helps me get ready for the situation." Instead, you can explore this: What if I can care deeply without emotionally rehearsing disaster? What if worry isn't the same as loving or being a good parent? We can start to explore like, yeah, I can care deeply, but I can also optimistically hope for what could go right rather than pessimistically worrying about all the things that could go wrong And this doesn't mean that you know everything is gonna work out exactly how you want, because it doesn't. Like the interaction with this parent didn't necessarily work out exactly how I wanted, but it worked out how it worked out, and I have the confidence that, man, I can handle that. I'm sure she can handle that. Like, I'm just gonna trust myself and my ability to handle hard things. And as a parent, if you can move from, "Oh my goodness, I'm so worried about this. Like, what if, what if this thing happens? What if I can't handle it?" What if you can shift that to like, "You know what? I can handle hard things. I can care about my teenager without catastrophizing and worrying about everything that could go wrong. I can just trust that whatever happens, I trust myself and I trust my teenager to be able to handle the next step." And that's important because I'm not telling you that, "Oh, just think positively and nothing bad will happen." The truth is, I'm telling you, stop making yourself suffer over a future that hasn't even happened emotionally, mentally. Stop making yourself experience this and suffer, and just show up in reality as reality is and as it unfolds, and just practice being the type of parent that you want to be. When it comes to how your mind works, your mind is going to find evidence that supports what you already believe. If you believe that your teen is just super disrespectful, every time your teen rolls his eyes or has a short answer or pushes back, you're gonna believe, "Oh my goodness, he's so disrespectful." If you already believe, "Man, my teen is so lazy," you're gonna notice everything your teen isn't doing. You're gonna overreact to when your teen is playing video games. But if you can believe, my teen has the power to figure this out. My teen can handle disappointment," it means that your mind starts filtering out all the negative things that could go wrong and starts exploring all the things that could go right. And you don't always have to just get into the catastrophizing. You don't have to accept when your teen refuses to do homework, but you can start to see it through a different light. Even if my teen chooses not to do homework, I'm sure he's gonna be okay, rather than, "Oh my goodness, my teen's not doing homework. What if he drops out of high school? What if he doesn't go to college? What if he lives in my basement until he's 35?" You have the power to change the story, to change the narrative in your mind about what's going on. And the truth is, worry and fear will make you experience more pain. Like, say the thing that you're scared of happening actually does happen. If you spent three days worrying about it leading up, now you've experienced the pain of the three days like I did stressing out about this meeting, and you're experiencing it again, only now in reality. Why not just experience it once in reality? You don't have to pre-suffer to prepare yourself. And a lot of parents are disconnecting from their teenagers because they are pre-suffering. They are worried about what could go wrong, and they're just living in a state of fear. Now, I wanna quickly give you an example of the opposite. I don't know if you know this about me, but Thanksgiving is my all-time favorite holiday, especially when my birthday falls within, like, the break from school and work, and we get Thanksgiving. I spend a good two weeks just looking forward to Thanksgiving. And I plan my Thanksgiving. I imagine how good the food's gonna be, how fun it's gonna be to hang out with my friends and family and play board games, to play our annual Turkey Bowl, and I just look forward to it. I'm so excited. I just can't wait. And the truth is, that's the exact same skill that the brain is using when it catastrophizes, and it worries, and it just hyper-focuses on what could go wrong. It's the same skill, like when I imagine how great Thanksgiving will be and how everything is just gonna go great. And your brain knows how to predict the future and practice the future. We've seen it. It does it when you're stressed and when you're worried. We've seen it in my life when I'm excited for Thanksgiving. I'm predicting what might happen in the future. I'm predicting how I'm gonna feel, what I'm gonna be like. The question is, which future you do you want to practice? If you're like the parents that I work with, fear will change you. It will change how you handle tough parenting situations. It will change how you connect with your teen. It will change how you show up as a mom. Worried parents have worried thoughts, and they focus on that, and they have a hard time connecting with their teen. They lose control of their voice, their body language, the way they behave. But the same is true for the other end. Confident parents, optimistic parents, they focus on what could go right. They just trust, "Hey, my teen's gonna be okay. I'll be okay. I can handle this." And it changes how you show up as a parent. And the deeper thing, like we can focus just on the anxiety and the stress and the worry, but the deeper root cause is the pattern of stress and worry and focusing on the things outside of your control. And the truth is, if you can address this at the root, and if you can start practicing changing your focus and showing up with a different identity, if rather than focusing on everything that could go wrong, you just trust, "No, I-- everything has always worked out. Like I'm still here. It's still working out. I trust it will continue to work out," it will change how you show up as a parent. And it doesn't mean that you allow disrespect and ignore failing grades. It means that you look at the same issues through a new lens. And it's okay. this can be hard, but I'm capable of doing hard things. I don't know exactly how this will turn out, but I trust that my teen will be able to handle it. I trust that I will be able to handle it I wanna leave you with this one thing. You have more power to be the parent of your dreams than you realize, and if you are parenting out of fear, I promise you, you are holding yourself back. If you would like help with this, and if you'd like to learn more about this, go take my free Parent Trap quiz. You can go to benpughcoaching.com/parenttrap. quiz. it'll take you 90 seconds or less, and it will help you start being that parent of your dreams. I'll talk to you soon