Understanding Anxiety

By Marcia Tryon

The Buzz About Anxiety

Anxiety seems to have become a buzz word to describe any sort of uncomfortable feeling a teen might have or an unexplainable behavior a teen presents with at home, in the community or within a school setting. There has been a significant increase in anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents. Adults and teens will frequently use the term “anxiety” to explain challenges across settings. For example, if a student is tearful or challenging or can’t sit still in a classroom, anxiety seems to be the catch-all explanation. 

It is important to understand more about anxiety. We all face anxiety and it is not necessarily a negative experience.  Anxiety activates the fight or flight response and lets us know there is danger. It can help keep us alive.  It has a purpose. Anxiety can motivate, improve performance, and foster empathy.  Anxiety can act as a warning sign that something is not right, bringing awareness to a situation that may need to be adjusted. Ideally, it can propel us to make necessary changes. 

Sometimes anxiety can become chronic, get out of control and/or interfere with daily living and cause us to shut down.  Symptoms can include excessive worry, uncomfortable bodily sensations, rapid heart rate, difficulty sleeping, difficulty concentrating, irritability, tearfulness, panic, anger, fear, clinginess, restlessness, muscle tension, stomach aches, racing thoughts. 

Often anxiety is a way of covering more difficult emotions such as rage and sadness.  Identifying and expressing a range of emotions is essential to overall well-being.  We can help teens figure out the function of their symptoms and then develop agency to problem solve, tolerate and develop better control of their emotions.  

Anxiety also occurs in a larger context of home, school, and community environments.  Sometimes anxiety is a way of communicating that something is not right in these systems and a more systems-based approach is essential to understanding the anxiety an intervening on a larger scale.  

It is also important for teens to explore the function of their anxiety, so that avoidant responses aren’t inadvertently reinforced.  It is often easy to explain everything as anxiety and then avoid situations that make us uncomfortable.  This is especially the case with school avoidance. Intervention usually involves facing what is making us most anxious which can be a significant challenge to teens and their families. Our job as professionals is to acknowledge the anxiety, identify triggers to anxiety, explore underlying feelings such as anger or sadness that might be manifesting as anxiety, tolerate a range of emotions and then develop coping strategies and plans to confront anxiety in multiple settings in order to feel better and before problematic patterns of avoidance begin.

MEET THE AUTHOR:

Marcia Tryon

Guest Author