Parenting a Rose in a Garden of Tulips: How DBT Skills Support Intense, High-Risk Teen Behaviors
The Reality of Raising a Teenage "Fire Feeler"
Every Wednesday on The Positively Healthy Mom podcast, we dive deep into the real, messy middle of motherhood with adolescent kids. But if you are a mom parenting a teenager whose emotions feel like a roaring fire, you know that standard parenting advice simply doesn't cut it.
When your teen experiences extreme emotional dysregulation, it often manifests outwardly as "big behaviors"—ranging from severe emotional outbursts and school avoidance to terrifying high-risk actions like self-harm or suicidal ideation.
You might constantly ask yourself: Why is my teenager so easily triggered and unable to calm down?
In Episode 111, host Laura Ollinger sits down with Katie May, a licensed professional counselor, author, and founder of Creative Healing—a specialized teen support center in the Philadelphia area. Katie May uses a proven roadmap for families navigating these exact crises with Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).
What is DBT, and How Does It Help Teenagers?
DBT or Dialectical Behavior Therapy is an emotionally and behaviorally focused framework adapted from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) . While CBT teaches you to change your thoughts to change your outcomes, DBT looks deeply at the body and the nervous system, addressing how intense feelings trigger dangerous urges and behaviors . It is considered the gold standard clinical treatment for high-risk teen behaviors, emotional dysregulation, and self-harm .
Katie explains that teenagers dealing with an accumulation of ongoing nervous system stress never quite get back down to a "centered baseline" before they are triggered again . Because their system is constantly activated, minor incidents cause massive reactions . DBT gives these teens practical coping skills to hit pause, tolerate distress, and emotionally regulate before turning to self-destructive actions .
Parenting a "Rose in a Garden of Tulips"
One of the most striking metaphors Katie shares in this episode comes from DBT founder Marsha Linehan: the concept of parenting a rose in a garden of tulips.
If your family system is made up of "tulips"—individuals who navigate stressors with standard sensitivity—and you have one child who is a "rose," standard advice will fail you. This child possesses a higher biological sensitivity, processes emotions with extreme depth, and requires a totally different communication style .
Katie reassures parents: "It’s not that you’re the wrong parent or a bad parent, it’s that you have to learn a new language for this kid. What if your kid came out speaking French and you only knew English?"
Managing Your Own Anxiety While Your Teen Is Hurting
When a teen is in crisis, parents naturally enter survival mode, often setting off alarm bells and "freaking out" over dangerous behaviors. To illustrate the dynamics of a healthy family system during recovery, Katie breaks down The River Metaphor:
Imagine the family standing on one side of a rushing river, looking across to safety.
The Therapist’s Job: To help the teen build stepping stones (tools, skills, interventions) to cross .
The Teen's Job: To find the willingness to take tiny steps across those stones.
The Parent's Job: To tolerate how the teen crosses the river without throwing their own anxiety into the rapids .
Katie flags a few common parenting archetypes that accidentally stall a teen’s progress:
The Micromanager: Constantly yelling warnings ("Watch out! Don't fall in!") out of anxiety.
The Pusher: Demanding they walk faster because the parent cannot tolerate seeing them stuck in the middle of the river.
The Enabler: Trying to cross the river for them by saying, "Get on my back, I'll carry you across".
To successfully navigate this, parents must take responsibility for their own feelings and seek external support rather than relying on their teen to change so that they can feel better .
Navigating the Grief of Parenting a Teen with Mental Illness
In one of the most raw segments of the episode, Laura and Katie discuss a topic few people talk about openly: parenting as a grieving process.
When your teen is barely leaving the house or making it to school, sitting with friends whose kids are getting accepted into top-tier colleges can feel incredibly lonely and isolating.
Katie reminds moms that you must give yourself permission to grieve the typical parenting experience you imagined when holding your child as a baby. Healing and radical acceptance only happen after you hold space for that loss. Only then can you fully accept the life you have, make meaning, and build a deep, lasting connection with the child in front of you.
Key Takeaways for Moms of Teens:
High-risk or self-destructive behaviors are always a brain's desperate solution to an underlying, deeply painful emotional problem.
Buy-in starts with validating that pain, not just demanding the behavior stops .
True emotional regulation includes "modifiable lifestyle factors"—ensure your teen is getting proper sleep and nutrition in addition to tackling complex emotional challenges.
If you want a regulated home, a healthy, regulated mother is the secret. Shift your own responses first to naturally alter your teen's trajectory .
Meet Our Expert Guest: Katie May
Katie May, LPC, is a licensed professional counselor, speaker, and the author of the #1 Amazon best-seller You’re On Fire, It’s Fine. As the founder of Creative Healing, she provides practical toolkits that help parents understand their teen’s intense inner world and build long-term resilience.
Connect with Katie:
Visit her website at katiekmay.com
Follow her on Instagram @katiekmay
Resources from Your Host, Laura Ollinger
Positively Healthy University: Ready to build your teen daughter’s emotional toolkit before they head off to college or independence? July 14th is the second session of the summer, and it’s right around the corner. Learn more here.
Connect with Laura on Instagram:@positivelyhealthycoaching
If this episode validated your journey or gave you hope, please rate and review The Positively Healthy Mom podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and share it with a mom friend who needs to hear it today!
