[Music] February is teen Dating Violence Awareness Month one in three us teens will experience physical sexual or emotional abuse in a relationship before they even reach adulthood and now with new technology kids can be targeted even when their abuser is sitting behind a computer or a phone the founder of the counseling and Wellness Center of Pittsburgh Stephanie wistrom is here to share with us the signs of dating abuse and how to tackle it what an important topic yeah so let's dig into what y
ou see what are some of the signs you know we have a teenager who starts to get into a serious relationship you're trying to guide them through that but what are some of the signs that things are not going well that there might be something else happening yeah it's really tough as a parent because you're not necessarily going to be able to see the signs for what they are often kids they're going to isolate themselves they're probably not going to come to their mom or dad and you know say hey thi
s this thing is happening um so a child who maybe used to use their social media but now is avoiding it um they also might become anxious or depressed have panic attacks you know and again they're not pairing those emotions with what is happening so you know it can be really tough as a parent to you know to help them work through that so how do you help them because I know um even for adults when something like this is happening there is this this feeling of shame that is misplaced but you know
a feeling of shame that we can carry with us like we did something wrong and and apparently you know that can come from the abuser putting that on us but how do you how do you help them through that and get them the help that they need yeah it's a great question um you know I was recently talking to a teenager in my life and she started to really check off all of those boxes like you know this person had taken her phone he was was going through it and you know this is one form of digital Dating
Violence going through it asking her who are you talking to who's this contact and you know when I asked her well how did you feel about that yeah and she said oh it didn't bother me and that is so consistent with how we process traumatic events right because we have this need as human beings to feel safe and so you know that causes us to kind of split off our emotions now maybe the next day or the following day we have a panic attack or maybe we start to feel very depressed but we don't necessa
rily put that together right so helping your kids to you know number one feel safe to come to you and have those conversations is huge number two whenever they do bring up something to try to to hold back a little bit you know your mama instincts are strong and and you're going to want to say get away from this person but you know instead if you can give them the space to process their emotions to trust their feelings and know like okay well maybe that felt a little bit strange let's let's talk
about that because they really might need you know professional support to get to the roote can we talk about what the actual like digital Dating Violence and abuse what are what falls into that category so many things so it could be like you know like I mentioned with somebody who's taking your phone looking through your cont taxs it could be stalking your your socials or stalking you in another way it could be breaking into your accounts email accounts or you know anything like that and it cou
ld also be sharing you know intimate photos or virtual bullying you know so there are a lot of different things under that category I was going to ask if sexting kind of falls into that unwanted SE and pressuring pressuring so I think one of the hardest things too is breaking off those relationships and we have found this with just bullying and online bullying in general you know once you cut off that communication physically this can continue on our phones so how do you put a stop to that that'
s really tough right because you know one thing that we know even professionally when you're working with somebody who's in an abusive relationship they may not be ready to leave so how do you make somebody leave it can be very difficult um you know the best that we can do to not isolate and push that person further away from us is to make it safe for them to trust us and continue you know dialoguing about it in a non- shameful way so okay really good conversation to have though with your kids i
f you're starting to see them withdrawal a little bit or some of the other signs that you mentioned Stephanie thank you so much really good topic if you're interested in learning more about protecting your children from teen violence or seeking out the services offered by the counseling and Wellness Center we're going to have links on our website at kdka.com talk Pittsburgh
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