Practical Ways to Help Teenagers with Stress and Anxiety

 

More and more I am being contacted by worried parents whose teenage son/daughter is struggling with stress and anxiety. Some have become overwhelmed with the school changes due to the pandemic, and other’s have found that their anxiety symptoms have flared up and both parent and teenager don’t know how to cope. 

Anxiety is our mind telling us lies. In my blogpost: Anxiety: The Mind’s Fake News, I explain that it is an early warning signal that our mind has used since we were primitive nomads. We are programmed to overestimate the potential threat in a situation because then we are protected from danger even when our estimation was incorrect.

One of my teenage clients described it as a faulty alarm ringing in a building but there wasn’t a burglar. Even though everything was safe and calm in the building, the alarm kept sounding. It is very stressful for the building owner to have to manage the faulty alert, particularly when they had no idea why the alarm kept sounding.

In our teenage years, it is important to learn skills to manage stress and anxiety because they build our resilience. The knowledge of how to manage the stresses of life supports our self-esteem and prevents us having behavioural problems in later life.

Here are a few tips for parents and teenagers to manage and prevent stresses from becoming anxiety. The key is to apply them consistently and frequently not just as a one-dose method.

Reassurance: The Antidote

Parents, don’t feed the drama of the panic attack. It is Fake news, a faulty warning signal. Reassurance and remaining consistently calm in your behaviour helps to prevent the anxiety from taking over.

You will want to talk about it but pick your time. Often it is best after the emotion has subsided. This is particularly true with teenage boys. Do not attempt to reason, rationalise and challenge the behaviour when they are experience emotion, whatever it might be. Wait until later. 

When you do talk about it ask, question and reassure rather than tell. You aim is you want them to talk it through. You want them to talk understand what triggered their stress and emotion that particular time, then, together, you can start challenging the accuracy of the fake news (see below).

Avoid Problem-Solving

Unless there is a serious situation regarding their safety, avoid trying to solve the problem for them. Question and encourage them to come up with solutions. How do you think you could make that less stressful? What would make things easier, right now?

Remember you have the experience to help you know what to do, but you acquired that through trial and error. You made mistakes and took wrong turns, and now you use that to guide your decision making. If we jump in and say, “What you need to do…” we are denying them the ability to build the foundations that lead to psychological resilience.

When the teenager makes a decision, useful or otherwise, and they experience the consequences of that choice, they are learning about what to do next time. With careful questioning, the parent can guide and provide a safety net for them to experience trial and error.

Challenge the Fake News

Question and challenge the anxiety thoughts, feelings and behaviour as a response to fake news. Talk it through: “where is the evidence that it’s accurate?” Of course, we mean real evidence. Evidence is the past positive experience that indicates the reality of the situation. This will oppose anxiety because we know that it is fake. 

Keep a record of positive experiences that you know will help dispute the triggers for your son/daughter’s anxiety. When there is a flare-up of stress and anxiety, use the list as evidence of fact that the worrying thoughts and concerns are fake.

Example:

“Yes, I do need to stay up late revising every night. I have a test. I’m not good at them. I’ll fail.”

“Stop and think about that. How accurate is that? How accurate is it that you are not good at tests and that you will fail?”

“You don’t understand. I have to work late to get all the work done, otherwise, I will mess up the test. You know I have to do well to get to university.”

“Let’s stop and take just 10 mins to think this through because I wonder if the way you are feeling about that test, the thoughts you are having about failing are tricking you. They are fake news. They feel very real, but in fact, it is the anxiety and worry talking and there is plenty of evidence to prove that.

Firstly, you have passed every test you have taken this year. Not just passed but got higher grades than you expected.

Secondly, your teacher emailed the other day to say how well you were doing, let’s read that email again. 

Thirdly, this one test is not going to determine your entrance on the university course, it is a test to check your knowledge. 

All that evidence, the factual information, tells us that while, of course, you will want to do some revision for your test, your past results show that it is not necessary to work late every night. The teacher’s praise is evidence that you are doing better than you think, so the anxiety is lying to you. It’s making you feel more anxious about it than you need to be.

Let’s take charge and I suggest that you set a limit on the revision that you do each day so you don’t burn yourself out. Let’s show the anxiety that it is wrong."

While it may not be as smooth a conversation as that, the aim is to stop and challenge the lies anxiety tell us. It is helping your son/daughter to get into the habit of using positive experience to bolster their self-esteem and resilience.

Avoid Toxic Comparison

It is so easy to give in to the toxicity of comparing ourselves with others. Social media has a large part to play in this, but it has only exacerbated a problem that was always there.

Teenagers are particularly prone to comparing themselves to each other in less than favourable ways. It ranges from school performance, latest fashions and trends, to arbitrary measures of popularity. These must be challenged and avoided as much as possible.

Comparison is toxic because it undermines our self-confidence and denies our individuality. Comparison implies that we are missing out on something, we are 'less than’ and reduces our self-esteem.

If you can encourage your teenage son/daughter to use less social media, that would be a good start, or at the very least have open conversations about how damaging it can be. They will know this! They are far more clued up about it than we often give them credit for! 

The conversation means you are helping to challenge the messages that you see as unhelpful. Remember so much of the content is fake. We know, and your teenager knows, that it’s fake, so we remind ourselves that to make a comparison with our lives would be pointless. This helps to encourage an individuality which builds psychological resilience.

You must model this too. Check out your social media. Are you encouraging a comparison? Are you doing the same? Perhaps you often post selfies with your children that have to look just right. When your teenager got their last set of exam results or was picked for the sports team and you posted about it on social media, were you doing for them or for other’s to see and compare?

It’s a tough one to think about I know, but ask yourself is that fuelling a toxic comparison in your teenager? Is it really helpful for them? It is difficult to have a conversation with them about not comparing themselves to what they see online if we are part of that very content.

Do an audit of your social media account and decide if you think it would be more helpful to change your content and the regularity with which you post. Perhaps it will benefit you too!

The Bottomline

Reassure without adding to the drama, remember the emotion created by stress and anxiety will pass, then challenge the lying thoughts and feelings that triggered the anxiety. Use the evidence of positive experience to show the truth of the situation rather than lies created by the anxiety fake news. Decide together what would be more helpful ways to manage those triggers in the future. Be aware of toxic comparison as the road to stress and anxiety. Consider ways you can challenge the unhelpful and stressful messages that your teenager is subjected to. 

Remember this is the groundwork to resilience and stress management. They are learning the skills to deal with what life throws at them. It would be crazy to think they should know what to do, we all have to learn it sometime.

Hypnotherapy Helping Teenage Stress and Anxiety

Stress-Busting For Teenagers - The Blow Away Technique is a safe way of helping children and teenagers deal with the emotional obstacles of growing-up.

As we grow up it’s perfectly normal to have fears and worries about ourselves and the world we live in. Sometimes these fears can lead to problems like a lack of confidence, shyness and school anxiety.

While many of these problems can fade as we get older; it is possible to relieve the symptoms with a simple form of Suggestion therapy using Hypnosis called The Blow Away Technique.

What Does The Technique Involve?

Using a relaxing hypnosis session coupled with visualisation techniques, the teenager can “blow away” thoughts and feelings associated with their problem. Imagine if when you were a young adult and you had the opportunity to blow-away the things that have been making you feel upset, how big a difference would that have made to your happiness and resilience?

There is no need for us to cross-question the child, the technique is non-verbal and benefits from them being able to us the calming effect of hypnosis to reduce their worries and concerns.

Parents take part in the session at the same time experiencing relaxing hypnosis too, so they also get the chance to blow-away their anxieties!

Come along together for a chat, where we can discuss how Hypnotherapy will help. The session lasts approximately one hour and usually with a follow-up session in a week or two.

David treats clients at Kettering Osteopaths and Oundle Osteopaths and can be contacted to book a free initial consultation at www.ketteringhypnotherapy.com or call him direct on 01536 350328