Is Your Nervous, Stressed And Strained Teen Causing You Concern?

Does your teenager seem highly stressed, often irritable, or unable to relax? Does your teen strive for perfection and find it hard to move on from mistakes, to the point where the pressure to succeed nearly paralyzes him or her? Maybe your teen is dealing with insomnia or you’ve noticed changes in eating habits or other sleep patterns. Or perhaps your teen is trying to cope with anxiety by abusing substances, self-harming, or procrastinating. Does your teen frequently complain of physical issues like headaches, stomachaches, or a rapid heartbeat? Are your teen’s racing and sometimes illogical thoughts hurting his or her self-esteem or ability to focus? Do you wish you had the insight and tools to help your child find relief from anxiety and learn healthy ways to manage life’s stressors?

Watching your teen suffer from heightened stress and anxiety can be a concerning, frustrating, and even frightening experience for parents, especially if the anxiety becomes severe and starts showing through phobias or panic attacks. Parents’ worry can increase when teens begin harming themselves or abusing drugs or alcohol in an attempt to escape the pressure to excel in school and sports – which is affecting more and more teens. You may want to help your teen but struggle to know how, especially if your teen is withdrawn, defiant, or too stressed to focus.

Teen Anxiety Is Increasingly Common

Teens face increasing pressure to succeed in school, sports, peer relationships, and other activities. Many try to juggle multiple extracurriculars alongside heavy schoolwork. They stay up late and wake early, driven by ambition to earn top grades and attend prestigious colleges. This constant push to stay ahead can make teens anxious and preoccupied with worries, stressing their still-developing brains and nervous systems. If they feel they’re not performing at their best, teens might view themselves as failures or feel fundamentally lacking. As stress and anxiety build, these teens often suffer from low self-esteem, physical discomfort, and restlessness. Many also develop poor ways of handling stress and turn to harmful behaviors to cope with their anxious thoughts and feelings.

It’s common for teens to experience stress, and some stress is normal. However, if your teen is engaging in self-harm, you notice a noticeable change in behavior, your child suffers from low self-esteem, or anxiety affects your teen’s ability to feel good and function well, getting help may be critical to his or her immediate and long-term well-being.

Therapy Can Help Your Teen Relax, Relieve Stress And Develop Healthy Coping Skills

With the right therapist and approach, therapy for teen anxiety can be highly effective. It can give your teen an outlet for stress and provide tips, tools, and skills to help manage anxious thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations. Additionally, it can help your teen develop more mindfulness and healthy coping strategies.

In our teen anxiety sessions, I can help your teen identify, understand, and address what is fueling his or her anxiety. We can explore the triggers, thought patterns, emotions, and beliefs that may be driving your teen to catastrophize or over-personalize what’s happening inside and around him or her. By developing a more realistic self-talk practice, learning to set and maintain healthy boundaries, and creating achievable goals, your teen can start to find more balance and experience relief. During sessions, your teen can also learn relaxation tools, such as breathing techniques, which can be used to calm heightened thoughts and feelings stirred by anxiety.

If anxiety seems to dominate your teen’s life, seeking help now—during the teenage years—is essential. Teenagers establish patterns of behavior, coping strategies, and self-talk that they may carry into adulthood. The good news is that, with support and guidance, your teen can learn healthy ways to manage stress, handle high-pressure situations, and recognize the importance of maintaining balance both now and in the future. There are many effective tools available to treat teen anxiety. Counseling can help your teen set realistic goals and establish healthy, attainable expectations for performance in school, sports, and other activities. Together, we will develop an approach that best fits your teen’s unique personality, strengths, weaknesses, and needs.

Although you think your teen could benefit from teen anxiety therapy, you may still have questions or concerns…

My teenager doesn’t believe that he or she has an anxiety problem.

You know your child best—even if he or she is in the process of seeking independence from you and tries to drown out your concerns. While some teens are self-aware, many struggle to understand themselves and to set and maintain healthy boundaries and expectations without guidance. If you notice that your teen is experiencing issues with eating and sleeping, perfectionism, difficulty slowing down, mood swings, or persistent high stress, getting help for your teen may be essential. Without intervention, these problems could worsen. However, seeking help now can support your teen in developing healthy coping and stress management skills as schoolwork and external pressures become more demanding later in life.

I think that my teen could benefit from therapy, but I’m worried about cost and time.

I encourage you to see therapy as an investment and to think about how much your teen’s anxiety is negatively affecting his or her ability to feel good and function well. If your teen is under too much pressure, prone to anxiety, or has been suffering for some time, anxiety symptoms are unlikely to go away on their own and may even get worse. And, ongoing and consistently high levels of anxiety can impact mental, emotional, and physical health, as well as your teen’s ability to grow academically and socially in a healthy way. Alternatively, therapy can help your child gain a better understanding of how he or she relates to and is influenced by the world. Developing this understanding and learning healthy, effective ways to cope as a teen can be invaluable in promoting long-term emotional balance and success.

Your Teen Can Experience Relief

I invite you to call me for a free 15-minute consultation to discuss your teen’s specific situation and needs and to answer your questions about teen anxiety and my practice. You can reach me at 404-386-6130 or email alison@kellycounselingandcoaching.com

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If you would like to set up a complementary 15 min. phone consultation or schedule an appointment, call 404-386-6130 or email alison@kellycounselingandcoaching.com You can also fill out the form below. Please note that counseling and coaching services are for Georgia residents only. Thank you and let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

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