What Teens Worry about Today

A blog post from 4th of August 2017.

At the end of term I spent a few days with 300 Year 9 and 10 students as part of their school wellbeing week. I was running a workshop teaching them ways to feel happier, more positive and confident about themselves and their lives. It was everything I thought it would be – hectic, full on, noisy, sometimes awkward, enlightening and lots of fun! But the part I found most interesting and I want to share with you is the stuff that came up around their worries and fears.

We had a discussion about what are the kinds of things they think about on a daily basis – thoughts, ideas, plans, questions, memories, worries etc, and here are some of the common worries that came up:

‘Pressure to get good grades’
‘Disappointing my parents’
‘Worrying about what other people think of me’
‘The future – not getting a job’
‘Dying’
‘Terrorism’

Now, there were lots of others that came up too, ones I would expect – friendships, family relationships, school work, body image. But I think the fears they have around world issues and how this can threaten their safety is very real for this generation of young people, and plays a part in why we are seeing more anxious kids today.

In fact, I have recently been working with a 16 year old who was very anxious and suffering with panic attacks after hearing about the recent terror attack in Manchester. The fear of something like this happening to her or her friends/family was stopping her from going out to meet friends, travelling alone and going to concerts too. But with some understanding of how her mind and body worked and getting her to notice what was going well in her life and the world around her, she soon felt more confident and could go back to doing the stuff she loved again.

So it’s not all doom and gloom, and what I get young people to notice is what’s going right in the world, because it’ so easy for all of us to get swamped with the horrible stuff that’s happening, that we completely lose perspective and just get super miserable.

So with those 300 students we made a ‘Celebration Wall’, where they wrote things that made them happy or proud, things they were grateful for and people they wanted to give a ‘shout out’ to for being awesome! And this totally changed the mood in the room……..

So if you have a teenager in your life who could do with a dose of happiness, maybe they are affected by some of the stuff I’ve talked about, maybe they are in year 9 or 10 and in the thick of all these worries and pressures, then I would love to help.