THE SAVAGE MAKEOVER: Anxiety

ALL PEOPLE, like all animals, experience fear (or anxiety) from time to time—and it is good we do! Without fear, we would be unaware of potential danger and therefore unprepared. When worries and fears keep you safe from real danger and help you plan for truly challenging situations, they are “adaptive,” or useful. During adolescence, a lot happens to stir feelings of nervousness, worry, and fear, which are normal and necessary feelings to have at this time in your life.

But sometimes anxiety can be overwhelming, failing to subside after a difficulty has passed, or rearing its head during typically mundane experiences (ever injured yourself trying to avoid a cockroach?). Or maybe you worry too much about everything, making it impossible for you to focus on things that matter, like studying for tests, practicing for the big audition, or simply enjoying time with friends. And studies show teenage girls suffer from anxiety twice as much as teenage boys. So while some anxiety is necessary to achieve your goals and improve performance, too much anxiety can negatively impact your day-to-day function. Excessive worry actually takes cognitive resources away from the deep-thinking areas of the brain and the immune system, not only making it harder to solve problems, but also making it more likely you will get sick! When anxiety becomes detrimental, it is time for you to take control.

Yes, you have the ability to control your feelings of anxiety.

The first step to achieving emotional self-regulation (self-control) is to believe you can. You control your anxiety, not the other way around! The second step is to commit to consistent practice of coping strategies, such as positive thinking. It will be hard to change how you tend to perceive things, so it is crucial to keep trying until it becomes a habit. The third step is to become aware of the things or people causing you to worry excessively; once you have identified these “triggers,” you should think about why they worry you and whether or not your worries are valid or distorted. This is a crucial step in controlling your emotions because while what you feel (anxiety) is very real, it may be based on a lie your brain is telling you. The teen brain is notorious for cognitive distortions that may lead to chronic or severe anxiety.

We all tend to interpret things that happen to us with bias, which often leads us to wrong conclusions. It is important to become aware of your own cognitive distortions, so you can practice being more objective and tolerant of ambiguous experiences. For example, when you study hard for a test but don’t get an A, you can think of your performance as all-or-nothing (“I will never earn the grade I want so I should stop trying”) and fulfill your biased belief, or you can think realistically (“That was an especially hard test! I need to adjust my study plan next time.”) and adjust your behavior to improve next time. By seeing things through a positive lens, you will be more motivated to change your behavior and be better prepared next time. It pays to see failures as opportunities instead of setbacks!

Remember, how you feel does not always reflect reality, and it does not have to impact how you respond to a situation. If you want to be less anxious, practice positive thinking. If you want to overcome your irrational fears, face them head on instead of running away. And do not expect perfection, for it is unattainable. Make and learn from mistakes, for trial-and-error is the sure path to success. Know you cannot always control what happens to you, including what others think or say about you, but you can control how you respond to the world.