If you ask most parents what they want for their children, their response is, “I want them to be happy”. While this is obviously a great goal, no teen will be happy all the time because stress is a natural part of life. You can not protect your teen from every stressful situation, but you can help them create healthy habits to manage stress better, so that they don’t get stuck in the Chronic Stress Loop.
A teen who has broken out of the Chronic Stress Loop still experiences stress and panic, but their default habits are healthy, so they are able to decrease their stress so that it does not escalate and create unwanted physical or mental manifestations such as a short temper, anxiety or weight gain. I share specific strategies you can start using today on how to help your teen break out of The Chronic Stress Loop in my Stress Less Guide that you can get here.
Teen stress might not seem as challenging as adult stress, but the truth is, if your teen feels stress than the impact on their body is real and often exactly the same. It might seem helpful to offer words of support like, “Don’t worry about it” or “it is no big deal”, but if your teen is already in the stress loop, this is not helpful. This makes them question how their body is reacting so that they don’t feel like they can trust the messages that their body is sending.
Rather than telling your teen not to worry, you could say, “I understand how stressful this is for you, but I am not worried about it because I know you can handle it.” The top job of a parent is not to tell their teens that they shouldn’t stress, but to give them permission to feel the stress and then help them create healthy habits to manage it well, which will strengthen their coping skills now and as they become adults.
Life is Full of Stressful Events
A familiar stressor for many is trying to get out the door on time in the morning and not being able to find something such as a textbook, homework or sports equipment. Your teen’s instinctive reaction might be to freak out and run around the house frantically looking for the item shouting in frustration that they are going to be late for school. While this might seem like a good solution to them in the moment, it increases the stress of the situation. If your teen calmly walked around the house looking for the item saying, I will find it any second now, they are decreasing the stress of the situation.
Really both reactions will help your teen find the item, but one has your teen walking out the door with everything that they need relaxed and ready for the day. A teen heading out the door in a relaxed state is much more likely to handle other stressors that arise throughout the day well and keep themselves out of the Chronic Stress Loop. By breaking the Chronic Stress Loop, your teen will have a more positive day and experience more success.
In the Moment Strategy for Managing Stress
Repeating positive mantras is very helpful to reduce stress in the moment because what one focuses on expands. When one chooses to focus on a positive outcome, it is more likely to show up. Helping your teen change how they talk about stressful situations can really turn things around because it calms the panic. When stress arises instead of the panic voice in their mind repeating over and over everything that is going to go wrong, your teen intentionally starts repeating the outcome that they desire. Our natural tendency is to focus on the negative, but by consistently repeating positive mantras, your teen can begin the process of rewriting the story in their subconscious mind. Once an idea becomes a part of the subconscious mind, then it becomes their default habit that they automatically rely on in times of stress helping them stay out of The Chronic Stress Loop in the moment and in the future.
Create Daily Practices for Decreasing Stress
The other piece to reducing stress is to begin creating habits that reduce the likelihood of the stressor occurring. In the case of the missing item, having systems in place so that backpacks and sports bags are packed at night is an obvious solution. Making that as convenient as possible is important. For example, having a spot for bags near the front door takes the search aspect out of the morning.
There is also the concept of the one minute rule. That is the strategy where anything that takes less than one minute should be done immediately. As soon as your teen walks in the door, encourage them to put everything in its place. Although it is often easier to just do these things for your teen, it is important to have them be responsible for keeping themselves organized, so that they are creating the habit for themselves. By creating daily habits that reduce avoidable stress for the whole family, you are teaching your teen an important life skill that they will be more likely to adopt when they begin living on their own. While avoiding stress altogether is not possible, creating systems to help reduce it as much as possible is well worth the time and energy.
Whatever stress your teen is experiencing, remember that the goal should never be to eliminate stress from your teen’s life. Your goal as a parent should be to let your teen know that stress is a part of life, but they have the choice of whether they stay stuck in the Chronic Stress Loop or whether they create the healthy habits to break free.
A great first step to help your teen Break Out of the Chronic Stress Loop is to encourage your teen to create the healthy habit of focusing on what is going right and creating daily systems that reduce unnecessary stress. A teen who creates healthy habits so that they stress less will manage expectations better, experience more success and be happy and healthy in school and beyond. For more ideas on how to help your teen break out of the Chronic Stress Loop for good, get your copy of the Stress Less Guide here.