Teen Girl Anxiety & Sleep Loss | The Nervous System Connection

Teen girl anxiety and mood crashes often start with one hidden culprit: sleep loss.

In this episode, discover how sleep deprivation isn't just making her tired, it's rewiring her nervous system, hijacking her emotional regulation, and turning small frustrations into massive meltdowns. 

Learn what her behaviour is actually telling you, why she can't switch off at night, and the specific nervous system impact that most parents never connect to sleep. 

If her moods feel unpredictable, anxiety is climbing, or you're noticing daily behaviour shifts, this is the episode to understand what's really going on beneath the surface.

If this episode helped you to feel a little more seen, understood and less alone, I'd love to welcome you into WTF - What's The Feeling - don't you know? A supportive community where mums make sense of what's really going on with their daughters, together. 

Because you shouldn’t have to figure this all out on your own.

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See you next time! 💛

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

What time did your daughter finally go to sleep last night? And if you know, like many other mums in this space, you were checking for that light under a door. And even when you got up to go for a wee in the middle of the night, as we all do, you possibly still saw that light underneath the door and you just thought, come on. You looked at the time and you went, Oh my god, you're supposed to be asleep by now. What's going on? Why can't you sleep? Do you know what? That's what we're going to talk about this week. Because how she sleeps affects everything for the next day. So if you've been following me for a while, you may have noticed that this podcast format has changed just a tad, and there's a reason for this. I want to give you all the insights as to what's beneath your daughter's behaviour. I want to give you the why and what we've taken away in the pursuit of progress. And a mahusive part of this is what your daughter and you for that matter need for balanced health and well-being. So yeah, that's why. So let's start as we mean to go on. So if you're a mum of a teen gal or a twin who's starting to feel like a stranger inside your own house, this podcast may well stop you in the tracks a little. And I think that's a good thing. Because you know, you've tried the conversations, you've read all the books, you've googled at two o'clock in the morning, and you've maybe spoken to the school, maybe even pushed for a referral with a GP. And she still seems unreachable, still glued to her phone 24-7, still shutting you out, still not the girl that you know is in there somewhere. And you're starting to wonder: is it me? Is it her? Or is something else actually going on? Here's what I want you to know before we go any further. Nothing is wrong with her, and nothing is wrong with you. But something is seriously wrong with the story we've all been told about teenage girls. You know, just grit your tooth a hobo through. It's a roller coaster, and today and every week on this podcast, we're gonna unpick it bit by bit. So welcome to the Teen Whisperer. I'm Rach Friedley, a healthplay specialist, a mum, a coach, a mentor, and the person who finally connects all those dots that everyone else has been staring at independently. I'm gonna give you the full picture as to what is going on for your daughter so you have the tools at the end of your fingertips to help her in the moment. It's not rocket science, I hasten to add. Most of it is really, really simple, but in the pursuit of progress, in the pursuit of doing something bigger and better and everything else, and perfectionism, procrastination, fear of failure, everything else, it has become unknown. It has become misunderstood. But here's the truth: your daughter's behaviour is not a problem to be fixed, it's a message from her nervous system, basically, her body's built-in alarm system that isn't getting what it was designed to need. And when you understand that, and I mean really understand it, in your body, when you embody what I'm talking about, and you don't just overthink it time and time again in your head, everything changes. How you see her, how you respond to her, how you feel about yourself as a mum, and this is really important because as mums, we are told time and time again just to be stricter, just to have more rules and regulations, just to put more control in there. But actually, do you know what it backfires with our girls, and there is a reason for this, and that's what this podcast is about. So every week I'm gonna give you the biology, the physiology, the tools, and the honest conversation that we should have had years ago. No jargon, no judgment, because that's definitely not me, no perfectionism, because that's overrated and I don't believe in it, no list of things you should have done differently earlier. It's too late right now. But what we can deal with is what's happening in the moment with our girls, what they are dealing with right now. So we're going to talk about the truth about our girls, their bodies, their cycles. Yes, and this means that even if your daughter's not menstruating yet, so her body still has a cycle, it has a 28-day energy cycle, her nervous system and what they actually need to come back to themselves so they feel grounded, so they feel safe, so they feel seen and heard and believed in. So, right, that's what we're doing. Let's go, let's dive in. So, sleep feels like it should be the most simple thing to do, doesn't it? She's tired, she goes to bed, she sleeps. But if you have a teen girl in your house, you already know it definitely does not work like that. And by the way, if you have a tween girl, so a pre-teen girl in your house, again, it doesn't necessarily work like that. And the exhaustion of watching someone you love run on empty 24-7, whilst also not sleeping yourself because you're lying awake worrying about her, which is where the 2am googling comes in. This is a particular kind of relentless. I see you. So let's sort this out. Let's unpick it stitch by stitch. So here's what's actually happening. When her nervous system, as I say, her body's alarm system, is overwhelmed, it finds it very hard to switch off at night. It's still scanning, it's still asking, Am I safe? Am I enough? Do I belong? Am I heard? Am I seen? And a nervous system running that question doesn't sleep, it stays awake. So she lies there, tossing and turning. She cannot sleep. She picks up her phone because her phone is comfort. As I've said already, if she lives at the end, if she lives somewhere rural, if she lives somewhere quiet, her phone is company, it is connection. It's something to do with the feeling. But then that phone floods her with more light, more stimulation, more input at exactly the time when her body actually needs the opposite. Her body needs that restfulness, her body needs that sleep. And guess what happens? She gets to sleep later and later, until her body clock has completely shifted. And here's what I really want you to hear. Here's what I want you to embody. Teenagers and girls especially have a genuine biological shift in their body clock around puberty. Their melatonin, so the sleep hormone, releases later in the evening than it does for adults. This is not a myth, this is not just a oh, this sounds good. It actually frigging happens. Their body is genuinely not ready to go to sleep or to have that downtime at nine o'clock. So let me say that again. Their body is genuinely not ready to sleep at nine o'clock. Their rhythm has changed, it has shifted back. Apparently, it's due to the fact that when we were cave women and cavemen living in caves, obviously, and the adults did the work during the day and had their sleep at night, but the teenagers stayed up at night to protect the family. This apparently is where it's come from. Whether that's right or wrong doesn't really matter. Their sleep cycle shifts, their melatonin releases later. So where it releases for us, kind of nine or ten o'clock at night, allowing you to have that downtime before you go to sleep. In teenagers it shifts to like 11 or 12, which means they're not sleeping till one o'clock. But you know, society, culture, and education have us up at 7 o'clock, 6 o'clock, whatever it is, in the morning, so then they can go to school. Now, if they haven't got to sleep until 2 o'clock in the morning, they're having like four to five hours sleep a night. That is not enough for anyone. So that it does mean that fighting it, fighting the sleep, sorry, that's a really low plane gun over. Um fighting her sleep and trying to get her to go to sleep earlier is not gonna work, it's gonna backfire because your daughter is running on anxiety, she's running on stress. And then, of course, we've got the mornings. So, as I just said, if she's had four to five hours sleep, you know what's gonna happen. You know what you're like when you haven't had any sleep, and even mild, consistent sleep deprivation dysregulates ye old nervous system, so the alarm system again, it affects her mood, her ability to manage her emotions, her stress tolerance, her appetite, her concentration. Every single thing that makes the day harder gets, strangely enough, way harder than it was before. So poor sleep makes the nervous system more reactive. So you know you've been there, haven't you? When you've said something very minor and she's gone from zero to a thousand in two milliseconds, and you've gone, what the frigody frig just happened there? This is what's going on. Sleep is at the back of it, it means it goes round and round and round. It is a loop, but it's a loop that we can break. And something else, if your daughter has just finished her A levels or is starting her GCSEs, please hear this. Exam stress lives in the body, not just in the head, as we're told time and again. It shows up as a tight chest, racing thoughts at night, that anxiety, that overwhelm that I can't deal with this anymore. The waking at 3 am in the morning, notice that's shifted from ours at 2 am, and immediately catastrophizing every little thing. And then once the exams are over, it doesn't just switch off as we're told. Her nervous system has been in high alert for weeks. It's that alarm system has been going woo woo woo for weeks and weeks and weeks, and it needs time to come back down. So the phone in the bed is the obvious one, and yes, that blue light really does suppress the melatonin. So if it's already delayed in our teen girls, as I say, to 11 or 12 o'clock or one o'clock, then the blue light delaying it again, it's a double whammy, and that bit isn't a myth, but it's not just about the light, it's the content. Content. So Instagram and TikTok are genuinely designed to make them feel like there's always one more thing to see. I mean, they scroll, they see a reel, and then they're literally given another one straight away. There's no time of thought, there's no time of thinking, oh actually, I'll put it down now. It's constant, it's fed on an eternal loop. Her nervous system doesn't know it's one o'clock in the morning, it just knows it's not done yet because it's been fed this constant reels of eternal loops. So, how do we break it? Do you know what? I'm so glad you asked. And none of these are take the phone away at nine o'clock, as we're told, time again. Because if you try that, you already know how that goes. It leads to escalation, it leads to kickoff, it leads to massive meltdowns, screaming matches, screaming in your face, you feeling so frustrated and angry, you can't get to sleep. Her feeling frustrated and angry, she can't go to sleep. It's a double whammy, yet again, it's a knock on their nervous systems. So the first thing is to work backwards. Yep, you heard me correctly. Work backwards from sleep. So instead of focusing on what time she goes to bed, look at the two hours before it, and this is important. That's when you can make a real difference. So two hours before your bed make a real difference and encourage her to join in. So we all need to start winding down before we get into bed. So we need less stimulation, less bright light, less drama. So probably not the conversation about her homework or whatever it is at 9:30. More warmth, more quiet, more signals that say the day is over, you're safe, you can rest. That may be a bath or a shower, it may be that you dim the lights, you have softer lights, you may have something warm to eat or drink earlier in the evening. You may have soft conversations, you may just have a connection kind of chat, which is what I do with my daughter. We sit down and we talk about what's happened in the day and what's going on the next day. So then she's got a plan. She doesn't have to overthink it during the night, she knows what's going on at every step of the way, and it's about giving them those boundaries, that kind of connection to herself that she knows what's happening. It may be a short walk before it gets dark, and I know this works on my dog so well. And yes, I did say my dog here. If she walks at night in the evening, it gives her that downtime, that regulation before she goes to sleep. I mean, these all sound incredibly small, and as I said at the beginning, at the top of this podcast episode, these things are simple, but her nervous system, that alarm system, is able to regulate as she regulates as you regulate. The second thing is notice how her sleep shifts across the month. In the first couple of weeks of her cycle, whether or not she's menstruating, I say, her energy is naturally higher and settling is easier. In the week before her period, which I call the volatile week, because you know it is, sleep is often disrupted. So vivid dreams, lying awake with those anxious thoughts, those constantly looping anxious thoughts, that restlessness. It's not random. That's her hormones doing exactly what they're supposed to do. And if you can track it, you can work with it instead of against it. And the third thing, and this is so important, and this is where a loomie light comes in. So if you ever heard about a loomie light, honestly get one. I go to sleep with a loomie and I wake up to a loomie. It's about giving you that morning light, and I know that sounds simple, it isn't. Getting outside in natural light within the first hour of waking is one of the most powerful things she can do to reset her body clock. It tells her Cacadian rhythm it's daytime now, it tells her nervous system it's time to wake up, which means later when the light fades, her system starts preparing her for the night without her doing anything. Even 15 minutes of daylight in the room in that first hour is gold dust. Even just standing outside before she does something, it genuinely works. So this week I'd like you to do one thing and yet again, just one thing. I don't want more than that, I don't want to overwhelm you, I don't want to add more into your day. One thing for the week. Do not fight the bedtime because you are gonna come off far worse, and so is she. Work on the hour before it. Pick one thing that helps her nervous system wind down. Massage her feet, massage her head, stroke her head, have her lying down on your lap, having a drink, have doing something quiet, something that doesn't involve a screen. And if she listen, if she has to have a screen at bedtime because she listens to music, that's okay. Listening to music, but being off the screen is okay. Having a shower, five minutes of just sitting near each other with no agenda, just having that connection, just having that hug calms her nervous system down. Try it honestly, try it for a week and see what shifts. Right, remember, sleep is not a luxury, it's when everything gets repaired. So her emotional memories get filed, her body resets and regulates itself, her nervous system regulates and calms itself down. Her mood, her ability to cope, her body and her brain. When she doesn't get enough of it consistently, everything else gets way harder, and she's already working hard enough during the day. But remember, you cannot fall asleep, you but you can create the conditions for it. Sorry about that, and sometimes, not always, but sometimes that genuinely is enough. So before I go, if what you've heard today felt like something you've so needed to hear, I want you to tell you about WTF. By the way, that's what's the feeling. But you know, we all have lots of those WTF moments when we're bringing up teen girls. It's my membership for mums just like you. The biology, the physiology, the tools, the community of women who are in it too, all in one place. The doors are open right now, but only until the end of June. Then they close until August. So if you've been thinking about it and you've been sitting on the fence going, Oh, is this what I would need to do? Is that not what I need to do? Now's the time. Come and find us. The link is in the show notes. See you next week. Take care. Da doe it.