Teen Anxiety: Tips for Taming the Edgy Improv Group
Comedian Aparna Nancherla jokes that living with anxiety is like having an edgy improv group living in your brain: “It only takes one suggestion to be off and running. . . Noooooo . . . I just came [to the show] to be supportive! How long is this going to last? None of these thoughts has a future!” she wails in the voice of the put-upon audience member. This is what it often feels like inside a teenager’s brain. The trouble is that they’re rarely able to laugh at the cosmically tragic events with the emotional distance of a casual audience member. Their amygdalas, the center of their brain that signals fear, make it seem like they are forecasting probable, real-life scenarios.
You’d think that high schoolers would be celebrating and enjoying the golden years of later adolescence after the hormone pandemonium of middle school. High schoolers are starting to experience a few wins after the awkward years of middle school. Hopefully, they have already encountered and weathered several difficulties and emerged with resilience and a bit of wisdom. They’ve probably faced problematic student-teacher mismatches, grown into or out of friendships and crushes, and endured the scrutiny of peers' judgment.
The hitch is that once kids get to high school, the expectations for them, both academically and socially, are significantly increased. This can be especially tough on teenagers with ADHD or related struggles with executive function. It’s no wonder there’s a relationship between anxiety and ADHD or executive function struggles. CHAAD reports that anxiety disorders may be present in 10-40% of teens with ADHD.
Parents and teen mentors should know the signs of anxiety. Does your teen have frequent headaches, stomach aches, or back or shoulder pain? Anxiety can also present as perfectionism. Anxiety can present as perfectionism, too, so going to extreme lengths to avoid mistakes and everyday problems is a flag. Rumination over the all-nighter before a project deadline, the missed ball at the game, or an awkward social interaction at school can make a teen’s nervous system feel like a saber-toothed tiger is breathing down their neck.
To what degree should an adult be concerned? It depends on how much the teen bounces back from common mistakes and everyday problems. Are they living a life secluded from friends and activities that used to bring joy? Fear and second-guessing can create a spiral of despair that leads to withdrawal. Social anxiety and panic attacks can appear in young people who functioned with greater resilience earlier in their childhood. To complicate matters, teens often hide their feelings from adults. If they’re suffering deeply, they may begin self-medicating with alcohol or marijuana rather than reach out to ask for help. If you’re searching for additional information specifically about discussing drugs and alcohol use with your teen, parenting coach Megan Leahy recently wrote an advice column for the Washington Post. Leahy also recommended sharing the book High: Everything You Want to Know About Alcohol, Drugs, and Addiction with every teen.
Sometimes the signs are tough to read. Is a teen blowing off steam, or escalating their worries in a feedback loop of anxiety? Teens are famous for making blanket statements like, “Mr. So-and-so never posts the assignments in the online portal,” Or “ That girl is always pushing my buttons!” How seriously should an adult take these exclamations? You can take a moment to validate the emotions without evaluating the logic of what they’re saying. Those nevers and always statements certainly feel true when strong emotions hijack your teen’s amygdala. You can offer a statement that mirrors their feelings: “You are so frustrated with that class,” or “You sound like this person is really getting on your last nerve.”
If you overhear your teen using negative self-talk, you can also offer validation of their efforts to get things right. “I’m so stupid, I’ll never get this,” they may mutter (or yell!) You can respond with a sincere “Holy crap! You’ve been putting so much effort into this! You are scared you won’t get this right” Or, “It makes perfect sense that you’re so worried about that interaction, given how much your friends mean to you.” If they’re perseverating over a social encounter, you could affirm their struggles by saying, “You are going over and over some moment where you wish you’d handled this one thing differently. That’s so hard.” The point is that you are normalizing struggle without implying, or worse, directly saying, that their problems shouldn’t matter.
Be prepared to hear teen complaints about stressors that may seem small from your adult point of view. From your older and more experienced vantage point, it may seem tempting to let out a sarcastic laugh. Remember, a teen is just getting the hang of these types of struggles with a still-developing frontal cortex offering shaky support for self-regulation, memory, and organization. For example, a teen venting that they have no “free time” may be overwhelmed about managing their time because they frequently multi-task and burn their cognitive candle at both ends.
Sometimes, teens shut down rather than air their grievances. They may feel too overwhelmed to share their emotions or fearful of a grown-up's minimizing or dismissive response. It’s important to share that you care about them, and while they may not want to talk to you, you hope they feel comfortable confiding in an aunt, college cousin, favorite teacher, or school counselor. Ask if you can do anything to lessen the pressure they may be feeling. Parent coaching gurus Ned Johnson and Dr. WIlliam Stixrud advise communicating security with statements such as:
I love you no matter what you do or say or achieve.
You don’t have to be good at everything to have a great life.
Screwing stuff up is a necessary part of learning to do things well.
There are thousands of ways to become successful in the world.
Life isn’t a race; the world is full of late bloomers.
If a teen struggles with executive function or has ADHD or learning differences, it’s essential to affirm that their struggles are unique to the neurological profile handed to them by genes and the random luck of biology. In other words,in a world usually built for more “neurotypical” brains, their hardships are not their fault.
The way your brain works is making this type of thing harder to manage, and that sucks.
You really shine when you . . . and it’s not fair that other situations like . . . feel so overwhelming to manage.
Ugh, your prefrontal cortex couldn’t keep up with the gazillion things coming at you.
It’s not your fault. You were using so many of the strategies you’ve learned. I’m sorry that your coach/teacher/friend didn’t understand how hard it was for your brain/nervous system to be in that situation . . .
These conversations don’t come naturally to many adults, so bringing in an outside professional to support your teen can be valuable. The sooner, the better, because sometimes it can take up to 6 months to find an available provider! Your child’s pediatrician should have a referral list, and this is often the best place to start. A pediatrician can meet with parents privately to offer foundational advice or offer to talk to the teen directly to share a few survival strategies while the teen is waiting to begin seeing a mental health provider. Your child’s school counselor should have a list of providers as well.
Engaging a mental provider from a referral list requires patience and persistence. Five practices may be listed, but once you call them or send inquiry emails, you may find out that only one is open to new patients and takes your insurance. Still, one practice or clinician is all you need as a start. Sometimes it can take up to 6 months to find an available provider, so the sooner you’re on a waiting list, the better. It can’t hurt to call twice a month and ask if there have been any cancellations or changes in the clinician’s patient caseload.
For teens who are inflexible or not responding to direct counseling approaches, it’s valuable to seek out a clinician who is trained in SPACE. This parent-based program helps children and adolescents with anxiety, OCD, and related issues. There are many options for treatment, including medication. Treatment is not a sign of failure or weakness for children or the adults who love them. Treatment is a sign of care and a path towards greater self-compassion and resilience.
Minister, educator, and child advocate Fred Rogers shared the following encouraging words: “Some days doing ‘the best we can’ may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect—on any front—and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else.” May this philosophy guide our teens and affirm our efforts to support their well-being.
Photo credit Eren Li, via Pexel
