Every parent remembers their own awkward teenage years, but witnessing your child grapple with social anxiety can leave you feeling helpless. Through the intimate lens of our own experiences, we unravel the complex web of teen social anxiety, distinguishing the fine line between common adolescent awkwardness and the red flags that signal a call to action. As guardians, we're often the frontline support for our youth, and today, we explore how best to arm ourselves with the understanding and tools needed to guide them through this rough terrain.
This heartfelt discussion uncovers the importance of being present for our teens – both emotionally and physically – as they navigate the wild waters of peer relationships and self-identity. With advice on how to validate their feelings without exacerbating their stress, we share practical strategies for you to help your teen build resilience and effective coping mechanisms. Join us on this journey as we delve into creating a safe space for our teenagers to grow, learn, and ultimately, triumph over the challenges of social anxiety.
This podcast is meant to be a resource for the general public, as well as fellow therapists/psychologists. It is NOT meant to replace the meaningful work of individual or family therapy. Please seek professional help in your area if you are struggling. #breakthestigma #makewordsmatter #thingsyoulearnintherapy #thingsyoulearnintherapypodcast
Hello everyone, welcome back to Kids these Days. Today I am answering your questions, so I have on my Facebook page a link to an Ask a Psychologist survey and basically all you got to do is just click on that link and just ask your question. So today I am answering the question about social anxiety. Many of our kids have experienced social anxiety. They've experienced some level of anxiety. So today I am helping to answer that question. So the question was asked my teen is so anxious about certain social situations involving peers and I don't know how much is normal teen and, if slash, how I should help or what to do. Such a great question, and I think I'm gonna start by talking about the differences between kind of normal teen and maybe you know what is something that would then make me feel like, oh, you know, maybe I should seek the help of the school counselor or a psychologist or therapist or something like that.
Speaker 1:
So all of us experience anxiety from time to time. Right, anxiety really is a motivating emotion that some is good to have. Right, if you didn't have anxiety about your supervisor's opinion of you, you maybe wouldn't put in as much effort to the task that you have in front of you If your kid isn't worried about his or her grade, they don't feel anxious about doing their homework or getting their homework done. So all of us have a certain level of anxiety. That can be helpful or useful. It may also tell us the things that matter to us and things that we need to prepare, for Sometimes we feel anxious about certain things that we need to ponder a little more or prepare a little bit more for.
Speaker 1:
Our teens are really no different, except that they don't have the same level of brain development that we do as adults, and so when they experience anxiety around social situations especially, there are a couple of things for us to pay attention to. One, their brain isn't fully formed to handle anxiety the same way we do. It doesn't mean they can't manage anxiety. Let me let me be clear about that. It just means that their ability to tolerate high levels of anxiety may not be as fully formed. Right, they may not have as many coping strategies developed yet, and so part of our role is to help them develop some new coping skills, which I'm going to talk about here in a little while.
Speaker 1:
The other reason that social anxiety is maybe more prevalent in our teens especially is because social relationships matter a lot. They matter a lot for us as adults. But can you remember what it was like to be a teen and wanting to have friends and wanting to have a romantic relationship and wanting to be cool and not wanting to be so cool that you get in trouble, but cool enough that people actually like you and want to be friends with you? Right, you can remember those moments where it was part of the navigation of being a teen when you figured out how to interact with peers. So when we talk about kind of heightened levels of social anxiety, is it impairing his or her ability to make friends? Is it impairing his or her ability to learn in the academic environment? And so really, what we're looking at is an overall level of impairment. If you think they are at a place where it is really impairing their relationships or it's really impacting negatively their academic career, or you know otherwise, maybe they have a job and they're really socially anxious. If they're having problems at their job, then we might want to seek a therapist or a counselor here in town, or maybe do a virtual session with a therapist who specializes in working with kids and teens.
Speaker 1:
In the meantime, there are some things that we can do to help our kids when they're feeling socially anxious? The first is to not make it seem like it's not a big deal. It is a big deal, social relationships are a big deal. So if our kids come to us and they say, gosh, I'm feeling really anxious about it, or you notice their anxiety coming out, our comments to them about it's not a big deal, or calm down or anything that diminishes that level of importance for them, is probably going to either make them angry or more anxious. So the best thing we can do to help support them when they're feeling anxious is just to be be near them, both emotionally and physically, and so that might mean that you just kind of sit and breathe with them. You might rub their back a little bit if they're standing next to you. You could always ask them like, tell me what your brain is telling you.
Speaker 1:
Sometimes anxiety Happens for us in our mind as like a real, like a spinning real, and so with my teens in therapy, I often just ask them like, what is your brain telling you? Is true right now, almost like an invitation to just get it out, get it off their mind, get it off their chest. So if you can do your best to to kind of maintain a level of openness, not trying to fix it for them, but just really trying to hear their perspective. Sometimes anxiety is just about being heard, not necessarily about fixing the problem. The next thing you might be able to do is ask your teen to either journal about it or spend intentional time every day Talking with your teen about it, even when they're not feeling anxious. So you may just check in with them, ask them how their day was, talk to them about things that may be going well. You know you don't want to put too much emphasis on it. If they're like mom, I don't want to talk about it anymore, that's okay. Just say you know, great, I'm here. Whenever you want to talk more about it. I I just want you to know that I'm here and I'm thinking about you.
Speaker 1:
If it is something that continues to happen over and over, maybe over the course of days or weeks, and You're still not really feeling like you've gotten a whole lot of additional Support for them, that might be time to kind of seek out additional help from a therapist or a psychologist if you have a teen who is socially anxious and have additional Kind of tips or tricks that you use that have worked. Would love to hear from you on our Facebook page. Comment MWM with kids. You can always reach out on our website. Make words matter for good comm, and Would love to to have you join in the conversation there. If you have a question that you want answered, please reach out, ask. You can find it on Facebook or on the contact page of my website. Until next time, stay well everyone.