WHEN WORRY WORKS responds to one of the primary sources of the nation’s worsening adolescent mental health crisis – achievement pressure. Burdened by the mounting pressures on today’s youth, parents seek ways to strike the balance between supporting their teens’ current well-being while also setting them up for future success. Eager to take action and to manage their escalating fears, parents inadvertently and unknowingly exacerbate the problem by overlooking their own parental achievement anxiety.
Based on thirty years of clinical practice and her experiences raising her own teenagers in New York City, the work demonstrates that when parents become aware of their individual anxieties and learn to effectively manage them, they are empowered to make values aligned, rather than worry driven parenting decisions. Dr. Dorfman provides practical evidence-based parenting strategies, exercises, and reflective prompts to guide parents through a process to constructively apply to their day-to-day parenting decisions.
Dana Dorfman, MSW, PhD, is a New York City based psychotherapist with 30 years experience treating adolescents and parents in her private practice, schools, and agency settings. As a passionate advocate of adolescent mental health, she is a lecturer and consultant for parenting centers, schools, and corporations. Dorfman is regularly interviewed and quoted in the media on mental health topics and was the co-host of a parenting podcast, 2 Moms on the Couch. Dorfman resides in NYC with her husband, her teenage daughter and son, and their beloved dog, Winnicott.
WHEN WORRY WORKS
How to Harness Parenting Stress and Guide Your Teen to Success
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PART I
WHY, WHAT AND HOW PARENTS WORRY
CHAPTER 1: THE DILEMMA DU JOUR ………………………. 1
CHAPTER 2: ANXIETY IS THE NEW SUGAR …………………14
CHAPTER 3: HOW WORRY WORKS ……………………………29
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PART II
PARENT ACHIEVEMENT ANXIETY REACTION TYPES
INTRODUCTION TO PARTS………………………………………..55
CHAPTER 4: THE SCULPTOR ……………………………………..56
CHAPTER 5: THE GAME SHOW CONTESTANT ………………..89
CHAPTER 6: THE CROWD PLEASER ……………………………109
CHAPTER 7: THE AVOIDER………………………………………..124
CHAPTER 8: THE CLAIRVOYANT ………………………………..141
CHAPTER 9: THE SHEPHERD ……………………………………...159
CHAPTER 10: THE CORRECTOR ………………………………….178
CHAPTER 11: THE REPLICATOR ……………………………….191
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PART III
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
CHAPTER 12: THE VALUE OF VALUES……………………… 206
CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………220
BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………224
APPENDIX …………………………………………………………...229
Parenting Decision Making Worksheet
Values List
10/12/22, The Reading Lists / Medium: This book was included in a roundup of must-read books about mental health.
Link: https://medium.com/the-reading-lists/10-moving-must-reads-about-mental-health-acdafc3442cf
12/13/22, Authority Magazine: Dr. Dana Dorfman was interviewed about the book.
Let’s face it. Parenting teens is stressful. Psychotherapist Dorfman, mother of two teens, admits to her own emotional battles…. Focusing on parents rather than teens, Dorfman offers sensible steps to ease relationships and find winning solutions. She helps parents learn to reason rather than react and points out how their own childhood experiences can influence their parenting styles. Readers are sure to spot themselves among parents described as sculptors, game-show contestants, crowd-pleasers, avoiders, clairvoyants, shepherds, correctors, and replicators and benefit from Dorfman’s sane advice.
— Booklist
Out of all of the stages of childhood, the teen years are notoriously the most difficult for parents to navigate. Teens continue to need our guidance, support and involvement and yet are also working hard to separate from us, to develop their own set of beliefs and ideas and to make their own decisions. And so, there is a delicate balance parents need to strike during this tumultuous time.
When Worry Works is a must read for any parent struggling with this complicated combination of opposing needs.
Dorfman’s wise, reassuring, and practical advice will automatically turn the heat down on these family struggles. She quickly identifies herself as a fellow worrier with teens and so approaches her topic from a place of kindness, knowledge, and identification. She advocates for our children while somehow never judging or criticizing parents.
Using compelling vignettes from her own clients she identifies eight different brands of parental anxiety and then guides readers to recognize their own style and then understand the origins of the worry so that they can ward off unhelpful reactions.
Hearing Dr. Dorfman gently yet expertly delve into and help parents sort out their worries will make the reader yearn to have Dorfman as you own family guru. Reading her book is second best to that.
— Jean Kunhardt, MA, LMHC, Director of Soho Parenting Center
Dana Dorfman’s When Worry Works nails the today’s parenting zeitgeist perfectly! It is the perfect guide for parents of teens in these challenging times. Dorfman’s humor and honesty about her own parenting pitfalls make this book relatable, comforting, and nonjudgmental. She also offers a clear roadmap for parents to understand their own anxieties so they can be solid, loving guides to their teens.
— Lisa Spiegel, MA, LMHC, Director of Soho Parenting Center, Author of A Mothers Circle and Internal Family Systems with Children
Grab this book and tame your anxiety. Your teenager will thank you.
This is just the book parents need to bring down anxiety and connect more with their child through the ups and downs, pressures and worries of the adolescent years. Based on vast clinical experience and a keen understanding of what parents struggle with, Dorfman takes an empathic approach to get to the roots of what underlies parental worries and fears- shifting to helpful, not hurtful parenting techniques. The book helps parents embrace their worries in the most positive ways on a road to becoming their teens advocate, not adversary, helping to guide them to become the person they are meant to be. Reading it will help parents exhale and enjoy these fraught years much more.
— Tovah P. Klein, PhD, Director, Barnard College Center for Toddler Development, Associate Professor, Psychology
