Helping Teenagers Deal With Their Stress

Teenagers today carry more stress than any generation before them. The pressure to succeed, land a spot at a good school, and launch a career has taken on the intensity of a contact sport. Public schools now push "college and career readiness" as early as kindergarten, so by the time a student reaches senior year, the anxiety has often settled into something unhealthy. We've built a world that asks young people to pour their full attention into succeeding at absolutely everything. The question is whether we've handed them a setup designed to make them fail. Chasing the perfect resume, teens panic over grades, sign up for more extracurriculars than any person can reasonably manage, and sink absurd hours into homework.

There's also the ordinary weight of being a teenager. When a child moves into adolescence, it can feel like a spotlight follows them everywhere. The ego sits at the center of the experience. That developmental stage is hard enough on its own, and now it comes layered with the demand to be flawless at everything while also deciding what they want to be as adults. Sleep disappears. Stress starts producing physical symptoms. The time they might have spent figuring out who they are quietly evaporates.

The Cooperative Institutional Research Program, or CIRP, surveys college freshmen every year to read the mood of this age group. The study is run by the Higher Educational Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA, and the 2014 edition turned up some results worth paying attention to. About 9.5 percent of respondents said they regularly felt depressive symptoms, a jump of 3.4 percent from 2009. Self-reported emotional health slid to 50.7 percent, the lowest figure recorded since the survey started in 1987. And 35 percent reported feeling frequently overwhelmed, compared with just 13.5 percent back in 1987.

The numbers get stranger from there. High school students are applying to more colleges than ever; that figure has roughly tripled over the past decade. Fewer of them actually finish their degrees, though, and among those who do, fewer come away satisfied with either their education or the career it led to. One bright spot is that fewer teens are drinking alcohol or using tobacco. But researchers see a catch hiding inside that good news: teenagers are socializing less. Many are deliberately trimming their social lives to protect their academic records.

Nobody is arguing that teens should drink or smoke more. The thing to notice is the shrinking amount of time spent with other people outside of class. Adolescence is the stretch of life where a person is supposed to work out their own values and feed the interests that will carry them into adulthood. That work happens through experimenting, hanging out with others, and learning from whatever comes of it. If a teenager is fixated on being good at everything, there's no room left to develop the handful of things they're genuinely drawn to.

People are not built to excel at everything, and no two of us are built the same way. Yet the college admissions machine, at least as it looks from a high school desk, rewards being "well-rounded," which quietly asks students for more than any human can deliver. The predictable result is that they feel lousy about themselves, and for some that slides into depression or an anxiety disorder.

Pushing back against the status quo is genuinely hard, and plenty of parents are certain that college admission is the single biggest thing riding on these four years. I'm not trying to dismiss that worry. Still, there's a longer question underneath all of this: what becomes of these teenagers once they're adults, carrying impossible standards and shaky emotional health? What does the 35-year-old look like, or the 50-year-old, who never had the chance to learn what adversity teaches or how to build a sense of their own worth? When a person demands perfection from themselves, they stop taking chances and stop making peace with their mistakes. They don't forgive themselves either, and that shortage of compassion tends to leak into everything else.

You can't single-handedly dismantle the culture of constant achievement, but you can get better at coping, set expectations that match reality, and commit to growing as an individual.

For teenagers, the most useful thing you can do is follow what actually interests you. Your schoolwork still needs real effort no matter what you're passionate about, but naming your talents and spending time on what makes you happy pays off in a big way. A few more habits that protect your physical, emotional, and mental health:

Pull back on extracurriculars. Keep the ones you enjoy and drop the ones you're only doing for the resume. Showing you can balance several things has some value, but don't burn your energy and your free hours on activities that leave you cold.

Move your body. Physicians suggest at least 60 minutes of vigorous activity a day, and getting outside helps too. Exercise builds habits that last and gives stress somewhere to go.

Sleep nine hours a night. I know that's a tall order when your internal clock wants you up late and there's a massive English paper waiting. Pick a bedtime anyway and finish as much as you can before it arrives. If assignments keep spilling past that line, take an honest look at how your non-homework hours are spent and rethink what you've committed to.

Talk to someone. If you feel anxious or low, bring it to an adult. Parents, teachers, counselors, and other relatives can hold a lot of wisdom. Stay in touch with your own feelings too, whether through journaling or some other creative outlet.

Aim for balance. Give your best effort without expecting perfection. Work hard at school and go through the motions of planning for life after graduation, but carve out time for your well-being and for the things that bring you joy.

A note for parents and the other adults who care about these kids: we're the ones who set the expectations in the first place. They should be expectations that grow character, compassion, and acceptance.

Ask the right questions. Instead of leading with "how are your grades," try "how are you?" Defining a kid by their report card trains them toward anxiety. Point out the reasons behind a win or a loss, too. "You got a good grade because you studied so hard, and I'm proud of the time you put in" lands far better than "you're so smart."

Watch for stress. Keep the lines of conversation open. When a teen looks swamped, help them take stock of everything on their plate and build a plan to lighten it.

Be their loudest supporter. Loving them without conditions is the single best thing you can offer. Show them how to extend that same love to themselves and to the people around them, and help them cope, forgive, and grow into a sense of who they are.

Melissa Lavery, M.S.

References: Ginsberg, K. (n.d.). The 7 Cs: The Essential Building Blocks of Resilience. Retrieved March 4, 2015. Moss-Coane, M. (2015, February 17). Radio broadcast, Delaware Valley: Marty Moss-Coane. Teens and Stress: How to Keep Stress in Check (2015). American Psychological Association. Wyer, K. (2015, February 5). HERI's Freshman Survey: Annual Report Reveals Attitudes Toward Cost of Education, Student Life.