HOW TO HELP A TEEN WITH ANXIETY // Know what to say or suggest to a teenager with anxiety

What's going on? Welcome back to my channel. Because I specialize in anxiety, I see a wide range of anxiety symptoms, everything from anticipation to full blown panic and anxiety attacks. But I also see a range of ages, everything from little kids to teens to adults. But I want to talk today about teenagers and anxiety. And over the years I've worked with a lot of teenagers. So a lot of what I'm about to tell you comes out of collaboration with my teens. This is not just my perspective. These are tried and true tips and techniques and ideas and suggestions that have come out of many, many, many conversations with the teenagers that I've had over the years. One thing that I want to address is that teenagers have a lot going on between school and friends thinking about the future in that teenage years, let's call it high school, because that's generally a big chunk of the teen years from, from social stuff to sports and working in their future and thinking about college, things going on at home, maybe past issues or trauma if they've ever experienced anything like that. It's safe to say there is a lot of stuff going on in the teenage world. And as adults, we do tend to forget that even though we know they're going to be okay and we want to just reassure them that it'll turn out fine, they're still in the trenches, they're still dealing with all of the stuff that has to do with those teenage years and their experience experiencing it. But then as adults, we're saying it's fine, relax, calm down, it's not a big deal, it's just your friends, but it's very real to them. So I want to just make it really clear. A lot of times what I hear from teens is that they don't feel heard because adults in their life are so far removed from their own teenage years that we forget how stressful it is. And it's not bad. That's just kind of how things happen in life. And we don't mean to, to minimize their issues or what they're expressing to us, but to a teenager when we're just reassuring them or telling them to relax or it'll go away or it'll get better to them, that is kind of minimizing it and not really validating their experience of their teenage years. So I want to just remind you of that if you're an adult who has a teen or works with teens, we can often forget how stressful of a time period your teenage years are. And I just want to remind you of that the other Thing that I want to make a point of is that a lot of their anxiety, a lot of teenagers who experience anxiety will say sometimes in not so many words, that a lot of their anxiety or a lot of the symptoms that they're experiencing are self inflicted. And it's not that their anxiety or their experiences or their feelings are their fault, but they often put a ton of pressure on themselves because of school and sports and family and friends and social media and the world they're living in. So they feel all this pressure, or they have all this pressure being indirectly kind of given to them or directly being put on them. And then a lot of their anxiety is self inflicted. So it's not like they're doing it on purpose, but they will recognize that they put a lot of pressure on themselves and or there's a lot of pressure being put on them. So I want to just talk today about a few things that over the years, in collaboration with all of my wonderful teenagers that I have worked with, that these techniques and suggestions work in helping manage their anxiety symptoms or anticipation or stress, or whatever kind of range of anxiety they're experiencing. Let's put this down for a second. One of the first things that I encourage an adult, whether it's a teacher, a parent, a guardian, whoever it may be, who has a teenager who's maybe exposed, experiencing some anxiety, is to teach that teenager how to breathe. I know that sounds super simple, but breathing is such an involuntary habit, we don't even realize we're doing it. And a lot of times with anxiety or stress or anticipation, our breath can quicken, we get tense and we're not getting the oxygen that our system needs. So as a therapist, I almost always, pretty much always teach my clients with anxiety how to breathe. Just a couple simple techniques and encouraging the adults in their life to remind them to breathe. Not in the sense of calm down, just breathe, it'll be fine. But breathing with them or reminding them to breathe can help just calm their stress or their anxiety in the moment. And there are so many different ways to teach somebody how to breathe. Just google breathing techniques or breathing techniques for stress, or breathing techniques, techniques for anxiety. But one of the main things that I always teach is just to make your exhale longer than your inhale. So if you inhale for four counts, exhale for five, six or seven counts, making that exhale longer than the inhale just kind of hacks the nervous system and just calms the body down and allows the body to physically relax. But also everything else, whether their heart is Racing or they're sweating, just get some oxygen to the system. I know it sounds super simple and like, duh, Lori, who doesn't breathe. But reminding somebody to breathe or giving them a few options and helping them through a stressful time just by paying attention to their breath can really help. And it's obviously with anxiety. One of the things I always teach a client, especially to my teenagers, because that's something they can do during a test, in class, when they're in an interaction with their friends and they're stressed out right before they walk out onto a court or a stage, if they're stressed before a game or a play or a performance or something like that, breathing is the quickest way to calm this system and bring that person back down to earth if they're freaking out or if they're just experiencing a little bit of anticipation. The second suggestion that I have for helping a teenager with anxiety is to have them get a bracelet or a ring or a crystal or a rock, something that they can touch that reminds them of a calming feeling. Or maybe that bracelet has a word on it that says serenity or calm or relax or breathe. So it can remind them to do a thing like breathe, or it can be a nice calming word that they've associated with that item, that bracelet or ring or rock or whatever it is. But just having an item in the moment of stress that they can touch, that they can look at and remind themselves, and it helps ground us and be more mindful and kind of bring us back down to earth. But it's also just a nice symbolic kind of thing that they're, okay, whatever it is, that evokes a good warm feeling in them other than the anxiety that they might be experiencing. The third thing that I always want to encourage the adults in a teenager's life to do, and this is easier said than done with a lot of teens, I understand, because they're living on coffee and fast food nowadays. But just encourage them to take care of their physical health. And the easiest way we can do this as adults is to model that behavior by living a healthy lifestyle ourselves as parents or teachers or counselors or whatever it is. But encouraging a teenager to eat well and sleep and exercise, those three big things in your physical health can really be helpful because a lot of times they're living on sugar and caffeine, which can heighten anxiety and make things worse. And it doesn't help stress, but also eating poorly, we know, can impact your mood. But even exercise, if a teenager is in a sport, they're performing, but some kind of walk or other kind of regular exercise outside of that sport can be really helpful because a lot of times with teenagers, there's a lot of stress and anxiety that come with that sport. So we want to encourage them to be physically active outside of that field or that court. If your teenager isn't physically active and they're doing a lot of sitting around or studying or playing video games, we also want to highly encourage them to be active because so much of anxiety is pent up energy. So we want to associate physical movement with a good feeling, but we also want to just relieve some of that energy, move it through the body. And getting on a regular physical movement kind of routine can be really helpful. Encouraging a teenager to take care of their physical health can be a key component in helping them manage their anxiety. And number four is sleep. And I kind of mentioned that with our physical health because it has a huge impact on our physical health. But sleep also has a huge impact on our mood. And when we struggle with anxiety, if we're not sleeping well or we don't have a really good sleep schedule or routine, it can impact our mood, our anxiety, our ability to cope with stress, and all the other things that come with being a teenager. And we know teenagers are often up late playing video games, hanging out with their friends, studying, and then they go to bed at 11, 12, 1am and then they're up at 6am for school. So we know that teenagers really don't get a lot of good quality sleep, which isn't good for their mind or their body. But also they're not sleeping because they're trying to get things done. So as adults, we really need to remember that sleep is important. And in the teenage years, they need actually about 8 to 10 hours of sleep, whereas an adult can kind of get by about six or eight, depending on who you are, your personality, your lifestyle, lifestyle and all of that. But sleep is so important to our mood and somebody who doesn't have a good sleep schedule, a teenager who is dealing with all kinds of stress in their life and then isn't sleeping, it's definitely not helping this situation. So encouraging a good sleep schedule, a good sleep routine, good sleep hygiene can be super helpful. And it's incredibly important in their overall mood and ability just to handle daily life. The fifth thing that I generally encourage a lot in my office if it happens is a teenager will start to get really overwhelmed and they will start to cry. And I always tell them it's okay. I look at crying as A sign that we're full. It's just coming out in the form of tears. And I just let them cry and get it out. There's no judgment and there's no, calm down, stop crying, let's talk. I let them cry. And a lot of times it can be a very good release for them as parents or adults. When we see a child or a teenager cry, we're like, calm down, stop crying. Because it hurts us often to see them cry, but sometimes they just need to. And because they tend to hold a lot of their anxiety in during school or with their friends, it does sometimes come out at home or at the end of their day when they're finally settling in and trying to go to bed and then they find themselves crying at the end of the day. So just a reminder, don't judge them if they're crying or they're coming to you and crying. Don't minimize the fact that they're crying. Tell them it's okay. You can cry when you're ready to talk about it. I'm here. But let's not forget that crying is a really good release and all of these pent up emotions that these teenagers are feeling can help be relieved if they just want to cry. And reminding them that that's okay is a really good technique. And one of the last things that I want to encourage an adult, if you're watching this and you have a teenager or you teach teenagers or you work with teenagers, is if this is outside of your scope of expertise or your just ability to help them manage, it is okay to get them some professional help. And I know as a parent or a guardian, it might be hard because we want our kids, we want our teenagers to be able to come to us, but because there's so much going on in their life, an outside source or a professional might be a good option because that person doesn't live with them, they're not their teacher, they don't see them every day, they're not a friend and, and they're this outside entity that they can go and they can talk and they can kind of leave all their problems and get some coping skills and learn techniques and then they can go back out into their real life and practice this stuff that they're learning in therapy or counseling. So if your teenager is asking for help or even if you want to suggest, hey, do you want me to call somebody? Do you want to look at some bios online and see if there's a therapist that you might want to go see? It's okay. It's not a sign of weakness. It's not a sign that as an adult we're doing something wrong. It's actually a really good thing. And one thing that I see a lot with the teenagers that I work with is that if there's a struggle at home or there's something going on, when they come to therapy, I do a lot of encouraging to have them talk to those adults in their life that they trust so that they have other outlets, so that they can build other trusting relationships. So they might come in not feeling like they have anybody. But we always identify a support system. So if you're feeling like if you send a teenager to counseling, you're going to lose them or they're never going to talk to you, usually it helps because the teenager is able to learn to cope and they're able to have better relationships interpersonally in their life, which helps their relationship with those adults, that parent, that teacher, or things like that. So if you're an adult and you're trying to help a teenager with anxiety, if it's out of the scope of your expertise or you just don't know what to say anymore, it's okay to seek some outside help, assistance, reassurance, support. It might actually be a really good thing to get them somebody to talk to. One last reminder as adults trying to help teenagers with anxiety is that teens, kids, but teenagers especially, they just often want to feel heard. They already have enough going on that's being thrown at them that maybe they're feeling like the adults in their life are minimizing. So if you're an adult who's trying to approach a teenager who you might think is struggling, or a teenager is coming to you asking for help, don't try to convince them. And I know this sounds crazy, but don't try to convince them that you understand. Because teenagers often feel alone and they feel misunderstood and they don't feel heard. The best thing we can do is just listen, ask them what they need for us, maybe give some of those suggestions that I listed off. But the biggest piece of advice is not to try to impose your will or convince them that you understand, even if you do, because as adults, we generally understand some of the things that they've been through and we can relate, but that's not usually what they need. They just need to get it out. They need to feel heard. Maybe that can come down the line where you share some stories or you tell them, you know what, here's some things that I experienced as a teenager myself. But initially you really just want to be there for them. Let them feel heard, Let them just experience the idea that you're a senior safe person, that they can come to feeling heard as a human is one of the things that we want the most and we can often forget. So instead of trying to convince them that you get it and you understand, even if you do, just hear them out. This list is obviously not exhaustive. There are endless ways to help a teenager with anxiety. These are just several of the best big ones that have come out of many conversations over the years that I've had with teenagers that seem to be the most effective and the most helpful in the immediate. They don't take a long time to have an impact. They can kind of help pretty quickly. It's what we do over time that's really going to matter. But these are just a few of the big ones that have come out of so many of the conversations that I've had with my teenager clients over the years.