Keeping Your Cool: A Teen’s Survival Guide (Lou Priolo)

Keeping Your Cool

A Teen’s Survival Guide

If you are a teenager, you probably know plenty about issues like arguing with your parents, rebelling against authority, and attitude problems—either firsthand or because everyone expects you to be like that! But what if you knew that these things actually spring from a problem with anger? That they‘re the result of being a sinner, not a teenager; and that you can have more control over them than people think you can?  Keeping Your Cool explains how.

Biblical counselor Lou Priolo provides a practical, understandable, and biblical approach to mastering sinful anger and its causes and effects. He helps you to assess your level of anger and what form it takes, to identify some of the heart issues that lead to anger (and how to replace them with biblical attitudes) and to have open communication with your parents without the distractions that cause arguments.

Practical tools, such as journaling exercises and discussion points to talk over with your parents, help you to take measurable steps toward “keeping your cool.”

About the Author

Lou Priolo is a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors and an instructor with Birmingham Theological Seminary. He has been the Director of Biblical Counseling at Eastwood Presbyterian Church since 1998 and has started counseling ministries at additional churches in Alabama, where he lives with his wife Kim and their two daughters Sophia and Gabriella.  He is the author of many books including The Heart of Anger and Danger Signs of an Unhealthy Dating Relationship.

Endorsements

“Refreshingly and doggedly biblical.  With a thoroughly gospel-centered approach, Lou helps young people to confront sin head on and move toward finding both grace and change by the power of God’s Word and Spirit, while remaining intensely practical and concrete.”  —Jon Nielson, college pastor, College Church, Wheaton, Illinois

“Being a teenager is hard. Finally help is in print! Lou Priolo shows what teenage anger is and where it comes from. Open these pages and you will find hope, encouragement and the Savior.”  —Rick Holland, Lead Pastor, Mission Road Bible Church, Prairie Village, Kansas, and cofounder of the Resolved and Anchored youth conferences.

Contents

1. I’m Not Angry
2. The Volcano and the Clam
3. Learning to Communicate
4. Maintaining Your Cool
5. How to Handle Rejection and Hurt
6. Provocative Parents
7. Journaling Your Anger
8. Getting to the Heart of Anger, Part 1
9. Getting to the Heart of Anger, Part 2
10. Undoing Disrespect
11. Managing Manipulation
12. The Appeal Process
13. How to Talk to Your Parents about Their Sin
14. What Does it Mean to be a Teen?

Appendices:

• A) How to Become a Christian
• B) How to Respond to Reproof
• C) Parental Provocation Worksheet
• D) Idolatrous “Loves” in the Bible
• E) Common Ways in which Teenagers Sin Against their Parents
• F) Parental Evaluation Form
• G) Extra Journals