This week is finals week at my house, and that comes with a lot of stress for my teenagers. They are studying and prepping for AP tests and cumulative finals in the midst of all the other things they still have going on. There are end of the year school events and concerts. There are friends that are graduating and they're going to graduation parties and there's still things like sports conditioning and they are just trying to keep their heads above water right now. Last night I was sitting with one of my daughters who was Feeling the weight of this time of year and feeling just completely overwhelmed and so stressed about everything left she has to do in the next four days, and like there was no possible way she could get it all done. And I could see that she was completely paralyzed. She couldn't get the energy or the focus or the brain power to do any of it. And I want to share with you today a couple of the things that I did with her last night so that you have some tools that you can use with your teen when they are feeling overwhelmed and stressed and like the load of what they are trying to do is just too heavy. But before I share those tools, I want to help you understand what is actually going on for your teen in these moments. Each one of us as humans has something called a central nervous system. And this is basically the communication line that connects your brain to your body and your body to your brain. And all day long, every single day, our nervous system is basically asking one simple question. Am I safe? That is what it's meant to determine. And if you are in a situation that your nervous system determines is not safe, then it goes into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Now this has served us as humans very well for many, many years because back in the day when we lived in caves and we didn't have homes and we didn't have electricity and we didn't have food at the grocery store, we had to survive. And this central nervous system is actually designed to sense dangers, to sense threats. And when it senses a threat, it automatically puts us into gear to get to a place of safety. The problem is, in our modern society, the threats around us are very rarely actual threats to our safety. There are no tigers chasing after us. And if we get excluded from a group, we are not going to die. But our bodies don't know the difference. They just know, am I safe or am I not safe? And when the answer is, I am not safe, whether it's a tiger chasing after us or a test we don't feel prepared for, or a friend saying things about us that might exclude us from our group, it all feels the same. Now, each of us have a unique and different nervous system that is based on our entire life experience. And most of it was programmed when we were infants, when we were children. And our bodies had to learn to determine what was safe and what was not. So each of us is going to have different things that we perceive as threats to our safety. And each of us is going to respond differently to those threats. Today I specifically want to talk about what this might look like for you and for your teen as it relates to overwhelm and stress related to school. Some teens are going to experience the stress and overwhelm of schoolwork as a legitimate threat to their survival. And that's really what we're talking about today. But that is not every teen. Some teens just take it in stride. They just do what needs to be done. Keep going. They don't feel like it's so overwhelming that it is a threat to their survival. And that is actually the goal that I think we all want to work toward with our teens, is to learn coping mechanisms and skills that help them avoid feeling like stress and overwhelm are a threat to their survival. And this is actually exactly what we do in the Enjoy community, is we learn how to teach our teen these coping mechanisms and skills to build their resilience, to build their capacity to handle the stresses of life, so that they aren't constantly going into one of these survival states. It's a process of rewiring, reprogramming their nervous system. And it does take some time and some intentional effort, but that is the work that we do inside of Enjoy. Now if your teen is not in this place, if they do interpret this stress and overwhelm as a threat to their survival, there are a few different types of reactions they might have. One survival state they might go into is fight. So when they experience stress and overwhelm that feels dangerous to them, that feels like a threat to them, they are going to get aggressive. They will probably start to get annoyed and frustrated and maybe even angry. And direct that anger toward you, because that is how their nervous system is programmed to respond to stress and overwhelm that feels like a threat to their safety. It actually isn't about you at all. And it's probably not even about the stuff they have to do. It's just that they have gone into this survival state where they feel like if they fight, they're going to be okay. Another survival state your teen might experience is flight and with flight What we're wired to do is run away from the danger get out of there And so they might avoid their schoolwork altogether They might not even get their homework out of their backpack even though they're feeling really stressed and like there's so many things they need to get done. but they just want to escape it all and so they distract themselves with their phone or on video games or hanging out with friends and they just don't even pull it out. They also might go into freeze. Freeze is what happens when our nervous system senses a threat and we feel like the only way to survive is to freeze. It's basically to play dead, to freeze, to not move a muscle, not make a sound. And that is the state that our kids get into when they just shut down. They cannot do anything. They cannot think about anything. Their brain won't even engage. in their work because they are just so overwhelmed that now they have shut down. If you struggle to motivate your teen, it is very possible that they actually are in freeze, that they are so overwhelmed and it feels so dangerous to even engage in their schoolwork that their bodies and their minds just shut down. And the last state that your teen might experience is called Fawn. I think of this as the perfectionistic response. This is when your child senses the threat and it feels dangerous and scary to them. And they think, if I just do everything perfectly, then I will be okay. Then I will survive. So they are studying and going through every single piece of paper and rereading all their books. And they're spending all day, every day. They don't want to take breaks for meals and they don't want to go to sleep because they think I just need to study, study, study, study, study, and then I will be safe. So what do we do if our teen is in one of these states? Whether it's fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, how do we help them get through the overwhelm and the stress? Now there is so much more to this than I could possibly cover in a short podcast episode. We did a full hour long workshop on this topic, on how to respond when your teen goes into these different states last week in my Enjoy Community. And we have another workshop coming up on the same topic next week because there just is so much to it. But I want to give you a couple of really practical, tangible tips that you can use today. If you notice that overwhelm and stress are sending your teen into one of these survival states, the first thing you have to do. is stay calm. I recorded a podcast episode a while back about being a thermostat, not a thermometer. And I will link that episode in the show notes because that is a great resource to help you stay calm in these moments. The second thing you have to do is validate your teen's experience. No matter which state they are in, they are experiencing emotions that are valid. They are having an experience that makes sense. And we need to let our kids know that they make sense. That this makes total sense that they're getting upset because they're feeling really overwhelmed. This makes total sense that you think that if you just do everything and you never sleep and you just study, study, study, that then you will be okay. It makes total sense that you want to just avoid this altogether because it is a lot. And I see that. Our kids are often just as confused as we are about why they are responding this way. So if we can help them understand that they are normal, they are okay, this is a legitimate and valid response that your body is having because you don't feel safe. When we validate our kids experience, we create safety for them to have that experience without it feeling like a threat to their survival. The next thing we have to do is help our kids process their emotions. When our kids are in this state of survival, their thinking, rational, planning brain is offline. And when you're feeling overwhelmed, what you need is that rational, planning, thinking part of your brain to help you make a plan, to help you break things down into smaller pieces. And they don't have access to that when they are feeling like their safety is threatened. So, in order to get that thinking part of their brain back online, what we have to do is get them out of their head and into their body. We do this by having them process their emotions. And this is something I did with my daughter last night, and I could see the weight lift off of her shoulders as she processed the emotion of stress. I'm not going to go over how to process an emotion or how to walk your kids through processing an emotion here today. But I do have a free mini course that you can download if you are looking for how to do that. And I will put that link in the show notes so you can grab that, watch the video, learn how to do it for yourself, and then take your kids through that exact same process when they need to process an emotion. The next thing we need to do is emphasize our kids worth, their value as a human. I talked about this on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, but we need to reinforce to them that their grade on a test, their grade on a project, their grade in a class, does not change how we feel about them. It does not change their worth as a human. And I would encourage you to reiterate to your kids that this one score, one grade will not make or break them. It will not destroy their future. Let them know that you will help them find a path that gets to where they want to go. And you will work on it together. Yes, the path may look different depending on the outcome, but that's okay. There are a million different routes they can take to get to the same destination. And you can help them find a new route if this one doesn't work out the way they had hoped. When we take that pressure off of them, they're able to come back to safety in their body and get that thinking brain back online. Finally if you can tell that after you have stayed calm, you have validated their whole experience that they're having, you have helped them process their emotions, you have emphasized their worth and your love for them, regardless of the outcome, so that they can have some of that pressure taken off of them; you should be able to tell at this point that they are coming back to a place of safety, that that rational, logical thinking brain is coming back online. And when it comes back online, that is when you can help them make a plan. When you can help them take all the things that they have to do and make sense of it. Put it into small doable tasks in an order that makes sense so that they know what to work on and how to work on it effectively. When we do this again and again and again with our teens, every time they get really overwhelmed and go into a survival state, we are helping them learn the skills to bring themselves back to safety. We are helping them to build their resilience, to have a toolbox of coping skills for any situation. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you want to know more about how to do this, if you want help with each one of these steps, And you want to be able to do it effectively at any time, I want to invite you to join me in the Enjoy community. When you join, you get instant access to workshops that I have taught in depth on all of the things we talked about today. You also get access to a parenting toolbox with tips and ideas that are quick and easy to use right now. And you get access to support and help directly from the community. me with the specific challenges that you are facing with your teen so that you don't have to try and figure out how to apply all of this to your own situation. You can just ask, and I will help you every step of the way. This time of year can be especially challenging for moms and for teens. And I want you to know that I am cheering you on. I am rooting for you every step of the way. I hope that these tips will be really helpful as you navigate the next couple of weeks with your teen and anytime they go into one of these survival states. Sending you a great big hug and a reminder that you've got this.
