Ep. 54 Your Teen Isn't Overreacting: The Science Behind Teen Anxiety

If your teen freezes up before school, avoids social situations, or spirals into what-if thinking, this episode is for you. I'm walking you through what's really happening beneath your teen's anxiety and why pep talks and reassurance so often fall flat.

We'll cover why some teens' alarm systems run louder than others, how the pandemic disrupted key years of social practice, why LGBTQIA+ and marginalized teens carry an extra layer of anxiety, and the data behind what's become a national trend. And we'll get into the first grounding principle that changes how you support your teen: anxiety is a body-first experience, not a logic problem.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why you can't reason your teen out of anxiety
• How the amygdala and prefrontal cortex shape your teen's response to stress
• The difference between functional worry and concerning anxiety
• What the latest CDC and Trevor Project data tell us about teen anxiety rates
• Why body-based tools like breathing and grounding come before any thinking tool

Resources mentioned:

• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
• Under Pressure by Lisa Damour
• CDC data on anxiety disorders in children and teens
• The Trevor Project's 2024 National Survey on LGBTQ+ Youth Mental Health

Get the freebie: 5 Steps to Help Your Anxious Teen a free guide with practical steps you can start using with your teen today. 

Connect with Jasmyne:

Instagram: jasmyne.guidedpassages

Website: https://guided-passages.com

Transcript

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Anxiety isn't just about school work or grades, it runs so much deeper. It is the brain's alarm system and it's designed to keep us safe. But when that system gets stuck in a high alert, teens start to experience all the symptoms that we see, racing thoughts, upset stomachs, avoidance, perfectionism, you might see procrastination, or irritability, and sometimes even physical illness before school. Their nervous system is saying something's not safe. That's why you can't logic your teen out of anxiety because it's not a logical response, it's a physiological one. And understanding that really starts to change everything. Welcome to Parents and Teens Rising, the podcast that bridges the gap between parents and teens and helps families survive. I'm Jackson Chandler, Teen and Central Coach, Wilderness Writes and Package Guide and founder of Guided Passages. After over 16 years of working with young people, I know how challenging and rewarding these years can be. Each week we'll explore real conversations, practical tools, and fresh perspectives to help you connect with your team, support their confidence, and navigate the ups and downs. Let's rise together. Hey everyone, welcome back into the podcast. Today we're going to be talking about something so many of us parents are in the midst of with our own teenagers right now, and that's anxiety. If you've ever watched your teen freeze up before school, avoid social situations, or spiral into what if thinking, you know how hard anxiety can be, not just for them, but for the whole family. Maybe you've tried pep talks, reassurance, or even pushing them to just do it, but nothing seems to help for long. I have been there, both as a mom supporting my son through social anxiety and as someone who's lived through it myself. And in this episode, I want to take you inside what's really happening beneath your teen's anxiety and share simple, compassionate ways you can help them move from avoidance and overwhelm to confidence and calm. So most of us have been doing everything in our power to lift them up, to reassure them, to tell them it's going to be okay. But it's not easy. And if that's you, I just want to say my hat is off to you because I know how hard this is, and you haven't given up. You're still here, you're still trying, and you're still believing your teen can find their footing again. And that belief matters more than you know. So one of the things that's coming to mind right now is a teen that I've worked with who's bright and funny and kind and also absolutely paralyzed by everyday moments, most people just breeze through. So the thought of walking into school knots their stomach. Ordering a burrito at the lunch counter has their heart racing and their hands shaking. And even standing in a checkout line feels like everyone is watching and judging and waiting for them to mess up. So for teens who struggle with anxiety, routine life can feel like life or death. And a lot has amplified that anxiety. The pandemic stole two prime years of practice with normal social micro moments. Things like eye contact and small talk and group work. So skills that usually strengthen through repetition never got those reps. And then LGBTQIA plus youth face even more pressure. Things like bullying and judgment and daily microaggressions from peers or even adults can keep their nervous systems on high alert. And some kids are just simply wired with more sensitivity. Their brain notices more, feels more, and their alarm bells go off faster. So how we respond as parents really matters. Sometimes we jump into rescue mode the moment our teen feels uncomfortable. Other times we swing into the opposite side and become the enforcer, saying things like, just do it, it's not that big of a deal. And without meaning to, we can also invalidate their experience by saying things like, you're overreacting, which can create shame and make their anxiety feel even more confusing or out of their control. So in this episode, we're going to talk about how to show up in ways that support your teen's growth and sense of safety so they can stretch and regulate and reset and steadily rebuild comfort and confidence with the everyday stuff again. Alright, so we know that anxiety is happening all the time right now for our young people. But why does it happen? Why do some teens get caught up in it while other teens seem to handle things more easily? I want to unpack all of this together in this episode today. So, first of all, anxiety isn't just about schoolwork or grades. It runs so much deeper. It is the brain's alarm system and it's designed to keep us safe. But when that system gets stuck in high alert, teens start to experience all the symptoms that we see racing thoughts, upset stomachs, avoidance, perfectionism. We might see procrastination or irritability, and sometimes even physical illness before school. Their nervous system is saying something's not safe. That's why you can't logic your teen out of anxiety because it's not a logical response, it's a physiological one. And understanding that really starts to change everything. So the first thing to understand is that some teens are just wired differently. So we all have an alarm system inside the brain, which is called the amygdala, and it's like a threat detection network. For some kids, that system's on high alert more often. And at the same time, the part of the brain that helps calm things down and regulate, which is our prefrontal cortex, that part is still under construction in adolescence. So when you add those things together, alarm systems that are louder and breaks that are weaker, it can really lead to a teen being constantly in the what-if zone or really going to all of that catastrophic thinking. So it's not just a choice that they're making or not making, it's about the way their brain is wired. And the second thing to know is that how they handle that wiring really matters. So if your teen is regularly avoiding things that scare them, their brain learns that avoiding equals safety. And avoiding the stressor might help them momentarily, but it also builds a pattern of avoiding more, which builds more anxiety. And then when we add in things like disrupted sleep or endless scrolling on social media, and then fewer real life practice opportunities, especially since about 2012, when phones became so central for teens, you've got an environment that doesn't build resilience. It amplifies their fear and vulnerability. The third thing is that we cannot ignore the impacts of the pandemic. For two solid years, our teens missed key social practice. Walking into a classroom, making small talk, having unplanned group interaction. Imagine missing that in your prime development window. It absolutely contributes to more internalizing symptoms like worry and withdrawal and anxiety that the researchers are still tracking. But as a mom whose kids lived through it, and as a coach who works with teens every day who also lived through it, I see the impact so clearly. The pandemic has had a devastating and long-lasting impact on our teens' confidence and their ability to navigate social situations in the world. It stunted their social development, and we are still recovering. And I feel like we're going to be recovering for a long time to come from this. Because when they're not out in the world practicing those skills during those key developmental years, they, you know, go inward. They lose their confidence. They lose their ability to navigate those situations because those things take practice. And that is the prime time for learning how to get along in groups and all of those things, right? To start, you know, having more independence out in the world and running around with friends and all of those things that they missed out on. And so it has absolutely made an impact. All right, and the fourth thing that I think is so important to add into this conversation is that there is so much added pressure for marginalized teens. For example, LGBTQ teens face significantly higher rates of anxiety. Daily microattacks, bullying, rejection, judgment, they are not just background noise. They are constant. Discrimination and victimization don't just hurt, they change how a body stays on alert. And similarly, teens from racial or ethnic minorities often face extra barriers too. So less access to care, systemic stressors, trauma exposure, cultural stigma. All of that compounds the why behind anxiety. It's not just what's happening inside of them, it's what's happening around them too. So we know that not all anxiety is bad. We know that anxiety is just a normal part of life, right? That anxiety helps us to detect unsafe situations. It helps us to, you know, really be on alert when things are not right, which helps to keep us alive, right? We want to be able to have that gut instinct when something is off, when something doesn't feel safe. Our anxiety is really important for that. So what is normal anxiety and when should we worry? So we all have anxiety, which is part of being human, but there is a difference between functional worry, which is situational and proportionate and short-lived. This is where your teen feels worried about the test, but they study and then they meet their friends afterwards and they sleep okay, right? There's a difference between that and concerning anxiety. And this is anxiety that's heavy and persistent, maybe for weeks or months. And this might include things like school avoidance, panic at the grocery line, major sleep loss, withdrawal from social situations, physical complaints like my stomach hurts before school. And all of that tells us that their system is overloaded. So if you're thinking this has gone beyond nerves or teenage angst, then yes, that's definitely a red flag that we want to pay attention to. So when it affects friendships and motivation and school attendance, or it shows up as constant panic, help is definitely needed. This is a time to seek some support, okay? So let's zoom out for a minute and look at what the data is actually telling us about anxiety in teens right now. Because the numbers help us understand this isn't just happening in your home or with your child. This is something we're seeing across the nation. So according to the CDC, about 11% of all children ages 3 to 17 currently have a diagnosed anxiety disorder. And when you break that down by gender, it shows up as 12% of girls and 9% of boys. And that gap is important here because girls, especially adolescent girls, are experiencing some of the highest rates of anxiety we've ever recorded. And if we look specifically at LGBTQ plus youth, the numbers get even more concerning. The Trevor Project's 2024 National Survey found that 66% of LGBTQ plus young people reported experiencing recent symptoms of anxiety. And for transgender and non-binary youth, that number jumps to over 70%. So for many of these teens, anxiety is not just occasional or situational. It's a constant part of their daily lives. The same survey also found that 39% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered suicide in the past year. And that number rises to 46% among transgender and non-binary youth. And here's the part that really hits me as a parent and a youth coach. More than half of LGBTQ plus youth who wanted mental health care last year were unable to get it. And this was not because they didn't want help, but because support was not accessible, affordable, or available. So we have some of our most vulnerable young people facing the highest levels of anxiety with the fewest pathways to support. And then there's the larger trend we've all been watching unfold. In his book The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt highlights something that the CDC, Monitoring the Future, and International Studies have all confirmed. So starting around 2010 to 2012, rates of anxiety, depression, and self-harm in adolescents, especially girls, began rising sharply. Haidt references data from places like the CDC, nature, and even global well-being data sets, and they all show the same pattern. When smartphones and social media became central to teen life, internalizing disorders, so things like anxiety, withdrawal, rumination, and low self-esteem, they all started climbing in ways we had never seen before. So when we talk about teen anxiety, we're not talking about something rare. We're talking about a national and global trend, one that's shaped by biology, environment, identity, technology, and access to care. And so your teen and your family and your parenting are not happening in isolation. You're navigating all of this within a landscape that has changed dramatically over the last decade. So we're still just trying to catch up and figure out what the heck do we do? What do we do to help support our kids, right? We want them to be able to function out in the world. We want them to feel confident and be able to maneuver through social situations without having panic attacks, right? So we all want the same thing for our kids. Okay? So let's kind of keep working through this process so that we can have some actual tools today that we can start applying with our own kids and just have a better understanding about this whole situation. Before we move into the concrete steps for helping your teen, though, I want to leave you with a few grounding principles, the kinds of things that really shift how we parent anxious kids once we understand them. So the first one is this anxiety is a body first experience. A lot of parents go straight to logic. We try to reassure and reason and give perspective. We want to fix the thought. But when your teen is anxious, their nervous system is already activated. Their heart rate is up, their breathing is shallow, their body is telling them something is wrong, even when they're perfectly safe. So thinking tools don't work until the body calms down. That's why breathing and movement and grounding and getting back into their senses, those are not just nice add-ons, they're actually the starting point. So once the body shifts, the mind can follow. And the second truth is that avoidance feels good in the moment, but it grows anxiety in the long run. So when your teen avoids the things that feel scary, their brain gets instant relief and it learns, oh yeah, avoiding works. Let's do that again. And so over time, avoidance shrinks their world. And that's why guided exposure, little steps into the things that they are afraid of with support is what starts to build their confidence again. So not giant leaps, not pushing them off the deep end, just steady, supported practice that teaches their brain, I can handle this and I'm actually okay. The third truth here is that stress isn't always the enemy. This comes through so clearly in Lisa Damore's book, Under Pressure. She explains that stress is actually a normal and healthy part of development. It's the body's way of rising to meet a challenge. So not all stress means something is wrong. Some stress is actually a sign that your teen is doing something new, something meaningful, or something that asks a little bit more of them than they're used to. It's the same kind of stretch we feel when we're learning a new skill or starting a new job or trying something that we care about. So we want to help our teen step toward the things they're afraid of, even in small ways. And as they do that, they're going to start building their capacity and their resilience and their confidence again. So what we want to watch out for is not the presence of stress, but whether they have the support and the tools and the recovery time to move through that stress and come out stronger. That's the difference between overwhelming stress that shuts them down and healthy stress that helps them to grow. And then the last grounding truth or principle that I want to talk about and that I'll say over and over again is that sleep is medicine. Sleep is the absolute foundation of a well-regulated nervous system. When a teen is tired, everything anxiety, irritability, emotional reactivity gets louder. Their system is literally more fragile. So if your teen isn't sleeping well, even the best tools are not gonna work the way they're supposed to. Protecting sleep, setting tech boundaries, and helping them build nighttime routines, those things make an enormous difference in their ability to cope with their anxiety. Okay, so now that you've got the why, let's move into the how. I'm gonna walk you through five concrete steps you can start this week to help your teen minimize and manage anxiety without power struggles. The five steps I'm gonna cover here are open communication, challenging catastrophic thoughts, regulating the nervous system, stopping the over-rescue cycle, and then setting up tech and sleep boundaries that actually stick. These five steps are actually pulled straight from my free guide, five steps to help your teen minimize and manage their anxiety. And I'm gonna pop the link for that guide into the show notes so that you can snag it for reference later. Alright, let's dive into step one, which is open communication. The truth is that communicating with an anxious teen isn't about having the perfect words. It's really about creating the kind of space where they feel safe enough to talk in the first place. So when your teen shares something, try to be curious instead of corrective. You don't need to jump in with solutions or minimize their feelings. Just let them talk, let them feel, let them process without judgment or pressure. And trust is really built in the little things you do consistently. So responding instead of reacting, following through on what you say you're gonna do, and apologizing when you mess up. Those things really, really matter. They show your teen that you're human, you're steady, and that you're safe. And here's the real secret teens almost never open up when it's convenient for us, right? They open up at 10 p.m. when your bedroom light's still on, or in the car when you're almost to your destination, or right in the middle of something you were trying to finish, right? But those moments are gold. When they open that door even a crack, make sure that you open your door even wider so that they can walk through it. That is where the connection lives. So let me give you an example of what open communication actually looks like in real life. So imagine your teen comes home from school, they drop their backpack and they say something like, I don't want to go tomorrow, my stomach hurts, I can't deal with it. And as a parent, your reflex is going to be to immediately jump into problem solving. You might say something like, You're fine, you just need to get some sleep, or you can't just skip school because you're stressed. But open communication looks different. It slows things down, it gets curious instead of corrective, like I said. So instead of reacting, you take a breath and you say, Okay, sounds like today was really hard. Can you tell me what made it feel so overwhelming? And when you do that, you're not fixing and you're not minimizing, you're just opening the door. And maybe they'll shrug at first because teens love to shrug, but they might also say something like, I just feel stupid in math. Everyone else gets it and I don't. And then this is your moment to validate, right? So that makes total sense. Feeling lost in class can be so uncomfortable. Thank you so much for telling me. And that one validating moment does something so important. So their nervous system is going to start to settle, their pressure will start to decrease, and then the trust between you grows. Not because you fixed the problem, but because you made the conversation safe. Alright, so step two is helping them challenge catastrophic thinking. And this is a big one. Anxious teens are constantly imagining the worst case scenario. It's just how anxiety works. Their brain is trying to protect them by scanning for danger, even when there isn't any. So let me paint a picture of what this might look like for a teen. So let's say your teen has a presentation the next day. They're pacing around the house, they can't focus. They're saying things like, I'm gonna mess up, everyone's gonna laugh at me, my teacher hates me, I'm gonna fail the whole class. Their brain has sprinted straight to the worst case scenario, and that's catastrophic thinking. And anxious teens do this all the time. Anxious anyone does this all the time, right? Catastrophic thinking is a key component of anxiety. So in these moments, most parents are gonna typically respond with reassurance. You're gonna be fine. No one's gonna laugh at you. You're overreacting, you're gonna do such a great job, right? And you mean well, but reassurance often bounces right off of their nervous system. They're not in a logical place, they're in fear mode. So instead, what you can do is slow things down and gently just guide them back to a more balanced perspective using three simple questions. So you might say, okay, let's look at this together. What's the absolute worst thing that could happen? And they'll usually describe something dramatic because that's where their brain is living. And then you can ask, what's the best thing that could happen? And this opens up the possibility that good outcomes do actually exist, and that is one of the possibilities, even if they don't believe it yet. And then you can end with, based on what you know is true, what's the most likely thing that's gonna happen? And then nine times out of ten, they're gonna land somewhere in the middle, something a little bit more realistic. So you just are presenting options, right? That it doesn't necessarily have to be this horrible conclusion, that it's not a foregone conclusion, right? That we don't actually know what the outcome is gonna be yet. And so that's just that reminder that there are other possibilities, and that will help to regulate and settle down their nervous system in that moment. So these questions don't dismiss their fear, they help put it into perspective. They pull the brain out of panic mode and into problem-solving mode, and just remind them gently, just because they think something doesn't mean it's true. Thoughts are powerful, but they are not facts. Alright, this moves us into step three, which is to regulate the nervous system. So when your teen is anxious, like I've mentioned a few times, reasoning with them does not work because their brain is not in thinking mode, it's in survival mode. So instead of trying to talk them out of their anxiety, we want to help them calm their body first. And this is where tools like box breathing come in. So this is where you inhale for a count of four, you hold for a count of four, you exhale for a count of four, and you hold. For account of four, and you'd repeat that cycle several times. Or simple movement. So things like taking a short walk or stretching or shaking out the tension, right? Just any kind of movement in your body is going to help move that energy a little bit. And then one of the most powerful things you can offer is co-regulation. So when you stay calm and you stay grounded and you stay centered, your teen's nervous system picks up on that. So your calm really becomes contagious. And these tools are not about making their anxiety disappear. They're just about helping them to move through it instead of being trapped by it. And having some things that they can reach for in these moments, right? That they don't just have to be in this panic mode, that there is something that they can do to help regulate. All right. And the more we can help them find the things that work for them, the better. Because for every person, it's different. For some of the teens I work with, um, they really love putting their headphones in and listening to some calming music or any type of music that helps to calm them down. For some of them, it's just about going to their room and laying on their bed for a little bit. Other of them really swear by stepping outside and breathing some fresh air. So it's really just about finding the tools that work for them to help their body calm down, help their mind calm down in those moments. Okay. All right, let's talk about step number four, which is probably the hardest one for us as parents, and that is to stop over-rescuing. And listen, if you've been rescuing your teen, it's not because you're doing anything wrong. It's because you love them. You love them so much, right? You want to protect them, you want to help them. And so that is our instinct, right? That is our parental instinct coming out. We do not want to see them in pain. We don't want to see them embarrassed or uncomfortable. That's totally natural. We've been helping them to feel comfortable their entire lives from the time they came into the world, right? Our job was to protect them and keep them safe. And now they're at this point where they're teenagers and they have to be out trying these things on their own. They have to learn that they are capable of figuring things out, of handling hard situations. If we continually rescue them, we're sending them the message that you cannot handle this. And that message can actually make their anxiety stronger. So even though we have the best of intentions, it's backfiring. It's making things worse. All right. So this is something that we have to start addressing. And so instead of rescuing all the time, we can try encouraging small, manageable steps towards the things that scare them. So maybe that looks like practicing a short presentation in front of you. Maybe that looks like going to a hangout with friends for at least five minutes, and I'll be out in my car if you need me to, you know, take you home. But we're going to try it for five minutes. Maybe that means I'm going to send you into the grocery store to buy this one thing so that you can practice checking out at the checkout counter, right? So just little tiny things that they can practice that we are not always doing for them because they need to build those skills. They need to build their confidence that they are able to do those things, right? And then each small success that they have, it builds their self-trust. But then they start to think things like, I did that, I survived that. Maybe I can do the next thing, right? So their capacity grows, their ability grows, their trust in themselves grows. So one thing that we can say to them is, I know you can handle this, and I'm right here if you need me. Right? So we want to show them that we believe in their ability to maneuver through hard moments. They are strong enough. They have what it takes. They have everything they need inside, and we believe that about them. And we're right here to support them if they fall down. Okay? We're not going to go rescue them, but we're here. They can come tell us all about it and how hard it was. And we'll and we'll give them a hug, right? And we'll help them get back up and go out and try again. And so that balance, support plus autonomy, is where real growth starts to happen. All right, that moves us into step five. And this one impacts almost every teen today. This is media consumption. But basically, phones and social media, they're not inherently bad, right? They're actually really amazing tools. But for an anxious teen, they can be absolute amplifiers of anxiety, especially when it comes to things like sleep in comparison. Teens need around nine hours of sleep every night. And without it, anxiety shoots up. Sleep is the foundation of emotional regulation. If they are up at night scrolling, right, they are not getting good rest. The blue light keeps them up longer, their melatonin doesn't release till later, they're, you know, needing to keep checking in the middle of the night, they're not getting good rest. And so that is gonna really limit their ability to regulate their emotions without that good sleep. And then there's also just the never-ending scroll, right? So constant notifications, constant comparing, constant access to other people's opinions. It keeps their nervous systems on high alert. So what can help is really starting to set a technology wind down time. So maybe around 9 p.m., we start to wind down, maybe we start to, you know, do some other things besides being on our phone. We start to, you know, read our book or whatever it might be. And then keeping phones out of bedrooms at night is so huge as well. I'm still working on this one with my kids, but the more we can keep, you know, trying to limit the phone in the bedroom at night, the better. So having open conversations about what feels good online and what feels harmful, and really letting it be a dialogue rather than a command can really be helpful if we're going to try to, you know, just create some healthier boundaries around our phones because we know how impactful they are for mental health, for anxiety, for all of those things. And remember, these boundaries are not about punishment, they're really about protection. Helping your teen find balance with technology gives them the space they need to calm their system, sleep deeper, and show up more like themselves. All right, we have talked about a lot of things today, but I want to remind you that anxiety does not define your teen. It is not who they are. It's something they can learn to understand and manage and move through. Okay? So when you combine empathy with practical tools, listening and reframing and regulating and setting some healthy boundaries, you're teaching them how to maneuver through this very human experience. And remember, your calm presence is one of the most helpful things that you can do for your anxious teen. It helps them settle when everything feels intense and out of control. All right, so we're gonna go ahead and wrap up for today. If you found this helpful, I have created a free guide called Five Steps to Help Your Teen Minimize and Manage Their Anxiety. And you can grab it in the show notes or just DM me the word anxiety on Instagram and I'll send it straight to you. Um you can find me on Instagram at jasmine.guidedpassages, and that's jasmine with a Y. And then just remember to keep showing up with compassion and curiosity and connection. You're doing an amazing job. Your team does not need you to be perfect, they just need you to be present. All right, everyone. Thanks so much for being here and have a beautiful rest of your day. Bye.