Hi there,
My name is Clara Sante and welcome to Insight Timer.
Today's talk is going to be about anxiety in teenagers.
Our teenagers are struggling,
There seems to be more anxiety than ever before but what is it that's causing their anxiety and what are we meant to do to help them?
There's nothing more painful than watching your child completely paralysed by a panic attack or so anxious about going to school they spend more time at home than going in.
We feel helpless because this is something no one prepared us for.
When they were younger we could mostly sort out their fears.
They would come to us if they were worried but when they become teenagers they've got so much going on they don't know where to turn and sometimes suffer in silence until it becomes so bad they don't know what to do with it.
Anxiety always starts with our chatty mind planting a seed of information.
An outside event will happen,
The energy in our body will change and bang our mind wants to label it as bad and store it so it can be really helpful and give you a warning if you ever find yourself in that situation again.
For example,
Your child goes to school one day,
The teacher asks the class a question,
Your child puts their hand up,
Gets picked,
Answers the question,
Gets it wrong and somebody laughs.
The energy in your child's body changes,
Their heart might beat a bit faster or they might feel it in their stomach or they might go a bit shaky,
Everyone feels their feelings in different places.
Once this happens their mind gets involved because its job is to keep us safe and gives us the information that this feels bad and we need to keep ourselves safe.
Your child comes out of that lesson maybe not even thinking about it but their mind has already stored it.
So the next time your child goes into a class where the teacher is asking questions,
Their mind might be screaming,
Beware,
Beware and this is so instant and invisible that they don't even know that this is happening.
All they know is that they feel uncomfortable and their very helpful mind will link it to the fact that the teacher is picking on people to answer questions.
And this is the start of what we would label as anxiety.
We don't know or have any control over what will be stored by our mind and if we don't know that this is how it works then it really looks like what is happening out there is causing it.
I know this doesn't sound like good news but it is.
If it was things like teachers or friendships or social events that were causing their anxiety then we would have to spend our days changing the world to keep them anxiety free.
It's not the outside world,
It's an inside job.
I'm not saying that things don't happen but if it was being chosen by a teacher that caused the anxiety then we would all feel the same and chances are no one would want to go to school.
The best thing that we can do to help our teenagers with anxiety is to introduce them to this understanding of how the mind works which is like giving them an instruction manual for their mind.
This awareness of how the mind works is like knowing how a magic trick works and never ever falling for that trick again.
Can you imagine the difference if when your child was in class and the teacher chose them to answer a question and their mind was screaming danger in the background?
Instead of being completely floored by it they would know that that's a mind's job and that it's just been stored.
It doesn't mean that it's true and that it's dangerous just that it's doing its job really well by being a habitual machine but the content isn't necessarily helpful.
The habitual nature of a mind is really helpful when it's something like knowing how to tie our shoelaces but when it's used in situations like we've been using as an example it's not helpful at all and when this is something we start to know and trust it doesn't feel scary anymore it's more interesting than anything because we see our minds in a completely different way.
Thank you for listening.
