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The Unique Problems of Teen Stress
"Teen Stress - SAME but DIFFERENT."The problems of teen stress deserve a category of their own within the context of stress management.Teenagers (defined literally here as people between the ages of 13 and 19) are exposed to a unique set of stressful challenges not only due to the realities of human biology but also due to the importance we place on the teenage years both socially and culturally. First understand that stress is the direct physiological and psychological response to change in your environment. In that sense, stress is change. Teenagers experience a period of relatively drastic social and biological change during the years between childhood and adulthood. It only stands to reason that teen stress would take on a unique character corresponding to the specific changes experienced during that period. In other words, while teen stress and the stress experienced by adults or children might differ in certain important ways, at its root all stress is a function of change and our reaction to it. The teenage years mark the transition between childhood and adulthood, a period often referred to in the literature of social psychology as adolescence. This is a period of rapid psychological development (second only to that experienced in early childhood) marked by a strong trend towards individuation - in other words, the process of defining one’s self as an individual. The process of individuation typically involves a number of psychological shifts. One of the most important of these is a shift in the teenager’s focus from their parents to their peer group – a group composed of other teenagers who experience these changes together. Teenagers are not only trying to define themselves as individuals inside the context of their nuclear family, but also to develop meaningful relationships within their peer group outside of their identity as a son or daughter. As a result the process of individuation is often characterized by a strong identification with and subscription to the attitudes, values, dress, social vernacular, etc. of their chosen circle of friends. In other words, teenagers individuate themselves from their parents by identifying themselves more strongly with a chosen circle of similar peers. It is an unfortunate reality that teenagers are hypersensitive towards the members of their peer group who do not skillfully form these relationships. The formation of these relationships at this stage is in many ways a process of trial-and-error, and it’s the “error” part that can be the cause of a great deal of teen stress. Individual teens who do not strongly identify with one of their peer social groups are often ostracized as “weird” or singled out for their individuality. And their tormentors, fellow teens, do not carry the same inhibitions about callously persecuting a peer as an adult. The cruelty inflicted by teenagers upon one another is legendary. Countless Hollywood movies have been built around the premise of middle school and high school as teenage battlegrounds. And that’s just one source of teen stress. We haven’t even begun to talk about biology. There are tremendous physiological changes taking place, particular during the first few teenage years, which we typically refer to as puberty. A full discussion of the biological changes that occur during puberty are beyond the scope of this article, but from the perspective of teen stress, it’s important to understand that puberty is a fundamentally neurological and chemical process. A structure in your brain called the hypothalamus signals a master gland called the pituitary gland to set off a cascade of hormonal changes throughout the body resulting in the development of the secondary sexual characteristics (the lowering of the voice in males, menstruation in females, etc.) Are you beginning to see how teen stress presents a unique problem? Not only are teens going through profound psychological and neurological changes and potentially subject to extreme stress at the hands of their peers, but they are also practically swimming in a cocktail of powerful hormones as they begin to notice the opposite sex as “opposite” for the first time. Add to this a chronic lack of exercise, terrible diets, and parents who are busier by the day, and you essentially have a recipe for stress-related injury like anxiety, depression, and anger disorder. What is the solution? Well I’ll tell you what it’s not. The answer is absolutely not to feed teenagers a bunch of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. I am not a doctor, and no part of this article or website claims to constitute medical advice. But you don’t have to be a doctor to see how adding a powerful psychotropic drug to the situation I have described above could have terrible and unforeseen side effects, and should only be considered as a last resort or a temporary stop-gap measure. So what is the answer? Assuming the presence of a pair of loving parents who are committed to being involved in their teenagers’ lives,
you should take a look at some of my HARDCORE Stress Management techniques for teen stress.
Even better, pick up a copy of
HARDCORE Stress Managemet™
for an even deeper understanding of the nature of severe stress and how to fix it.
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