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Parenting Post-Wilderness: Parenting a Struggling Teen Before, During and After Treatment

Parenting Post-Wilderness: Parenting a Struggling Teen Before, During and After Treatment

By: Beth Hillman | Parent Coach for Parents of Struggling Teens
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Your guide to parenting a struggling teen or young-adult, whether they’re home, transitioning home, or presently in treatment.

Parents, say goodbye to exhausting confusion, overwhelm, panic and the unhelpful patterns that keep you and your family stuck. Learn how to develop healthy responses and set healthy boundaries with your teen instead of acting out of fear and anxiety.

Experience the relationship-changing power of focusing on your own behavior instead of futile attempts to control your teen.

Your guides to Parenting Post-wilderness are Beth Hillman, a life coach for parents of struggling teens and mom to a post-wilderness teen, and part-time co-host Seth Gottlieb, a wilderness therapy guide turned teen and young-adult recovery coach. Their unique combination of experience and training yields candid conversations chock full of practical, actionable tips and tools to smooth the challenges both parents and teens experience surrounding treatment.


Every week, you can expect conversations around:

  • Parenting a struggling teen or young-adult;
  • Setting healthy boundaries with your teen;
  • Treatment options for your struggling teen or young adult;
  • Bringing your kid home from treatment;
  • Parenting skills to support your struggling child;
  • Teen substance abuse, drug addiction, gaming addiction, suicidal ideation, or other teen mental health concerns;
  • How to end power struggles and instead foster healthy communication with your teen or young-adult;
  • And much more.


Listen in to discover how parents like you have learned to influence equanimity in the home and rebuild connections with the teens they love.

Connect with Beth on Instagram (@bethhillmancoaching) or find more information about working with Beth at www.bethhillmancoaching.com.

© 2025 Parenting Post-Wilderness: Parenting a Struggling Teen Before, During and After Treatment
Hygiene & Healthy Living Parenting & Families Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Relationships Social Sciences
Episodes
  • 174. Parenting a Teen With Borderline Personality Disorder With Mom Michelle
    Dec 23 2025

    ✨ 6-week Boundaries Masterclass ✨

    Starting January 13th -- Early Bird price until December 31st!

    👉🏼 Click here to sign up, or go to bethhillmancoaching.com/boundariesmasterclass

    I hope to see you there!


    If you’re parenting a teen with a mental health condition, like borderline personality disorder, you may recognize the constant confusion: Is this normal? Am I helping, or making it worse? Why does nothing seem to work?

    In this episode, I’m joined by Michelle Park, a mom who courageously shares her family’s long and winding journey of parenting a teen with borderline personality disorder. Michelle takes us all the way back to early childhood, through misdiagnoses, masking, suicide attempts, and multiple levels of care, and into the crucial shifts that ultimately helped her daughter and family heal.

    What makes this conversation so powerful isn’t just the treatment story. It’s the parenting transformation Michelle had to make along the way. She opens up about letting go of fixing, silver-lining, and minimizing pain and learning instead how to validate emotions, sit with discomfort, and radically accept her daughter for who she is.

    This episode is honest, emotional, and hopeful. It’s for those of you who are exhausted, scared, and wondering whether change is even possible, both for your teen and for yourself.

    In this episode on parenting a teen with borderline personality disorder, we discuss:

    • Michelle’s journey through early signs of emotional dysregulation in her daughter and how they’re often missed;
    • The impact of misdiagnosis, masking, and “whack-a-mole” treatment;
    • What borderline personality disorder can look like in teens and young adults;
    • Why validation (not fixing) became the turning point in Michelle’s parenting;
    • How long-term treatment supported real, lasting change for Michelle’s family;
    • The important role parents play in recovery, and why family work matters so much;
    • Letting go of expectations and redefining success for your struggling teen;
    • Finding hope, support, and community as a parent of a child with a mental health condition.


    Resources mentioned in this episode:

    • NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness)
    • NEABPD (National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder)


    Looking for support?

    🗺️Need help setting healthy boundaries with your teen AND following through? My free guide will help you do so by creating your own Parent Home Plan!

    🤍Influence lasting change in yourself and your struggling teen with my private coaching or parent group program specifically created for parents of struggling teens.


    Have a question or need support? You can email me at beth@bethhillmancoaching.com


    You can support the show by:

    Leaving a review

    Subscribing to the show


    And remember parents, the change begins with us.

    ✨ 6-week Boundaries Masterclass ✨

    Starting January 13th -- Early Bird price until December 31st!

    👉🏼 Click here to sign up, or go to bethhillmancoaching.com/boundariesmasterclass

    I hope to see you there!

    Show More Show Less
    36 mins
  • 173. Deciding Whether to Send Your Teen to Treatment (Again)
    Dec 16 2025

    ✨ 6-week Boundaries Masterclass ✨

    Starting January 13th -- Early Bird price until December 31st!

    👉🏼 Click here to sign up, or go to bethhillmancoaching.com/boundariesmasterclass

    I hope to see you there!


    It’s never an easy decision to send your struggling child to treatment, whether it’ll be their first time or their tenth. As a parent, you’re exhausted, scared, unsure what’s actually best, and constantly questioning whether things are really as bad as they feel, or if you’re just out of options.

    Today, Seth and I sit down for a short conversation on what so many parents silently carry: the fear of failing your child, the worry about keeping them safe, the confusion about what’s “normal,” and the sinking feeling when home no longer feels like a place where healing is happening.

    Together, we talk about how to make sense of the patterns you’re seeing, how to approach this decision without blame or panic, and why communicating openly is often the first step toward clarity. We also share what we see in our own families and in the families we support: the moments when a higher level of care may be necessary, the moments when patience matters, and how to keep going when you feel completely stuck.

    In this episode on deciding whether to send your teen to treatment (again) or not, we discuss:

    • What it means when a teen or young adult feels stuck or unsafe at home;
    • How to tell the difference between a momentary struggle and an ongoing pattern;
    • Why parents often feel they’ve “failed”, and why that’s not true;
    • How to start a conversation about returning to treatment without blame;
    • When to bring in a coach, therapist, family specialist, or other neutral third party;
    • How to poke holes in black-and-white thinking when crisis narrows your vision;
    • The importance of vocalizing concerns rather than holding everything inside;
    • Why there’s no single “right answer”, only the next informed step forward.


    Looking for support?

    🗺️Need help setting healthy boundaries with your teen AND following through? My free guide will help you do so by creating your own Parent Home Plan!

    🤍Influence lasting change in yourself and your struggling teen with my private coaching or parent group program specifically created for parents of struggling teens.


    Have a question or need support? You can email me at beth@bethhillmancoaching.com


    You can support the show by:

    Leaving a review

    Subscribing to the show


    And remember parents, the change begins with us.

    ✨ 6-week Boundaries Masterclass ✨

    Starting January 13th -- Early Bird price until December 31st!

    👉🏼 Click here to sign up, or go to bethhillmancoaching.com/boundariesmasterclass

    I hope to see you there!

    Show More Show Less
    15 mins
  • 172. Learning to Trust Yourself Again After Trauma and Conditioning, For Teens & Parents, with Jake Wood
    Dec 9 2025

    What if the behaviors you see in your struggling teen aren’t just “problems,” but signs that the identity they were given no longer fits? What if their resistance, shut-down, or self-destructive choices are really the early stages of something Jake Wood knows all too well: the painful beginning of learning to trust yourself again after trauma, addiction, and conditioning?

    In today’s conversation, Jake returns to share the part of his story most parents never get to hear from their own child: what it feels like on the inside when the systems that shaped you ( family expectations, culture, religion, diagnostic labels, school, recovery programs) tell you who you’re supposed to be, while your true self is begging for air.

    Jake walks us through the years he spent trying to fit into a system that convinced him he was broken… until everything collapsed. Addiction, relapse, spiritual pressure, shame, and finally a life-threatening cancer diagnosis stripped him of every identity he’d ever carried. The belief system he built his whole life on fell apart and he had to rebuild from the inside out.

    For parents, this conversation is a window into what your child may be wrestling with beneath the behavior. The confusion. The shame. The feeling of being “the identified patient.” The pressure to be who the system says they should be. And the long, messy, necessary process of learning to trust themselves again after trauma and conditioning.

    Jake’s journey reminds us that breakdowns in our teens aren’t always signs of failure, but can also be signs of a self being born.

    If you’ve ever wondered why your child reacts the way they do, why consequences don’t “fix it,” or why their behavior seems to carry so much pain, this episode will help you see their struggle with new compassion… and perhaps see your own inner work more clearly, too.

    In this episode on learning to trust yourself again after trauma and conditioning, we discuss:

    • How systems (family, school, religion, culture) shape identity, and shame;
    • What it feels like to be the “identified patient” in a family;
    • Why teens may crumble when they can’t meet expectations;
    • How addiction, relapse, and shame cycles destroy self-trust;
    • The symbolic collapse of identity through Jake’s cancer journey;
    • Shadow work and parts work as tools for rebuilding inner authority;
    • What unconditional love looks like when everything is falling apart;
    • How breakdowns can become breakthroughs for both parent and child;
    • And more!


    More about Jake Wood

    Jake Wood is a certified Resilience and Transformation Coach who helps individuals navigate their Soul–System dynamics — the interplay between the stories they inherited and the soul’s original truth. His descent through addiction, depression, and cancer became the doorway through which his soul revealed what had been buried beneath the early system conditioning. Today, Jake walks alongside those who feel called to turn inward and discover what their own soul is revealing.

    He can be reached at coaching@lifebeyondthebrink.com.


    Looking for support?

    🗺️Need help setting healthy boundaries with your teen AND following through? My free guide will help you do so by creating your own Parent Home Plan!

    🤍Influence lasting change in yourself and your struggling teen with my private coaching or parent group program

    ✨ 6-week Boundaries Masterclass ✨

    Starting January 13th -- Early Bird price until December 31st!

    👉🏼 Click here to sign up, or go to bethhillmancoaching.com/boundariesmasterclass

    I hope to see you there!

    Show More Show Less
    48 mins
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