Stress in children can be a good thing. When well-managed, it can give your child that extra push towards overcoming limits. The positivity can come in the form of politely nudging teenagers to learn new skills and achieve new fetes. However, stress can cause extreme health conditions like PTSD and adrenal fatigue when poorly managed or aggressively asserted.
Other debilitating health conditions can also arise due to stress. Unfortunately, they can go unnoticed in teenagers, unlike the case in adults. Some health effects of stress among teenagers besides PTSD and adrenal fatigue include but are not limited to:
- Immune system difficulties.
- Obesity and weight issues.
- Heart conditions.
- Mental health disorders like depression and anxiety.
How can you tell the signs of stress in teenagers?
Ptsd and adrenal fatigue are triggered by stress in teenagers. As teenagers highly value social relationships, they become susceptible. As many teenagers constantly fear being left out and desperately want to fit in, they are likely to be stressed.
Many teenagers are easily influenced; they seek to fit into behaviors that may cause PTSD and adrenal fatigue. They engage in romantic and casual sexual relationships, fashion, and technology fads. Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) or regret may trigger PTSD and adrenal fatigue.
Teenagers with PTSD and other underlying mental disorders have difficulty attaining and maintaining social relationships and are stressed as a result. The following are the tell-tale signs of stress in teenagers:
Irritability:
As many teenagers have issues with self-expression, owing to the journey to self-discovery, they choose to hide their sentiments. Some resort to angry outbursts when dialogue is a plausible alternative.
Irresponsible behavior:
This also signals stress in teenagers. It is characterized by defiant/unruly behavior. It can also be shown by an unwillingness to complete tasks, school assignments, or procrastination.
Sudden behavioral change:
When your teenager loves spending time indoors on movies and computer games, they suddenly want to be outside constantly or are just locked in their bedroom. These can be indications of PTSD and adrenal fatigue from stress.
Insomnia or sleeping too much:
Another way stress affects teenagers is either having insomnia or sleeping too much. This is when your child sleeps ‘too much or they hardly sleep, then they may be stressed or doing drugs.
Changes in feeding habits and health:
Observe how your child eats if they are light eaters and then suddenly compulsively eat, ‘they may be eating away their stress’ Inversely, if your child had healthy eating habit then suddenly stops eating, that should also be a warning shot that they are stressed.
What Causes Stress in Teenagers?
As mentioned earlier, teenagers are on a path to self-discovery. The transition from childhood and experiencing puberty is enough pressure to induce stress. Equally, peer pressure emanating from social relationships can be an active contributor to stress in teenagers.
As teenagers find the need to fit into social cliques extremely important, they will go towards any length to fit in. Failure to fit in actively contributes to causing PTSD and adrenal fatigue among teenagers. Other causes of stress in teenagers include the following:
- Frustrations from demands in school and society.
- Bodily changes are most profoundly occasioned by puberty and adolescent growth.
- Financial strains in the family setting.
- Parental disputes like marital strains like separation and divorce.
- Low self-esteem and negativity.
- Insecurity and insecure living environments.
- Bereavement and loss of loved ones.
- Debilitating health difficulties.
- Taking too many expectations in and high expectations from society.
- Change in schools and neighborhoods.
- The rise of adverse social issues like gun violence, racially charged slurs, and sexual harassment.
How do you manage and contain stress in teens?
There are various ways through which stress can be managed in teenagers. this requires deliberate effort by both the teens and their parents. The following are ways through which you can check stress, mental disorders, PTSD and adrenal fatigue in teenagers:
- Encouraging healthy sleeping patterns by monitoring your teen’s sleep routine. When your teen expresses difficulty sleeping, you should examine and eliminate all the stressors that affect the quality of their sleep. Teenagers require a minimum of 10 hours of sleep to be deemed as having a healthy sleeping pattern.
- Nature is a natural healer; get in touch with nature by taking your teenager on hikes, nature walks, and other destinations that benefit them. Nature has been proven to positively impact stress, PTSD and adrenal fatigue, or other mental disorders.
- Encouraging physical exercises, it is common knowledge that physical exercises benefit the mind positively and alleviate stress and other underlying health conditions.
- Encourage fun time: encourage your teenager to shun too much work without play and vice versa. Create time for having fun with your teenager, doing what they love most, playing video games, watching movies, and traveling. It would be best to create time for quietness that creates the tranquility that brings your child peace of mind that alleviates stress.
- Writing and talking is another sure way of managing and containing stress in your teenager. Encourage your child to be expressive. Whenever they have a problem, they shouldn’t bottle it. Instead, they need to share it with a person they trust. If your child is shy, they should be encouraged to write their frustrations.
- Inculcate a positive mind: teach your teenager to learn how to view themselves in a positive light. Tell them to treat themselves with kindness and not to be so hard on themselves. Where possible, show them some positive mantra and self-affirmation phrases like “I am more than I appear to be, all the world’s strength and power rests within me” or such other phrases to the same effect. These will go a long way towards boosting their self-esteem.
The Bottom Line
Stress in teenagers can have life-long adverse effects on your teenager and should therefore be identified and managed as early as possible. Stress management could require solutions as simple as your attention or presence in the teenagers’ life to teaching them to have positive thought processes and regarding themselves in a positive light. The key is in unlocking positive self-esteem in your teen.
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