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Anxiety In Teenagers And Its Significance Adolescence is a crucial period marked by significant physical, emotional, and cognitive changes in an individual. Teenagers see these changes unfold rapidly, and they also notice a shift in how they are viewed by others around them.  Many teenagers feel like they are stuck in a grey zone, where they are neither a child, nor an adult. While many adolescents become well-adjusted to this shift, others tend to feel an immense pressure while trying to fit in and navigate through their adolescent years.  The teenage experience of adolescence can be complicated and certainly confusing. Therefore, it is quite common for them to experience anxiety during this stage. This article focuses on understanding what causes anxiety among teenagers, and the significance of it.  Top Common Causes of Anxiety in Teenagers Academic Pressure: Many teens go through immense pressure from the family to perform well academically. This can cause teens to place unrealistic, high expectations for themselves. Additionally, being in a competitive academic space can also trigger feelings of inadequacy and comparison, which leads to anxiety. Social Acceptance: Social validation and acceptance are highly important to teenagers. Being socially isolated by their peers, or the fear of it can cause excessive worry about not being liked by everyone. Bodily Changes: One of the most externally visible changes in a teen during adolescence is bodily, or physical. Adjusting to a new frame takes time and can come with a lot of internal and external judgement. This can also cause extreme worry or body insecurities. Social Media: Social media has now become an indispensable part of many teenagers’ lives. Social media provides ample opportunities for social validation- through likes and comments. This can cause many teens to associate their self-worth with the numbers on social media. An over-reliance on social media for social validation, and comparing their lives with others, can cause anxiety and low self-esteem. Negative Experiences: Having negative, traumatic experiences, like losing a loved one, going through physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, and bullying, can cause severe anxiety. Interpersonal Relationships: During adolescence, teens can find a change in how they interact with their family, friends, and in other relationships. For instance, due to the shifting roles at home, teens no longer resonate with the title of being “the child,” while the parent still views them as one. This can cause frustration, anger, and ultimately conflicts in the family. Also, during teenage, there is a shift in how relationships are approached. Teens may begin to show romantic interests and may begin dating. Handling newer experiences in relationships can be daunting, and anxiety can be an expected outcome of this fear. Worry about the future: Teens may experience worry about multiple things in their future. They could feel anxious trying to picture how their life would look in terms of their career, lovelife, friendship, or just their future in general. Importance Of Identifying And Addressing The Underlying Causes Of Anxiety In Teens. Anxiety is a normal human experience. Everyone, from a child to an adult, can experience bouts of anxiety from time-to-time. Navigating through multiple shifts at once, as a teen, can be challenging. As a result, teens may experience anxiety while moving through these changes.  While some anxiety is normal, excessive worrying and anxiety during this stage can cause a multitude of physical, emotional, and social setbacks. Therefore, it is imperative to identify, address, and work towards understanding the cause of anxiety and resolve it.  Here are some of the reasons why it is important to work through anxiety in adolescence: It Helps With Understanding “The Self” Teenagers tend to go through many physical and mental changes around adolescence. During this stage, their idea of “self” changes and they try to find an identity that they deeply resonate with. This process can bring in anxiety for many teens as they try to have an identity that stands out, and is also relatable and similar to their peers.  A secure identity and a positive attitude towards oneself during this stage can make them well-adjusted adults in the future.  It Helps With The Fear of Being Socially Isolated Adolescence is also a stage where there are changes in the way teens interact with people. For teenagers, it is crucial for them to fit in and be liked by everyone. Having different interests or being different from others can put them in a disadvantageous position. In such instances, many teens can feel anxious, as not fitting in could affect their identity. This internal discomfort can lead to social anxiety or anxiety of not being liked. Working with this anxiety is important as it helps you learn the skills necessary to hold interpersonal relationships and connect with people. It Helps With Understanding Your Emotions Better As a person moves from childhood to adolescence, they are introduced to many new, complex emotions. As the situations and their environment begin to change, so do their responses. Teens can sometimes feel overwhelmed by what they feel. As a child they would have a single, monotonous emotion, but as they grow older, emotions can get more difficult to differentiate. This confusion towards their own feelings can cause anxiety, and resolving and understanding this anxiety can improve the teen’s perception of their emotions, which is also known as “emotional literacy.” It Helps With Improving Your Familial and Interpersonal Relationships Working through the anxiety during teen years can also improve familial and interpersonal relationships. As the teen becomes aware of their anxiety and other uncomfortable emotions, they start to become more articulate about these emotions. Communicating about their feelings with their loved ones can create a positive dialogue and build a better relationship with them.  Being a teenager can be confusing and difficult. Get the support you need to live a happier, healthier life with our online Teen Counseling services. Book an Appointment Conclusion For a teenager, adolescence is a confusing and worrying phase of their life. Teenage brings with it opportunities for growth and learning.

Adolescence is a time of many shifts, both in the mind and the body. It is a transformative period, where there is a growing curiosity about oneself and the people around them.  Teenage certainly isn’t a smooth period in one’s life. It is a time when one invests time into self-exploration and learns more about how and where they fit in. During this phase, with a myriad of changes, it is quite natural to face stress and worry over what could happen, and whether we would be accepted by everyone.  While many emphasize on the significance of having a healthy childhood, people tend to undermine the relevance of being a happy, well-adjusted teen.  The teenager in this stage, grapples with the many changes happening within and around them. It is a time where they try to fit in and find a niche for themselves. Adding to this, the teenagers of the present world also have the added challenge of maintaining their presence in an online, virtual world.  Thus, the teenagers today have to not just balance the challenges of growing up and accepting change, they also have to learn to navigate through the standards and norms of a virtual world as well. Balancing two worlds can be difficult, and therefore, acknowledging and understanding the significance of teenage mental health becomes important. The Changing Landscape Of Teen Mental Health The world as we now know it, is a product of the many significant changes and developments that have occurred only in the recent years. Due to advancements in technology, we can now connect to people across the globe with just a click of a button. Teeangers these days enjoy a plethora of options to connect with their peers without any hassle, over the internet.  But can these virtual interactions replicate actual, human interactions?  Ironically, there has been a surge in mental health disorders, loneliness and discontentment among teenagers in recent years. As of 2021, around the world, approximately one in seven teenagers suffer from at least one mental health disorder.  There are also other factors contributing to the pervasive mental pressure that teenagers face these days. While social media and technology are recent developments, there are other aspects that contribute negatively to the modern-day teenager’s mental health.  For instance, unrealistic body standards, shifting family dynamics, navigating through changes in the mind and the body, and managing peer and academic pressure may trigger mental health issues in many teenagers.  Therefore, it becomes imperative to understand the issues and challenges faced by teens. We have highlighted some of the most common mental health challenges among teens below:  Common Mental Health Challenges Among Teens 1. Social Media and Peer Pressure: Social approval, social acceptance, and social validation are some of the most important needs of the adolescent. As teenagers, it is quite normal and common for them to dabble into and try out new things that would gain approval from their peers. Peer pressure is a very common phenomenon experienced by many teenagers. For a teenager, peer pressure puts them in a tricky situation. If their peers pressure them into doing something they don’t like or something that their parents don’t approve of, it creates guilt and shame within them.  Or, if they don’t give in to peer pressure, there is also a huge chance of being isolated or rejected by their peer group. For a teenager going through adolescence, social approval is of utmost importance.  As a result, many teenagers experience stress, confusion, guilt, or may indulge in habits that may not be good for them.  Social media, in essence, is designed to provide you with social validation through likes, comments, and sharing just the happy, positive moments of your life. However, many teenagers use social media to base their self-worth on the numbers on social media, leading to poorer mental health.  Social media tends to only show a filtered version of life, and it shows only what others want you to see. This creates a warped form of reality.  “They have it better than me,” is something teenagers find themselves saying quite often. Many teens may find themselves constantly comparing themselves and their lives to what they see online.  While social media isn’t the sole reason for teenagers’ poor mental health, the excessive and mindless usage of it can definitely create low self-worth among teenagers and can lead to a multitude of mental health concerns like anxiety, depression, or substance use.  2. Academic Pressure and Performance Stress: Adolescence is one of the most turbulent and transformative periods of an individual’s life. During this stage, many teens begin to ponder over the question, “What next?”  Teenagers use this period to figure out their careers. This decision-making process can be uncomfortable, stressful, and daunting. There is a lot of pressure from oneself and also the family to choose the right field of study to ensure a secure career. And to choose the right field of study, the teen goes through immense academic pressure. Parents, and many of the grown-ups around the teen, constantly remind them of how important it is to score and perform well academically.  This causes the teen to set high expectations for themselves, thus, creating anxiety. Additionally, the competitive nature of education also causes the teen to constantly doubt themselves and compare their performance to others, creating more performance anxiety, stress, depression, procrastination, and self-doubt.  3. Digital Dependency and Screen Time: This is related to the excessive social media usage among teenagers. With the term “doom-scrolling” gaining popularity, it is becoming more apparent that everyone, including teenagers, are using their screens excessively.  Excessive screen dependency can lead to using social media and other mediums like binge-watching content online, gaming, and other means, to numb or suppress emotions. One of the main characteristics of adolescence is attaining emotional maturity and exploring various negative emotions that come up like sadness, angst, and irritability.  When there is an over dependence on the screens, teens do not learn how to sit with their feelings or actually feel