How to support your teen’s anxiety (+ OCD)
Supporting an anxious teen can feel confusing and exhausting — especially when reassurance, accommodations, or problem-solving don’t seem to help long-term.
This guide is designed to help parents respond in ways that reduce anxiety-driven patterns while maintaining connection and trust.
The approach in this guide is grounded in evidence-based, parent-focused strategies, including principles from SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions).
Here’s an example of how the guide helps you identify accommodation patterns:
What’s inside the guide?
This guide walks parents through:
Understanding anxiety-driven family patterns
Reducing accommodation without increasing distress
Responding to anxiety with empathy and boundaries
Supporting independence and confidence over time
The goal is not to eliminate anxiety, but to help teens build confidence in their ability to handle it — with parents playing a steady, supportive role.
This guide may be especially helpful if you:
Feel stuck in reassurance or accommodation cycles
Want to support your teen without increasing dependence
Are unsure whether anxiety is becoming a bigger issue
Feel torn between protecting your teen and pushing them too hard
How to use this guide
This guide is meant to be read gradually. Many parents find it helpful to focus on one shift at a time rather than trying to change everything at once.
Small, consistent changes often have the biggest impact.
This guide is educational and self-guided.
When tools aren’t enough
Parent strategies can be powerful — but sometimes anxiety is deeply entrenched or affecting multiple areas of a teen’s life. In those cases, working with a therapist can help support both the teen and the family system more fully.