Why Teenagers Need to Feel Understood (And Why They Can't Be Understood by Everyone)
This blog is adapted from one of our recent podcast episodes. You can take a listen at the button above.
Why does your teenager care so much about what their friends think? Why does being understood feel so high-stakes during the teen years, even when everything at home is going well?
Understanding teenagers starts with one simple truth: every human needs to feel understood. What changes in adolescence is who teens need that understanding from. For the first time, validation from parents and caregivers isn't quite enough on its own, and peer acceptance becomes a genuine need. That shift is healthy and developmentally normal. It can also bring on anxiety, angst, and a lot of vulnerability for teens and parents alike.
Today's teens are also navigating something no generation before them has: contact with an enormous number of people, in person and online. And many are trying to be understood by all of them.
I'll walk through why teens need to feel understood, what shifts in adolescent development, when a struggling teen may benefit from therapy, and how parents can help their teens find understanding from the right people instead of everyone.
Key Takeaways
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why the need to be understood isn't just a teenager thing; it's a human thing
What shifts in adolescence that makes being understood feel so high-stakes
Why it's healthy and normal for teens to seek validation from peers, even though it's vulnerable
When to consider professional support for a teen who's struggling
Why today's teens face something new: contact with far more people than any generation before them
How parents and therapists can help teens hold two truths at once
We All Need to Be Understood
Let's start here: the idea that social and emotional safety doesn't really matter just isn't true.
Yes, there's a hierarchy of needs. To put it plainly, that hierarchy is largely about what would harm us fastest. In most situations, going without food and water will hurt me faster than going without my social needs being met.
But social needs are still needs. Not wants. We all have not just a desire, but a deep need, to be understood by people.
Sometimes when we talk about teenagers, we treat the need to be understood like it's exclusive to them. It isn't. That's my first disclaimer. We all need to feel understood.
What Changes in Adolescence
Here's where things get different for teenagers.
If you have (or have had) kids around ages four to eight, you've probably noticed they care about their peers' opinions. My five-year-old certainly cares whether someone wants to play with her, what someone said at school, or whether a friend liked the drawing she made.
But she feels understood by Garth and me and her other close caregivers, and at this point in her life, that's really all she needs. She cares about her peers, but the validation she needs comes from home.
That shifts in adolescence.
Adolescence is really the first time you not only notice your peers' opinions, but genuinely need their validation. You're no longer running solely on your caregivers' validation and care. When you really think about that, it's pretty vulnerable.
Why It Can Feel So Disorienting
Hopefully, things have gone well at home, and a teen is getting plenty of validation, empathy, and connection from their caregivers. But adolescence is the first time in their life when that isn't quite enough anymore. They need connection outside of those people, too.
If that doesn't go well early in adolescence, it can lead to increased anxiety and general angst. Imagine going from "My whole world is okay because I have the acceptance, empathy, and validation I need" to "I don't have enough of it," even though your parents haven't changed a thing. You need it from people outside your home now, and maybe you're not getting it.
That's disorienting and overwhelming. And honestly, when a teen isn't getting that understanding from peers, what else would we expect from their system than some anxiety and angst?
This Is Healthy, and It's Still Hard
I want to be clear: branching out to need understanding from peers is developmentally appropriate. We want that to happen for teens. It's age-normative, healthy development.
But age-normative doesn't mean easy. It's still scary, and sometimes it doesn't go well.
There are things parents can do to help it go well. That's a long game, and to some degree, there's a little bit of luck involved. That's scary not just for teens, but for parents too.
When to Consider Professional Support
If you're seeing your teen struggle with increased anxiety or angst for more than two to three months, they would likely benefit from some professional help to walk through it with them.
Why Today's Teens Are Up Against Something New
Now back to that idea that "this generation needs to be understood by everyone."
Again, everybody needs to be understood. But I do think today's teens, and the generation just ahead of them, are the first to grow up with the kind of access they have to people, and that people have to them. And I don't think our systems have caught up to what that does to us.
The Numbers Pile Up
I was thinking about this on a walk a few days ago. I live in what I'd call a suburb, and as I walked, I noticed how many people I passed whom I don't really know but am familiar with. It was a lot.
Then I thought about everyone I come into contact with at my kids' school each week, at work, and online. The numbers pile up fast. In modern life, we come into contact with a lot of people, and the idea that we'll be understood by all of them is unrealistic.
Teenagers are people just like us. They're wired for connection, which means they're wired for understanding. But the number of people a 17-year-old at a large high school comes into contact with each week, in person and online, is many times more than the number I encounter.
Teaching Teens They Don't Need Understanding From Everyone
So we have to help train a teen's system to recognize that they don't need understanding from everyone. They need:
Understanding from their caregivers, just like they always have. That has to be sustained.
Understanding from a circle, a consistent group they can rely on.
What they can't expect is understanding, validation, and true connection from the huge number of people they encounter.
That's not anyone's automatic, natural wiring, so it takes some retraining. I've worked with adults who never worked through this and are still seeking understanding, acceptance, and validation from everyone, rather than from a small, consistent circle of people.
Holding Two Truths at Once
Just about everything in life comes back to holding two things at once, and this is one of them.
In one hand: how important and natural it is to want to be understood, and how natural it is for a teenager to branch out from their caregivers and want to be understood by others.
In the other hand: because of how we live today, you won't be understood by everyone you come into contact with, and that can be okay.
This connects to attachment and so much more (truly, that's another podcast). But even just the psychoeducation of naming these two truths can be really significant, for teens and for parents.
How Therapy Can Help Your Teen
If you're a parent reading this, I'm so grateful you're even considering this topic and thinking about how therapy and awareness of your child's mental health can help them through adolescence.
Therapy can give teens a steady place to work through the vulnerability of needing peer validation, make sense of anxiety or angst that's lingering, and practice finding understanding from the right people rather than everyone.
At Seen Therapy Services in Springfield, Missouri, I offer counseling and EMDR therapy in person and via telehealth throughout Missouri. In the next episode of this series, I'll get into what therapy for teens actually looks like and how it plays out in our practice.
📅 Schedule a free consultation →
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it so important for teenagers to feel understood?
All humans have a deep need to be understood, but adolescence is the first stage of life where peer validation becomes a genuine need rather than just a preference. Validation from caregivers is still essential, but it's no longer enough on its own, which makes being understood by peers feel especially high-stakes.
Is it normal for teens to care more about peers' opinions than their parents'?
Yes. Seeking understanding and validation from peers is healthy, age-normative development. It doesn't mean a teen's relationship with their caregivers matters less; that connection still needs to be sustained. It means teens now also need connection outside their home.
Why does my teen seem more anxious even though nothing changed at home?
In adolescence, the validation teens get at home may no longer feel like enough on its own. If they aren't getting the understanding they need from peers, that shift can lead to increased anxiety and angst, even when parents haven't changed anything.
When should a teen see a therapist for anxiety?
If you notice your teen struggling with increased anxiety or angst for more than two to three months, professional support could help them work through it.
How can I help my teen who wants to be understood by everyone?
Help them hold two truths: wanting to be understood is natural and important, and no one can be understood by everyone they come into contact with. Encourage a consistent circle of trusted people, sustain your own connection with them, and consider therapy for added support.
Related Resources
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Hello. Hello. Hello, friends, welcome to the podcast where we simplify everything about mental health. Just kidding. But here's what we are gonna do. We're gonna sit down together a licensed mental health professional, that's me and a regular old Joe as my husband Garth would describe himself. We're gonna talk about the nitty gritty of EMDR, some nervous system mapping, how couples can help each other heal. What's healthy parenting actually look like? Maybe a little bit of good old banter mixed in. All with the goal of making mental health a little bit simpler for you. Quick note, because my lawyer says that I have to, I'm a therapist, but not your therapist. Unless I am. Even if I am. This is still just a podcast. Okay, now have a good listen. Hello, friends. I feel like it is finally a cozy fall day. We are in October, and it is not going to hit 90 degrees today. I'm so excited. And today we are continuing our series on teenagers. And before we really dove in to what therapy looks like with teens there was a topic that I feel like in the , introductory episode to this series that we glazed over that I wanted to spend a whole episode on, and that's the idea that teenagers need a lot of understanding. And I've even heard a lot of folks recently saying things like, you know, "This generation just needs to be understood by everyone." They f- they feel like everyone needs to understand them, and I wanted to take some time to, to speak to that. And so we're gonna do that today. Before I do that again, I'm doing a- another single episode, but I always feel like I need to throw a bant in whenever Garth's not joining me. So today, I will be banting about... This is a great question. I did not prepare myself for this. You know what? Why don't I bant about, if you're just listening and not watching, you can't see me pointing, but my ducks above my head. I don't think I've spoken to them at all. I put up a little shelf behind me, so it was, you know, there was some, some more visual action happening whenever I did video on the podcast. And we have this, like, fun thing in our house where we say that Garth is a silly goose, and these are, I mean, arguably not geese. They are ducks. But I was out with my littlest at Target, and I had this picture, and I thought, "Well, that is just about perfect," because it looks like these two little silly goose silly geese, m- you know, wandering off together. So that's my bant of the day. If you only listen to the podcasts and you can't see anything, I have a fun little plant and two, we're gonna say, s- silly geese behind me, though I am fairly confident they are ducks. Okay, let's get into it. Here's what I wanna talk about today. I wanna talk about why we all actually just want to be understood, why being understood is particularly important in adolescence- And why I think this generation of teens, and even the generation before them, is up against something different when it comes to being understood. So we all just want to be understood. Let's start there The idea that social safety, emotional safety does not matter is just n- not at all true. There are certainly a hierarchy of needs and frankly, we'll just speak really plainly, that hierarchy is determined by what will kill us faster, right? And w- in most situations, especially in our modern world, what will kill me faster is not having access to food and water. That will kill me faster than not having my social needs met, right? However, social needs are incredibly important. They are needs. They are not just wants. And we all have not just a desire to be understood, but I would argue a deep need to be understood by people. So we make that something sometimes, I think, when we're talking about teenagers, that's exclusive to them, but it is not really. So that's kind of my, my first disclaimer is that we all need to feel understood. Now, here's where things get a little bit different for teenagers and for adolescents. If you currently have kids around the age of four, five, six, seven, eight, or you have had kids four, five, six, seven, eight, right, like those developmental years you will notice that they certainly care about their peers' opinions, right? So I have a five-year-old right now. She certainly cares about whether or not someone wants to play with her, or something that someone said at school, or whether or not someone liked her drawing that she made at school, right? Like, she certainly cares about her peers' opinions when she is with them. However, she feels understood by my husband and I, and other... By Garth and I, and other close caregivers, and that is really all she needs at this point in her life. She does care about peers' opinions but she has the validation from her close caregivers that she needs. Now, this shifts in adolescence Where, I forgot I was on camera. I just totally scratched my nose. At least I didn't pick my nose. I did not pick my nose, but I just like went to town scratching my nose because it itched really bad. Okay. Goodness gracious. I said a couple of episodes ago where I did a solo episode that I stay on track way better whenever Garth is not joining me, but that may not be true today. We will see. Okay. So adolescence is really the first time that you not only notice your peers' opinions, but really need their validation. You aren't just kind of running off of your caregiver's validation and care anymore. And when you think about that, like really, really think about that, that's pretty vulnerable. Hopefully for teenagers, things have gone very well in their home, and they get a ton of validation and empathy and connection all of the things with their caregivers. And so this is the first time in their life when that's not really enough, and they need some connection outside of those people. And if that doesn't go well at the beginning of their adolescence, it does lead to increased symptoms of, of anxiety and just general angst because that's very disorienting. That's very overwhelming to go from my whole world is okay because I have the acceptance, the empathy, the validation that I need to I don't have enough of it, even though my parents have not at all changed their behavior, but I need it from people outside of my caregivers now, and maybe I'm not getting it. So I do just want to acknowledge, yes, we all need understanding Teenagers are branching off into a whole different world of needing that understanding, and that's developmentally appropriate. We want that to happen for them, and it's still scary, and it still sometimes does not go well, right? And there are some things that parents can do to try to help that to go well and that's a really long game, and maybe we talk about that in, in a different episode, but there are things that parents can facilitate to try to help that go well. And to some degree, there's a little bit of luck involved there. Again, that's scary not just for, for teens, but for parents as well. So when we enter into that adolescent period and we're not getting that understanding from peers, and we do see that increase in anxiety and, and angst, what else would we expect from that person, from that system at that point? And they probably would benefit if, if you're seeing that happen for more than two to three months for your kiddo from having some professional help in order to, to walk through that with them. Okay. The last piece that I wanted to talk about here is that I'm hearing from folks this generation needs to be understood by everyone, or this generation just needs to be understood. Again, everybody needs to be understood. I do think that this generation and the generation ahead of them are the f-- they're the first generation that has first generations that have grown up with the kind of access that they have to people and that people have to them, and I don't think our systems have really caught up to what that does to us. And I was thinking about this on a walk a couple of days ago. I live in a community. I live in a, a, what I would call a suburb, and as I was walking, I was mindful of how many people that I was seeing that I don't necessarily know but that I am familiar with, right? It was a lot of people that I had seen as I was walking through my community. And then I thought about the number of people that I come into contact with at my kids' school every week, that I come into contact with online, that I come into contact with at my work, and the numbers pile up. In modern society, we come into contact with a lot of people, and the idea that we're going to be understood by all of them is unrealistic Teenagers in the generation ahead of them, they are all just people just like us who are wired for connection and who are thus wired for understanding. And the, the difference... I come into contact with a lot of people every week, but the difference between the number of people I come into contact with versus the number of people that a 17-year-old at one of our large high schools comes into contact with in person and then online i- is I don't even know well over quadruple the number of people that I come into contact with every week. And so then we have to really work to train that adolescent's system that they don't need understanding from everyone, that they need understanding from their caregivers like they always have. That has to be sustained, and then they need understanding from a circle, but they can't expect understanding, validation, true connection from the astronomical number of people that they're coming into contact with. But that is not their, or I think any individual's, automatic natural wiring. So that does take some retraining. I worked with adults who have never worked through that and are really looking from understanding, acceptance, validation from everyone rather than from a small circle of people a, a social group that they cons- consistently rely on to provide acceptance, validation, understanding. If we can teach this to our teenagers, if we can work through this as parents and in therapy so that they truly can come to a place where they understand how important it is to be understood, and that they will not be understood by everyone, that balance, right? Just about everything in life comes back to holding two different things, and this is, is one of them. We are holding in one hand how important it is and how natural it is, the desire to be understood, and how natural it is as an adolescent to start to want to branch out from your caregivers and be understood by others. And then also knowing that because of how we live in modern society, you will not be understood by everyone that you come into contact with, and that can be okay. Whew. That is, you know, we've talked about before on the, the podcast, that's a, another episode, and then sometimes we'll say, like, "That's another podcast." I truly think, I mean, that runs into attachment, it runs in... You know, we could talk about that forever. H- that being said, even just the psychoeducation of acknowledging those two things is really significant, okay? So I wanna run back through our points. It is natural for teenagers to want to be understood because humans want to be understood. It is natural for teenagers to seek understanding outside of their caregivers. That is an age normative healthy development. We want that to happen. That doesn't mean it's easy. It being age normative doesn't mean it's easy, but it is age normative. And then they are existing in a world where they come into contact with so many people, right? And we need to be mindful of teaching them that being understood by some and seeking understanding and validation by all are two very different things. N- we can accomplish one, but not the other. Okay? Folks, it is always such a pleasure. I truly, if you get to the end of an episode, I'm just so grateful for your time. If you're a parent listening, I'm so grateful that you're even considering this topic and being mindful of how therapy and being aware of your child's mental health can be helpful for them in adolescence. When we come back in the next episode, we will be getting more into what therapy for teens actually looks like and a little bit about how, even more narrowly, how it actually plays out in our practice. Thank you so much. Well, that's all folks. Please see our show notes for ways to connect with us or go give us a follow on Instagram. You can find us at Simply Mental. If this episode resonated with you, send it over to a friend. Give us a five star rating. Subscribe. Download all the things the cool kids are doing these days. Thanks for having to listen.
About Cassandra Minnick
EMDR Intensive Therapy for Busy Professionals | Trauma & Anxiety Treatment | Licensed Professional Counselor, EMDRIA Certified
I'm an EMDRIA-certified EMDR therapist with over a decade of experience helping adults understand and heal from chronic trauma. My practice focuses on the often-confusing patterns that emerge in adulthood—the behaviors, reactions, and relationship dynamics that don't make sense until we trace them back to their origins.
Chronic trauma doesn't always look like what we expect. It shows up in how we respond to conflict, how we relate to ourselves, and in the persistent feeling that something is "off" even when life looks fine on the surface. I work with clients to make sense of these patterns and create lasting change through EMDR therapy.
I specialize in EMDR intensive therapy—a condensed format that works particularly well for busy professionals who need effective treatment without the commitment of weekly sessions stretched over months or years.
I've been practicing EMDR since 2016, and I'm passionate about helping people move from survival mode to actually living their lives. When you've spent years adapting to trauma, reclaiming yourself is both powerful and possible.
