Your Teen’s Story Isn’t Finished Yet — Here’s How to Help Them Rewrite It

What if one simple question could help your teen break free from anxiety, self-doubt, and the negative stories they’ve been carrying all year?

In this powerful end-of-year episode, we revisit one of the most transformational tools I’ve ever used as a school counselor and teen anxiety coach: the story your teen is telling themselves — and how to help them rewrite it for 2026.

Teens are living with heavy narratives like:
“I’m the anxious one.”
“I’m always behind.”
“I mess everything up.”
“Everyone else has it together except me.”

These aren’t truths — they’re stories, often written by fear and anxiety.
And parents have more influence than they realize in helping teens choose a healthier, braver, more grounded identity.

Inside this episode, you’ll learn:

✨ The #1 question every family should ask before the year ends
✨ How anxiety quietly rewrites your teen’s identity
✨ A 3-step reflection activity you can do together this week
✨ How school counselors and educators can use this in January
✨ How to help your teen name the story they WANT to live in 2026
✨ Why chapter-title exercises build confidence, clarity, and emotional resilience

This is a gentle, hopeful reset — for you and your teen — before the new year begins.

If you want to build connection, calm anxious patterns, and support your teen’s confidence in 2026, this episode will walk you step-by-step into the conversations that change everything.

If you want deeper support as you raise a teen who struggles with anxiety, join Parenting Through the Maze — my private parent community where I teach calm communication, confidence-building strategies, and practical tools to help your child grow into their strongest, healthiest self.
https://www.betterregulatethannever.com/parenting-through-the-maze

I also work 1:1 with young people to help them write a new story. If you would like me to be a story guide for your child, set up a time for us to talk about the details. 
👉 Here is my calendar:  https://calendly.com/ccoufal/yourfamilysnextstep

And if this episode helped you, please LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and SHARE it with another parent who could use a little encouragement today.

Your teen’s story isn’t finished — and neither is yours. Let’s write the next chapter together. 

Find my podcast
Email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com
Text me: 785-380-2064
More information

Transcript

 Before this year ends, I want to ask you one powerful question. If your life were a book, what would the title of your story be right now? And more importantly, what story is your teen telling themselves and who taught them to tell it? I am Cynthia Coufal. I'm a teen anxiety coach and a parent coach and a longtime school counselor,

and someone who has lived through many versions of my own story. Back in episode number 88, I shared how a simple question, what would the title of your life be? Helped me to rewrite my identity when I was younger and hurting. Today we're revisiting that idea. But with 2025 clarity and through the lens of what teens and families are facing right now, this is my end of year [00:01:00] gift to you, and a way to ground your family calm, anxiety, and create meaning before 2026 begins.

Teens today talk about their lives, not as timelines, but as narratives. Things like I'm the kid who can't keep friends. I am the anxious one. I always mess things up. I'm not a math kid. I'm behind everyone else. They think these are observations, but they're really, really titles of their story. And anxious brains love to write dramatic, negative stories because the brain is always scanning for danger.

As parents and as educators, we have tremendous influence over the story identity that a teen adopts from my coaching practice, school visits, my time in the [00:02:00] classroom, my time in schools, friend conversations and parent sessions. Here's what I know teens are feeling heading into the new year. Pressure to be someone.

College career, GPA extracurriculars, teens feel like their life has to be impressive by age 17. And sometimes that pressure is coming from school and or parents. Sometimes it's them. And I have had clients that were pushing, pushing themselves and their parents would tell me they weren't the ones pushing.

But many times this is coming from society. Other achieving friends, their parents or school, constant comparison. Kind of the same thing with the friend thing. Their story is measured against everyone else's highlight reel, and they see everyone else's highlight reel all the time. Fear of messing up.

Teens are terrified to make [00:03:00] choices that will ruin their story. They're terrified to make choices about their career choice, their college. Once they're out of college, they're terrified to make a choice about a career that they're gonna go into. Anxiety masquerading as personality traits. So teens often think that anxiety is who they are.

Not just something they are experiencing. And that's what I teach in my one-to-one coaching. I think I feel like my coaching for teens with anxiety is much more about education and what I call psychoeducation learning about psychology and the biology of our brain more than it is any of the coping skills, because I have to let them know that anxiety is something that everyone.

Experiences, and it's not who we are. Parents feel that the, the wrong story is being written. So parents want help. They wanna help their kids, but [00:04:00] they don't know exactly how to do that. They don't wanna push too hard. They don't wanna stand back and just let things happen. They want their children to be independent, but they fear.

What's gonna happen to their child if they're not prepared or have certain skills in place. So this episode is gonna give you the language to rewrite all of those narratives together. So in episode number 88, I shared how my early life experiences and trauma shaped the first title that I gave my story.

And that was, I'm not that kind of girl. And that title was born from Misunderstanding and Shame and Rumors and Desperate Desire to Belong. And that's why so many, that's what so many teens go through today. They feel misunderstood. They feel labeled. They feel defined by moments where, especially where they made mistakes instead of their whole [00:05:00] human humanity.

So in 2025, my story feels more like the transformation that isn't finished yet. And just like our teens, I am still becoming, and so are you. And so is your child. This is where the new version of the episode goes deeper. So today I'm gonna talk to you about a three step family reflection activity that you can do today, and it works for you as a parent.

It works for the teens, it works for school counselors, running groups or classroom lessons, or even individual lessons that you have. Uh, I had many more individual lessons, one-on-one with a client in my office than I did groups or classrooms. But it can be done in all those areas, or even teachers wanting to have a closing activity before the winter break.

So the first step is to name the story of 2025. So ask [00:06:00] your teen if 2020, if 2025 were a chapter in your life. What would the chapter title be? Because if you think about, I always say I'm gonna live to be a hundred. And if you listen to this podcast, and you've probably heard that a lot of times, so that would mean that I would have 100 chapters in my story.

And this year of 2025 is just one chapter and all of those hundred chapters. And like I said, I feel like my chapter name for this year is the Transformation. That isn't finished yet. So I'm always transforming and I feel like there was a lot more transforming for me this year than in past years since I started my business anyway.

And so first of all, you're gonna ask your teen, what's the name of this chapter of your life? And here's some examples that they could use or that you could throw out if they're [00:07:00] like, I don't know, the year I was braver than I thought. Learning to start again. The year everything felt hard, but I kept going slow growth, big heart, figuring myself out, and you can think about what your chapter name would be and you could share yours because vulnerability with teens really matters.

They will connect with you so much easier if you talk about your. Challenges, barriers, failures, they, that helps them to feel like they're not alone in the struggle of trying to figure themselves out. Because again, I'm still trying to figure myself out at 57, so this doesn't really go away, but we just get better about it and we have more experiences to draw on.

Maybe even the year I had to dig deep for belief. That's another thing that I, I wrote down the [00:08:00] year. I had to dig deep for belief. This is definitely that year. So step two, what story did anxiety tell this year? A lot of my listeners listen because of anxiety tools and techniques, the parents want anxiety tools and techniques.

The educators that listen, the school counselors. And so a lot of kids and a lot of families deal with anxiety. So what story did anxiety tell you this year? And maybe some of those answers might be, people don't like me, I'm too much. I'll just fail anyway. Yeah, everyone else is ahead of me. I can't handle it.

So let's help them to externalize anxiety and put it, put it outside of them instead of believing it is them. And this year, anxiety told me you can't make this work, meaning my business. So step three, what [00:09:00] story do you want to write in 2026? So if next year were your come was your comeback chapter, what would its title be?

So here's some examples again that you could give your teen or your class. Taking my power back. Trying new things without fear, confidence, rising peace. First the year I said no to anxiety and my. New chapter for 2026 is gonna be called My Inner Guidance, led me to new discoveries. So then ask, what's one thing you can do in January to support that story?

Okay, just one thing that makes it a lot easier to do, it's not overwhelming. Remember, last week was about one word and mine was guided, so that's why my chapter is called My Inner Guidance led me to new [00:10:00] discoveries. So if you did the one word activity and made a vision board or talked about it as a family or in a classroom about uh, what their one word is, maybe they can incorporate that one word into their chapter name.

So I am going to make time every day to listen to my inner guidance because that's something that I had really forgotten about doing. I just, I am really task driven and when I get up in the morning, I just think about all the tasks I need to do or all the tasks I wanna do, and I don't sit down and really think about how am I feeling?

What is my inner guidance saying about what to do that day? So I'm really gonna make intentional time. I'm gonna put it in my calendar that every day I'm gonna have time where I really listen inward and try to figure out where is is my own guidance guiding me. So this is what it could look like in schools if you are a school counselor.

So you can use this episode in [00:11:00] classroom lessons in January. Um, a lot of times when you're starting the new semester and you're going back to school in January, if you have like guidance lessons or, you do small groups, or even, like I said, when you have one-to-one clients or um, students coming into your office, talk to them about rewriting their story.

You know, what's this year gonna look like? What kinds of. Statements do you wanna be telling yourself, if you remember back in some of the other episodes when I talk about power sentences, which, which are just those positive affirmations that we can say to ourselves to help, uh, get through obstacles and barriers, uh, or any other kind of future self work you could do.

But the, the lesson could be about rewriting chapters for the new year if you have, an anxiety group or a social skill skills group or something that meets, you could ask that same question. What story are you telling [00:12:00] about yourself and what story do you want to tell? So a lot of times when kids are in groups, they've been identified as lacking a skill or needing something, whether it's, you know, they need to work on their anxiety or they need to work on their social skills.

And so they might've been telling themselves a story like, I can't make friends or. Anxiety stops me from doing fun things or whatever, and then they can think about what story do I want to tell? And then in, if you're doing one-to-one counseling with anybody, you can. These kind of activities just help the teen to separate their anxiety from themselves.

Their anxiety is not them. Their anxiety is something they're experiencing on the outside of them, and it definitely can change their behavior or their actions, but they can, if they're telling a new story about anxiety, then that can help them [00:13:00] to do some of those activities that they want to do. Um, if you're even talking about college and career planning.

When kids are thinking I'm behind, or, you know, I don't know what I'm doing, or I don't wanna make the wrong choice about my future. Maybe they could think something like, I'm riding my path on purpose, or I'm choosing, maybe they're gonna use their inner guidance to help them make decisions about the future in college.

So you can talk about that. And then for parents, just think about that. Your teen story is not defined by their grades or their friendships or their mistakes or their emotional struggles, or their anxiety or their slow progress. And sometimes those things are happening and it's very frustrating to deal with as a parent, I had my oldest child.

He hated school, and I'm sure I've told these this story before on the podcast [00:14:00] too, but it was so hard for me to watch him hate it so badly and know that he really at least needs this diploma to be what I consider to be okay in the world. I just felt like that was really important for him to have.

And I, of course, wanted him to do some further training and he did end up doing the further training, but he didn't want to at the time, and we just struggled to get him through high school. And so after a while it was so exhausting. I, you know, just thought, just, just get your diploma. That's all I care about.

But our, our kids' story is really defined on how they rise, how they get up and work and go forward when they have had failures or how much they try or how they are trying to rewrite those narratives. That's where the real definition comes from, [00:15:00] and you as a parent being a calm and steady parent are like the story guide.

So. If you want help rewriting the story of anxiety in your home, the doors to parenting through the maze are always open. And you can go to my website and there is a parenting through the maze tab. You can look through there, you can sign up there to get extra help with your family, with anxiety inside there.

There are tools and scripts and lessons and on demand videos to watch. In your own time, even just listen to a lot of them. You don't have to to watch. You can just listen to the audio part of them while you're doing all the things that you do in your life, which I know is a lot. And I also work one-to-one with young people.

I used to say 14 to 24, and that's about the average range of clients that I get. Sometimes my clients are in college, sometimes my clients [00:16:00] have graduated from college, but they're a little uncertain about what they wanna do next, and I can help them rewrite their story as well. So whatever kind of thing you're trying to navigate with anxiety and with rewriting your story for 2026, I am able to help you.

I'll talk to you soon.