We know that our teenagers are experiencing high levels of stress and anxiety these days.  In my therapy practice where I work with teens and young adults, I work with kids every day who tell me their lives are super stressful.  The stressors they experience are pretty typical – academic pressure, conflict with friends or family, worry about the future,etc. But the stress itself isn’t really what concerns me.  What I’m noticing in my teen clients is this pattern: 

1)they experience something stressful

2) their body has a response to that stress that makes them uncomfortable

3) they avoid avoid avoid so that they don’t have to feel that discomfort.

My job with these teenagers is to help them understand how their nervous system works, why that stress response they are feeling is perfectly normal and healthy and that they don’t have to be afraid of it and avoid everything stressful in their lives.

On today's episode, I want to walk you through what I teach my teen clients about our body’s stress response cycle so that you can a) understand it better yourself and b) share this information with your teenager so that they can stop having such an unhealthy reaction to stress.