Who said adolescence is a period of storm and stress

The study found that current generations not only feel intense societal pressure to be perfect but also expect perfection from themselves and others. Licensed mental health counselor David Flack, who has worked with adolescents and young adults for 20 years, says he has seen a significant increase in anxiety related to academic performance among his clients.

This reality creates significant pressure and is particularly stressful for students who are predisposed to anxiety. Flack, a member of the American Counseling Association, also believes that such heavy academic workloads are interfering with important social and developmental processes because many teenagers may be spending more time doing homework than socializing and engaging in extracurricular or other age-appropriate activities.

Licensed professional counselor LPC Sean Roberts, an ACA member who specializes in working with young adults, says he has witnessed a precipitous increase in anxiety among clients.

He thinks this is strongly, though not solely, linked to teenagers and young adults feeling increased pressure to succeed. Not coincidentally, the anxiety they experience makes it only more difficult for them to achieve. This can have a significant effect on academic performance, says Gaesser, a certified school counselor in New York who gives presentations and offers private consultations with parents. For example, some students can study extensively and be fully prepared for a test, but because of their anxiety, can have trouble accessing that information while taking the test.

Anxiety can also interfere with the ability to take in and synthesize information, Gaesser says. Once a pattern of academic difficulty tied to anxiety is established, the problem can become self-perpetuating. Disrupting the cycle is vital, says Gaesser, who recommends the emotional freedom technique EFT as an effective method of interrupting the stress response and downregulating the brain.

In EFT, participants respond to stressful thoughts or situations by visualizing an alternative outcome while taking their hands and tapping acupuncture points on the body that have been linked to stress reduction. Students can go through the whole sequence of body points or just use the areas they find work best for them, she says.

This involves breathing in for four seconds, holding the breath for seven seconds and then breathing out for eight seconds. Students can practice this method themselves, but Gaesser thinks that teachers should also use it in their classrooms as a way to begin class. Peter Allen, an LPC based in Oregon who specializes in counseling young adults and adolescents, used to work with teenagers in a wilderness therapy setting.

Most of his clients were struggling with a variety of issues, including substance abuse, conduct problems although not usually at the conduct disorder level and mood disorders, principally depression and anxiety. In most cases, Allen says, the core elements of the wilderness setting were effective in helping these clients address their various presenting issues. Surviving in the wilderness also required working together and building a community, which helped teach clients new communication skills.

Participants also got daily exercise, ate healthy meals and were required to follow a regular sleep schedule, all of which had a calming and stabilizing effect. The wilderness can also serve as a mirror for clients, says Roberts, who has also worked in wilderness therapy, or, as he says it is becoming more commonly known, outdoor behavioral health care. For instance, when clients who struggle with executive function and organization encounter bad weather for which they are not prepared, the experience can be a vivid demonstration of the importance of working on those problem areas.

Another example: Someone who is struggling with distress tolerance will need to get used to having to build a fire after hiking all day. Although none of the counselors interviewed for this article view social media or technology as inherently negative, they agree that living in the information age is complicated.

The current generation of teens and young adults is awash in an unprecedented flood of information, asserts Roberts, clinical director at Cascade Crest Transitions, a program that provides support to young adults struggling to launch their independence by attending college or obtaining a job. Allen adds that in the age of the internet, children and adolescents are exposed to a lot of information and knowledge at an earlier age than previous generations were.

In certain cases, it is information that they may not have the maturity to handle. For example, most children and adolescents who grew up in the latter half of the 20th century had to somehow get their hands on a copy of Playboy or another adult magazine to satisfy their sexual curiosity. Children and young adolescents today are also more likely to be exposed to media coverage of frightening or horrific events before they have the ability to contextualize all that they are taking in, Allen says.

Roberts says that technology offers many positive benefits, but it also sometimes provides adolescents and young adults with a means to avoid their problems. He stresses the need for counselors to learn more about the draw of technology so that they can help clients evaluate whether they are using it in positive or negative ways.

Roberts gives gaming as an example. However, like any other activity, when gaming gets in the way of schoolwork, chores or getting out of the house, it becomes a problem to be addressed, he says.

Another complicated aspect of online life is social media. For all the potential benefits, social media feeds have made it so that virtually no part of life is private anymore, Allen says. In addition, he notes, social media feeds can encourage social contagion. ACA member Amanda LaGuardia, a former private practitioner whose research focuses on self-harm, agrees. Much of the social media content targeted to young girls is focused on body image, says LaGuardia, a licensed professional counselor supervisor in Texas and a licensed professional clinical counselor supervisor in Ohio.

Such posts are usually popular, garnering a large number of likes and admiring comments, which gives girls the impression that this is what their bodies should look like, she says. However, such standards are unrealistic for most females and are simply unachievable for girls with developing bodies, continues LaGuardia, an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati. Regardless, these images are presented as the feminine ideal, presuming to highlight all of the elements that will make women attractive to men.

All of these messages about how girls should look and act and what they should accept come at a time when they are already struggling to figure out who they are. It is overwhelming, and self-injury is becoming a more common way to cope with the distress.

Self-harm used to be most common in the eating disorder population, but according to LaGuardia, social media has introduced it to a wider audience. Username or Email Address. Remember Me. To use social login you have to agree with the storage and handling of your data by this website. Switch skin Switch to the dark mode that's kinder on your eyes at night time. Switch to the light mode that's kinder on your eyes at day time.

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