Life as a teenager is confusing.
Sometimes you still feel like a child, and other times you feel totally grown up. Maybe this is because of your own desires and feelings, but it can also be because of the way other people treat you. This seesaw of emotions can be confusing. It can feel lonely, exciting, overwhelming and a whole slew of other emotions. It can also make it difficult to feel at home in your own body.
Sometimes that feeling of disconnection from your own physical self shows up as anxiety.
Wanting to fit in, to make friends, or to feel like we are enough leads to us measuring our own worth by how others see us. One of the most common areas we feel like we need to change something, like we’re not enough, is about how we look. We might wonder, “Am I thin enough, pretty enough, sporty enough, for people to like me?” Another common area for teens is around school work and meeting everyone’s expectations.
There is a lot of pressure on teens to take all the right classes, extracurricular activities, and make HUGE decisions about what you want to be when you grow up. Not to mention navigating friendships, dating, and how your own body is changing!
Feeling like people are judging us, like we have all these pressures to succeed and be what our friends/parents/teachers/etc want us to be is overwhelming for everyone at some point. These feelings of overwhelm can easily lead to feeling not enough. That we will never be enough, and that we constantly have to try to earn the right to be loved, accepted, or worthy. And that leads to feeling anxious and uncomfortable in our own skin.
Anxiety can show up in our bodies in a variety of ways. Common feelings are a tenseness or tightness in the pit of your stomach, a feeling of heaviness or pressure on your chest, and/or difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. For some of us it may be more intense, a sense of nausea or lightheadedness, perhaps even a blacking out or narrowing of our vision. These are all signs that the body is dealing with stress and that it is struggling.
Research shows that mindfulness practices, sometimes as simple as an intentional breath practice – that’s right, simply breathing – can be as effective in treating anxiety as medication for some people. Learning some simple mindfulness techniques and using self-compassion to become a good friend to yourself can be both simple and powerful.
There are so many myths or misperceptions about mindfulness and meditation. One of the most common is that to practice mindfulness, you have to sit on the floor with your eyes closed and stay still. That is definitely one way to meditate, but it is not the only one. Mindfulness practice and mediation can be created in any practice that helps you be in this moment, right here and now. I have one client who finds her meditation in playing the trumpet. Playing the trumpet brings her present and into her body in a way that allows her to breath deeply and relax in her body.
We all want to belong, to have a place we feel we fit in, and people who welcome and care about us. Getting stuck in the thought loop of not being enough – worrying about how what you said yesterday was so stupid! Or feeling like you are going to fail tomorrow’s test because you never get things right! – is a common experience. When we these thoughts begin to feel like truths and we can’t shake them out of our heads, it’s time to ask for some help. Talking to a friend, parent or counselor is one great way to do just that.