Teen Girl Mood Swings | Why Her Body Not Her Attitude, Is Sending A Message - Teen Whisperer

So your daughter was fine at breakfast. Actually having a laugh with you, connecting, talking over something, telling you about her day, and then she comes home six hours, seven hours, eight hours later, and it's like somebody swapped her for a completely different girl. It's like Jacqueline Hyde, isn't it? She gives you one-word answers, a door that doesn't slam so much as it detonates the entire house, and you're left reeling from that slam. And you're left there standing in the hallway thinking, what the friggity frig just happened there?

What did I do wrong? I just want to say, right now, you did nothing wrong. But let's actually find out what did. So hiya, and welcome back to the Team Whisperer, the podcast for mums of girls that connects all the dots everyone else is staring at in isolation. When your daughter's alarm system is going off constantly, it's never just about the one thing, as we keep being told. It's about everything, all of it, all at once, adding up over time. And the problem with every other approach is that it picks out one dot and stares at it.

I draw the whole picture, I zoom out, I look at what's happened before, what's going on for her in her body and her mind, what she's actually dealing with on a day-to-day basis.

It's all connected, and when you see that, you go from confused and scared to oh my god, now I get it. So yeah, I'm Rach Friedley, and I'm here to support you. So, right, let's get into it. So, last week I introduced you to something that sits underneath every single episode from here onwards. That is never just about your daughter's behaviour, as I just said. It's also about the story you tell yourself about it, what you see, what you make it mean, how that then makes you feel, and what you then do about it.

This week I want to actually use that on something real that we're all dealing with as mums or girls because she's so moody is one of the biggest stories going. It's what we say when we run out of other explanations and it says almost nothing. Nada, zero, zilch. So let's do exactly what I talked about last week. Let's not ask what's wrong with her, let's ask what's going on for her. So when that door slams, the story that shows up instantly is something like, is she depressed? Am I losing her? Does she hate me?

Or maybe you've even caught yourself googling ADHD, anxiety, autism at midnight, wondering if this is a label you should, inadvertent commas, because you know how much I hate the word have caught sooner. And underneath all of that, the bitch you don't say out loud to anyone is something closer to, I don't recognise who she is anymore. I'm walking on eggshells in my own house. And maybe, just maybe, there's a secret feeling behind that. The one you feel guilty for even having in your head, that you dread her coming home some days because you don't know which version of her is gonna walk through that door.

I just want to say, stop. Right there. This is not bad mum thoughts. This is exactly what I talked about last week, and I just want to say, we've all been there. Your brain is filling the gap with fear because it doesn't have the real solution, the information yet. You are definitely not failing her. You just haven't been handed the map for this one. So let's build it together. Here's the map. Woohoo! Mood is an attitude, it isn't a decision she's making to be difficult, as people keep telling me time and time again, and I'm like, hello, this is my area, this is what I specialise in.

And they're still telling me attitude, she's choosing to do it, she's choosing to do that, and you're just like, no, she's not. Mood is data, her body's version of a message it doesn't have words for, and most of the time it's got absolutely nothing to do with what happened right in front of you. It's got everything, however, to do with three things you can actually tune into once you know where to look sleep debt, blood sugar, and sensory overload. I mean, think about it. Our teenage girl's Cacadian rhythm has physically shifted.

Proven point that one, it's science. Her body doesn't release melatonin until later in the day than yours does. And she needs way more sleep than she is not getting. Not less, as people also tell us. She actually needs more in her teenage years than she did at any other time in her life, bar when she was newly born. So if she went to bed at 11 o'clock, didn't get sleep till 12 or 1, and then got up at 7 o'clock, it's not rocket science. She's not operating on a full tank. She's operating on five, maybe six hours sleep.

That is nowhere near enough. So strangely enough, everything drains faster, everything sets her off quicker, not rocket science, as I've already said. That is an attitude, that is just simple maths. She's waking when she should be in a deep REM sleep cycle, and she's not, she's waking up from it. Then number two, you've got blood sugar. When was her last proper meal before she walked through that door moody? If it's been five or six or seven or eight or nine hours, and let's sort this: school lunch for a teenage girl is so often three bites and a packet of crisps eaten standing up, isn't it?

Because there's no room to sit down, there's nothing on the menu that she wants, or it's too warm and her sandwiches have gone squishy, you know it. Her blood sugar has crashed, plus, she's not eating what her body craves. Her body is craving protein, it's craving carbohydrates, it's craving those vegetables and that fruit. So a crashing blood sugar and a crashing mood look identical from the outside. Hangry, talked about it last week, is not a joke. Hangry, it's hunger and anger together. There's also had sad and hungry.

It is physiology, it's her body telling her that she needs food. But when we've been pushed down time and time again for listening to our bodies and just told to just get on with it and it's not the time for food, you ignore those signs. So let's listen to them. And then the last one here is sensory overload. I mean, think about it. Six hours of those blinking long fluorescent jubes, corridor noise, 40 voices at a time at a at once. Sorry, a phone possibly buzzing in a pocket all day because of course it's on silent, but maybe it's on vibration, and if she's got an eye watch, that's constantly going off again and again and again and again and again.

Her nervous system and her body has been absorbing input with nowhere to discharge it. By 3:30 in the afternoon, I'm saying that as in the UK, that's when we finish school, she is full. Her stress bucket is absolutely full. Possibly it's overflowing, and when it's full, it doesn't ask nicely for space, it slams the door, it tries to get away. And remember what I said last week about the 28-day cycle, not the 24-hour one. This is exactly where it shows up. In her volatile week, all of this is way harder, harder for her, and harder for you to see.

Not because she's being dramatic, again, something else that's people keep regularly telling me, but because her body genuinely has less capacity for stress that week. I mean, you know, in the week you have your period, do you feel like having an argument with me? Well, yeah, you possibly do. Um, do you feel like you're on a ghost load? Do you feel like you can't deal with everything? Yeah, it's not, it's the same for her.

She has that happens like clockwork. Because it is, it's happening like clockwork because she has that 28-day cycle. So her mood isn't a message about you, it's a message from her body about strangely enough, her body. So here's the thing this week's version of what I asked you to do last week. Notice what you're seeing, notice the story you're telling yourself, ask yourself if it's a fact or a story, or what else could it be? So, applied to mood, it looks like this. Notice what you're seeing. So the door slammed, no words, a plain fact, nothing added, no communication, no connection, feeling because I can't put that into words, and then notice that story.

The one that shows up instantly, the one you're telling yourself, she hates me, something is wrong. Oh my giddy aunt, what's going on here? La da da da da. And then ask yourself: is this a fact or is this story? I mean, at the end of the day, most of the time it is story. You don't actually know yet, and then ask, what else could this be? And now you've got three real physical possibilities to offer instead of the scary one. She's tired, she's hungry, she's overloaded, or if the timing fits, it's her volatile week and she's exploded.

You still don't know which one it is. You just need enough doubt in the scary story to walk towards her differently. Because it will change your whole body dynamics. If you're thinking, oh my god, she's angry at me, oh my god, she doesn't want to be with me. You enter that space with her in that mode. But if you're thinking, okay, she could be tired, hungry, or overloaded, it takes the fear out of it, it takes you out of the situation, and that is a game changer, trust me. So here's the part that turns this into way more than just a coping trick for you.

Because last week I said this podcast is about both of you, not just her. So once you've widened that lens, once you've zoomed out and looked at the bigger picture, all the dots together, don't default to leave her alone, she needs space. But yeah, sometimes she does, but so often what she actually needs is you without the pressure of a conversation. So instead of retreating, offer something small and low states together. Make her a milkshake with ice cream and vanilla extract in it. Because it's what she needs, it's what her body's craving, but it means you're also giving her something that makes her calm.

Or put the kettle on. Want one? Want a cup of tea? Want a drink? I'm doing a drink. Do you want one? Come and stir this for me for a second. I'm taking the dog out, she fancy a little bit of a wonder. I'm going down the river, she fancy a bit of a plunge. No agenda, nothing that requires her to perform being okay. Because do you know what? She's been doing that all day and she's had enough. She just wants timeout. She wants just that time. It's not a fix for the mood, it's a thread kept open, and those small, unremarkable threads are what actually builds the connection I talked about last week far more than any conversation about what's going wrong ever does.

So, one thing this week: when a mood hits, her mood obviously, or yours, run it through what you learned last week, what you're seeing, the story you're telling yourself, is it a fact or a story, and what else could it be? Then offer one teeny tiny small thing instead of giving her space by default. You offer her a drink and then you leave her to her space. That's fine. You've made that connection. That's okay. That is the whole practice. So I can see why you're scared when she goes from fine to fierce in under two milliseconds and you can't find the reason.

It feels like she's slipping away from you. But I just want to say she's not. Her body's telling you something loudly in the only language it's got left at the end of a long day, and now you've got a way to actually hear it together. So if today's episode landed for you and you want to go deeper, the community, the tools, the biology, the physiology all in one place, that's in WTF. What's the feeling, don't you know? But you know, we all have those other WTF moments. This is where we do the real work together.

The link is in the show notes. Come and find us when you're ready. So, yeah, that's me done for this week. So, have a wonderful week, and I'll speak to you next week. Take care. Da doe

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