Helping teens with anxiety

One of the best things you can do is really listen to what your teen has to say. Just getting things off their chest may help them to feel better. So try to give them your full attention (phones away!) and don’t dismiss what they have to say. Try not to offer any solutions and just help them feel heard.

Your teen may find it hard to tell you how they’re feeling. But there are lots of other ways they can explore their thoughts and emotions. For example, they could try:

• drawing their worries using colours, shapes and symbols
• writing in a journal
• making a mindmap, with the word ‘anxiety’ in the middle and other words they associate this written around it
• drawing an anxiety iceberg
• drawing a stress bucket.

They may find that simply getting their worries down on paper will make them feel a bit better.

Your teen could even try putting their mindmap or drawing away in a ‘worry box’, so their problems are ‘held’ outside of their head and they’re not carrying them around anymore. You can find out more about making worry box on the YoungMinds website.

Your teen may hate feeling anxious, but you can help them to see that it can also be a superpower. For example:

• If your teen is always imagining the worst, you could ask them to use their imagination to picture the best that could happen.
• If they’re constantly overthinking things, you could suggest they use these analytical skills to think of ways to solve their problems, rather than just worrying about them.
• If they worry about what other people think about them, this shows that they are sensitive to how other people feel, which is a great skill to have.
• If they feel nervous and jittery before events, you could point out that these are similar to the feelings we get when we’re excited. Labelling these feelings as excitement may help them reframe the upcoming event as something to look forward to.

Gratitude journaling sounds fancy but it’s really just the habit of writing down things in life that we’re grateful for. There’s no right or wrong way to do it – your teen may want to scribble things down on a piece of paper, use an old exercise book, download a free template or use an app. It’s a great habit to get into because it helps us focus on positive things that make us happy rather than dwelling on things that worry us.

Seeing your teen anxious can be really upsetting, and it may be tempting to let them swerve the thing that’s worrying them. But avoiding things can lead to the worry becoming even bigger in their head, and could end up with them missing out on valuable experiences and feeling isolated and lonely. 

Also, if they get used to avoiding everything that scare them, they won’t build up the skills they need to face challenges. This means that difficult things like exams and job interviews will seem even harder for them.

So try to encourage them to take baby steps to face up to things that scare them. 

If we’re anxious about something, we tend to build it up in our heads as being worse than it really is, and we then underestimate our ability to face it. We tell ourselves ‘it’ll be a nightmare’, ‘I can’t cope’. This worry can affect us physically, making us tense, breathless, uncomfortable and unable to relax. It then affects our behaviour, so we start avoiding the things that we’re anxious about. This in turn makes the action or event we’re worried about seem even worse, and so the cycle continues.

The good news is, there are ways you can help your teen break this cycle:

• Help them replace unhelpful thoughts with helpful ones. For example, if they’re worried about something at school, like having to do a presentation or an exam, remind them that they can cope, and that by the end of the day it’ll be over and they can come home and do something fun. Another example is if they say something like ‘everybody hates me’ ask them if this is really true – because it won’t be!
• Use some of the tips above to help them relax. This will help them manage the physical symptoms of anxiety.
• Suggest a way they can change their behaviour that helps them cope with the thing they’re worried about, rather than avoiding it altogether. For example, if they’re worried about going to a social occasion like a party, suggest they arrive early when fewer people are there, or meet up with a friend beforehand.

Working on this together will help them learn to break the cycle and manage their anxiety themselves.

Rather than rushing in and solving your teen’s problems for them (for example, by letting them avoid the thing they’re dreading) try to encourage them to explore ways to make things better. It’s best if you let your teen lead the conversation – so rather than suggesting solutions straightaway you could ask them questions like ‘How did you cope with last time?’ or ‘What could you do to stop feeling this way?’

Getting your teen to open up to you is fantastic, but you don’t want every conversation to be dominated by their worries, as this may make them seem even bigger and more significant. Also, if you’re constantly reassuring them, this may lead to them relying on you to calm their worries, rather than dealing with them themselves.

For example, if they’re worried about going into school, try not to speak to them about it too much, especially late in the evening or when they get up. Instead you could try some of the relaxation tips above to help them feel a bit better and take their minds off their worries.

You might want to set aside some time each day to talk about their worries and problem solve, and then try not to talk about it outside that time.

Try to always talk about their anxiety as something separate to them. So instead of saying ‘Are you worried about going into school?’ you could say ‘Is anxiety making you want to stay at home?’ Some people find it helpful to give their anxiety a name, as if it’s an annoying person they want to shake off.