Episode 6 —Teens & Stress: Understanding the Stress Response Cycle

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 Today, I want to talk to you about stress. We know that teenagers are experiencing high levels of stress and anxiety these days. In my therapy practice, where I work with teenagers and young adults, I work with kids every day who tell me that their lives are super stressful.

And the things that they're stressed out about are actually pretty typical. Academic and school pressure, conflict with friends, maybe some conflict with family, worrying about the future, like all the normal things that I think teenagers have always been stressed out about. So the stress itself isn't really what concerns me.

But what I'm noticing is a pattern in my teenage clients recently that goes something like this: They experience something stressful, their body has a response to that stress, and that physical reaction makes them very, very uncomfortable. And so then, they avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid any of those situations that cause that physical response because they don't want to experience that again because it makes them so uncomfortable.

So the way I see my job with these teenagers is to help them understand how their nervous system works. Why that stress response that they're feeling is actually perfectly normal and healthy and that they don't have to be afraid of it and they don't have to avoid everything stressful in their lives.

My goal today is to walk you through what I teach my teen clients about the body's stress response cycle so that you can, a) understand it better for yourself, and b) share this information with the teenager in your life so that they can stop having such an unhealthy reaction every time they experience stress.

So, if that's something you're interested in, if that's something you want to know more about, let's dive in. First, let's dispel a couple of myths. Number one: let's get rid of the idea that stress is automatically a bad thing. And number two: let's stop trying so hard to avoid it. Stress is a very natural thing, it's a very common thing, and it's actually a very necessary and important natural response that our body has to our environment.

The whole stress response cycle is there for a reason. It's designed to keep us safe. The whole purpose of the stress response is to get our body prepared to face some kind of threat. This is how it works. We encounter something that our brain interprets as dangerous or scary. Think of it as like the little spidey senses in your brain.

And our body goes into stress mode. Basically, our body is getting us ready to either fight the danger or to run from it. When I work with teenage clients, I talk about it like this —and partly because we're in Colorado and we go hiking and to the mountains and things like that — imagine you're hiking down a trail and you come across a grizzly bear.

Of course, your body's going to have a reaction to that, right? You're going to look at that bear and your brain is going to say, “Oh my gosh, we either have to fight this bear or we have to run for our lives!” That is a natural response that our body has in an effort to keep us safe. So what does that look like inside your brain and your body?

Well, our brain is going to release stress hormones. So we're going to have cortisol running through our body and adrenaline running through our body and it all just starts flowing and then we have all of these other physical responses. Blood rushes to our muscles, especially our biggest muscles like our legs, in case we need to fight or run.

Our pupils actually dilate so that our vision is more focused. And I think this one is always a little interesting — our digestive system actually goes offline during these stressful moments because our body's like, “we don't need to focus on that right now.” But what can happen is that can actually cause a little bit of queasiness or nausea that you might experience during a really stressful situation.

And so, the feeling that you have —you have a racing heart, your breathing is rushed, you might experience some sweating, or, um, some, like, shaking —that happens to all of us in really stressful situations. Does that sound familiar? Where we go wrong is that we assume that this physical reaction means there's a problem.

When in reality, this physical reaction is really natural and it's just doing what our body is designed to do to help us be prepared for a threat. So, obviously, the trigger doesn't have to be a grizzly bear to evoke that kind of response in us. The trigger can be just a new situation, a new class, a new team, a new tryout, an audition, a new teacher.

It can be a situation that makes you feel a little out of control, like studying for a really difficult final, um, applying for colleges. Right, there are lots of situations that make our teenagers feel like they are not in control. It can be social stress, feeling excluded or feeling like someone's mad at you.

So many things trigger this kind of response in our bodies. And what we know about teenagers is that they are even more sensitive to the triggers in their lives because, first of all, so many things are brand new for them. Every experience is something new. And they are still learning how their brains work, how to manage their emotions, what these sensations feel like, right?

So for them, all of this is heightened. So the first thing that we need to teach our teenagers is that they don't need to be afraid.

One of the things I do with my clients when we have sessions about anxiety is I teach them to just start kind of naming and labeling what is happening as it's happening. So when they experience a stress response, they will start to say to themselves, “ I can feel that my heart is starting to race a little bit. I can feel that I am starting to breathe a little heavier. I'm noticing that my palms are sweaty. I'm noticing that I feel a little bit queasy.” And then they remind themselves why this is happening. “My body is just trying to warn me. My brain is trying to help me. This is not a bad thing, right, and I don't need to run away from this.”

And once kids have this awareness, it is amazing how much more in control they feel. I love working with kids on this because they —after some practice of course —they really start to feel like, “I understand what's happening in my body. I don't need to be scared of it. And now I can make an informed choice about what I want to do next.”

But now I'm going to tell you that awareness, as powerful as it is, is just the first step. The next step is just as important. And it involves understanding how to complete the stress cycle. Most of the time, our kids aren't actually facing a grizzly bear.

And so they don't end up getting into a big physical fight or running for their lives. But now their bodies have all this pent up energy, all this adrenaline, and all this cortisol. And a big mistake that we all make, not just teenagers, when it comes to stress, is that we don't completely finish that stress cycle.

So what do I mean by completing the stress cycle? Think of the stress response like the first big hill of a roller coaster. We've all been on roller coasters, right? I love them! You climb and climb and climb, and you have that clickety clack, clickety clack, and you can feel the anticipation rising, the excitement rising, the fear rising, right? It all builds and builds and builds, and then you reach the peak, and then you're off and running. Well, when it comes to stress, too many of us climb up that hill, but instead of coming down the other side, we just jump to another peak. We jump over to another hill to more stress, or we run away. And so we don't finish the cycle. And what happens is we have all of this built up energy, all of this cortisol and this adrenaline, and it needs to go somewhere. It needs to be released. And so, what I'm going to offer you are four really effective ways to teach your teenager to release that energy when they have a response to stress.

Number one —this is my favorite one — because it's really simple and easy. An intense burst of exercise will release that energy. And I'm not talking about going to the gym every day, or running five miles, or anything. I'm talking about an intense, like five-minute burst of exercise. So that might be sprinting to the end of the block and back. That might be doing some jumping jacks. It could even be just dancing around your bedroom or living room to loud music. I think about when my kids were little. And they were really into watching that show”The Wiggles”. And The Wiggles had a song called “Shake Your Sillies Out”. It's the same idea. You're going to shake this energy out of your body.

Number two —yelling, laughing, being loud. Letting that energy explode through like singing really loud, or yelling into a pillow, or yelling into the void, or a deep belly laugh. That is a really great way to just release that energy.

Number three —believe it or not — crying it out is really helpful and effective. We've often experienced this, right? You're in a stressful situation, you have this stress response, and when it's all over, you just kind of fall on the floor and cry. And sometimes that makes kids really uncomfortable when that happens, and it's important for them to know that's really normal and actually a great way to just release all of that energy.

And then this last one is only going to work on certain kids. But another, another strategy that can be really helpful is physical comfort or affection. So if you've ever had like a really big bear hug where you can just feel the stress leaving your body, that’s the idea. If you have a kiddo who is okay with like snuggling and hugs then this might be a really good strategy. We know that lots of our teenagers don't want that kind of physical affection and that's totally fine but if you have a kiddo who's kind of a snuggler that might be a really effective way for them to release their stresses just with a big bear hug.

So just to give you some examples from the teenagers that I've worked with,

• I had one client who would just lie on his floor and cry and just cry and cry and cry until all that stress energy went away and then he could pull himself back together and say, “all right. I'm gonna move on now.”

• I had another client who would always do 20 jumping jacks and then drop and do 20 push ups and that was her way of taking action to get this energy out and then can move on.

• I had another one who would crank up really loud music and just dance around her room until she could feel that stressful energy leaving her body.

The point is, when our teenagers understand what's happening to them, it's a lot less scary. They can feel it coming, they know what it is, they can label it, they can name it, and then they can make a choice about how they want to handle it. And all of that is so empowering. And when our kids feel empowered, they feel more in control. And then they don't have to be so afraid, and they don't have to avoid the stress in their lives.

One last important point. What happens to all of us if we don't release that pent up stress? If we come up the side of the rollercoaster but then we never release it and we just jump to another, another hill and another hill and another hill.

I think you probably know the answer to this, but what happens is that energy has to come out somewhere. We can try to stuff it down, but it will come out in other ways. And with teenagers, what we often see is that it comes out as anger, or meanness, or sometimes even violence. Aimed at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and aimed at an innocent bystander, often a family member. This is where we get kids who are really mean to their siblings for no reason, or who come home from school just kind of ranting and raving and yelling at their parents. So if we don't teach our kids how to understand what's happening with them, so that they can make choices about how to release that energy, the energy is going to come out in some other way, which is often going to be more explosive, and definitely less healthy.

So teaching our kids how their nervous system works is so empowering. It doesn't take the stress away, but it makes it a lot less scary. Really, anytime we understand our body better, it's always helpful. Think of it as something as simple as like, if you understand why your stomach is growling, you're like, “oh, I'm probably hungry. I need to eat something.” We're not scared of a grumbly stomach. We know what that is. We don't need to be scared of our nervous system either. We just need to understand how it's working.

So, parents, here's my homework for you. Number one: I want you to pay attention to your own stress cycle and make sure that you are making an effort to fully release the energy and finish the entire stress response. And number two: I want you to work on teaching your teenager how to do the same and you can work on it together. It can be a fun way for both of you to learn how to interpret and manage your stress differently. Help them understand that stress is normal and that this response is not scary and then help them choose a way to release the stress energy.

Give it a try, and let me know how it goes. I would love to hear how you and your teenager learn how to embrace your stress response instead of avoiding and running away from it. I hope you found that helpful, and as always, I appreciate you listening today, and I will be back next week with more tips, strategies, and insights for helping you raise a teen who thrives.