Does Your Daughter Have Power & Control Issues?

Parents looking for effective therapy methods to help a struggling teen can learn about how we treat Power and Control issues at Re-Creation Retreat residential treatment for girls in Arizona. 

Our residential treatment for girls program understands that parents want to send a child to a safe, monitored environment where their child receives personal care, and individual therapies that help heal emotional and mental disorders–whether brought on by trauma, foster care, adoption or family genetics. 

And while your teen enrolls our residential treatment center for counseling, treatment, and improving academic/life skills, Re-Creation Retreat also helps teen girls struggling with power and control issues improve their mental and physical health. 

How Do I Know If My Daughter Has Control Issues?

Teens who struggle with power and control issues manifest this struggle in a variety of ways.  Here are just a few: 

• Ignoring a direct instruction or command
• Completing tasks half-way
• Using the “silent treatment”
• Pushing a limit (for example: child is told to stop throwing the ball in the house, throws it one more time and then stops)
• Refusing to eat what is placed before him
• Lashing out with anger when reprimanded
• Refusing to apologize

“A child with power and control issues only feels worthwhile when he is dominating those around him.  He achieves this domination by getting adults to do what he wants or by only doing what he wants to do.  He is likely experiencing deep-seated insecurities which are masked by these power plays.” 

Another therapist shares, “In my experience, this behavior came about for one or more of these reasons”: 

• Teens with underdeveloped lower centers of the brain often experience a lot of failure when others are leading. That’s because those in control usually have no awareness of how to build into the structure (i.e. make subtle modifications) so that such teens can then easily comply and experience success.
• So to avoid that dreaded sense of failure, some teens compensate by seizing control of the situation.  They’ll insist on doing it “their way.” But their way also works best for their brain, and now makes it impossible to fail by not doing a task as others expect.
• Teens take control because others (inadvertently) reinforce this distorted sense of power by giving a lot of attention to the negative behavior. Here, the child’s brain may actually register holding the whole family hostage (by refusing to do whatever, and thereby delaying everyone) as giving him a distorted sense of importance. It’s even better if family members become upset. Now she’s even controlling how they act!  She’s center-stage as she proves that, again and again, she can turn a whole house upside down. And every time she’s allowed to do that, she further entrenches a brain map that reinforces she’s the boss.
• Teens take control when they don’t trust those in charge to lead. If that’s so, then a key question to ponder is . .  . how did those teens lose that trust in the first place?

Some variables that affect trust are:

• As parents, we second-guess many of our decision
• We’re inconsistent with how we respond
• We focus more on the negative, without honoring the present gifts our child has to share
• We don’t regularly build into the structure to make it easy to comply.

Re-Creation Helps Teens With Power and Control Issues

Residential Treatment for Girls in Arizona

Whether your daughter is struggling with an eating disorder, risky use, emotional trauma, or any other emotional or behavioral issue – we believe that your daughter is able to overcome and emerge as an emotionally intelligent girl who is ready for a second chance. When a teen arrives at Re-Creation Retreat we realize that there is a lot of work to do… she needs to walk through a difficult journey of self-discovery. She needs to be equipped and provided with new tools. She also needs to be loved back to wholeness, and told that “she is able”. Finally, from day one we work toward eventually reunited with her family or to be prepared to enter adulthood as an independent young woman.

Re-Creation Retreat provides solutions to families dealing with troubled teen girls. For more information on our school or to enroll your daughter in our residential treatment for girls, call us or complete our inquiry form today. 385-414-8865 

Get Help For Your Daughter Now 385-414-8865