Stress and Anxiety: How to deal with the pressure on your shoulders
By Olivia Tucker, Staff Writer
April 5, 2024
Stress and anxiety are words that we teens are familiar with. Since the COVID pandemic, stress and anxiety have been on the rise among teens in high school.
Recent research done by The American Academy Of Sleep Medicine showed that anxiety symptoms doubled during the pandemic and most of those feelings of stress and anxiety have remained. Feeling stress and anxiety due to high academic pressures, tests, social anxiety, and sports pressures can all have a daily effect on many teens.
Experiencing stress and anxiety can lead to poor concentration, procrastination, poor sleep, poor grades, and feeling isolated socially.
Don’t panic though! Teens can do a few easy things to help relieve and manage their stress and anxiety.
First, teens can use relaxation techniques to help elevate their stress and anxiety. These techniques include deep breathing exercises, meditation exercises, meditation apps, and acupuncture. All these techniques help you to calm your mind and body and help to refocus your energies and allow you to relieve those anxious feelings. The best part is some of these techniques can be done anywhere!
Second, getting enough sleep and having a regular sleep routine can help those anxious and stressful feelings. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that most teens ages 13-18 should sleep 8-10 hours.
Making sure you are getting the right amount of sleep is as easy as putting down the phone and going to bed earlier or carving out time in your day for a quick cat nap. If you are having trouble falling asleep due to your anxious feelings, there are lots of apps that have white noise sounds that will help slow your mind and help you sleep. Some of those apps are Better Sleep, Calm, and Soothing Sleep Sounds.
The third way that you can easily help your stress and anxiety is by breaking down tasks into smaller parts and preparing well in advance for tests. Doing a little bit each day, whether it’s a small piece of a project, a larger assignment, or 10 min of studying can help the task not feel so overwhelming. It seems pretty simple but people know that others don’t always do this and I’m sure many other high school students don’t as well.
This is just a small sample of the easy things teens can do to help deal with their feelings of anxiety and stress.
Sophomores Katie Malley and Sammy Sullivan shared some of the ways that they help manage their stress and anxiety.
“ Sometimes I will just watch Tiktok and just not focus on my work or when it is warm outside I would hike because it is a good reset,” Sullivan explained
“Things that I do to manage my stress and anxiety is that I will take a break from my school work and either take a nap or go on my phone to just give me time to reset,” Malley said.
If these don’t work for you and those feelings seem to be getting worse, talk to a parent and see your doctor; there are lots of options that could work for you. Just remember that you are not the only one who has these feelings and can feel overwhelmed by all of the pressures of school, sports, and expectations outside of school.
Guidance counselor Christine Lynch deals with lots of stressed students and is very aware of the impact stress can have on developing teens.
“ I think it [stress] has a strong impact on everyone but you all are so busy doing a million things. Your day is so busy with school and then you have after-school activities, So I think if you are stressed or anxious it just adds you know more to that and will just make you more tired and drained at the end of every day,” she said.
“I think there are a lot of different ways to deal with stress and anxiety and I think it is definitely a very personal preference. I like talk therapy... group therapy, meditation, exercise, I think that those can all be very helpful,” Lynch said.
Whatever you choose to deal with your stress and anxiety, remember that it's not "no big deal."
“I think that stress and anxiety is taken pretty seriously. Many people experience stress and anxiety so I think that many people can relate and I think that is taken seriously” Lynch said.