Davina Hehn: When Your Teen Explodes, and What Anger Is Hiding

Davina Hehn explains anger to her own children as armor: the protective layer sitting over everything soft. When a parent asks her how to stop a child from raging, she asks them a different question first. What is the armor covering.

Davina is a trained therapist who moved into mental health coaching to work in a more action-oriented way. She is certified in anger management, conflict resolution, and mediation, she hosts the SHIFT Talking podcast, and she runs a group program built around nervous system regulation and communication skills. Her practice is A Steady Space.

Lisa opens with what she hears from this community: parents whose children have broken their fingers and their noses, and who will not tell anyone because the household already has one secret in it. Davina's response is that aggression in these homes is close to expected. A child either turns it outward or swallows it, and the ones with no behavioral tools have no third option. Her test for whether it has gone past ordinary adolescence is whether the size of the reaction matches the size of the trigger. If it is hysterical, it is historical.

The conversation is unusually practical. What happens in the brain during an explosion, why reasoning with a child in that state fails, and what brings them back: ice in the palm, a cold cloth, the five senses, sour candy, a walk looking for colors. Why sending only the child to therapy tends to make things worse, and why the outcomes change when the parent does the work alongside them. What sending a kid away teaches them if nobody explains why. Why timeouts can teach a child that big feelings have to be handled alone before they are allowed back. What mobile mental health crisis lines offer that a police call does not, especially when an ex is standing by to use that call in a custody fight. And what Davina says to the parent who has decided their child is past helping, which includes her own husband's history.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why anger is a secondary emotion, and what it is usually protecting
• If it is hysterical, it is historical: telling ordinary temper from something deeper
• Why reasoning with a child mid-explosion cannot work, and what to do instead
• Getting a nervous system back to baseline: cold, the five senses, sour candy
• Why sending only your child to therapy tends to make the household worse
• Mobile mental health crisis teams as an alternative to calling the police
• Building a care team and a safety plan before the next incident, not during it
• Guilt vs. shame: naming the behavior as the problem instead of the child

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 How common aggression is, and why families keep it secret
3:00 Why kids act out when they have no tools to say it
5:00 Red flags: when the reaction does not match what happened
8:00 Why sending only the child to therapy makes things worse
10:00 Isolation, and finding your kid a mentor instead
12:00 Shipping a kid off vs. saying "we have a problem"
15:00 Timeouts, attachment, and sitting with big emotions
17:00 The amygdala hijack, and why talking to them does not work
19:00 Getting back to baseline: cold, the five senses, sour candy
21:00 Police, mobile crisis teams, and building a care team first
26:00 "My kid is a lost cause," and where to actually start

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Davina Hehn at A Steady Space: https://www.yoursteadyspace.com/
🔗 A Steady Space on Instagram (@asteadyspace): https://www.instagram.com/asteadyspace/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.