Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi y'all. This is Virginia Lee, and today we are going to talk all things teen with the voices across generations here on spill the tea.
Do you play a sport at the club level? Play an instrument in a youth orchestra? Is your schedule filled with AP or honors or IB level classes? Or are you just surrounded by people doing all of this? Maybe you're a parent of one of these kids. If so, then stick with us, because in today's episode, we are going to tackle the topic of teen stress within high pressure environments. We are going to hear straight from teens what is really at the heart of their stress, not what we think it might be. Then we will hear from an expert clinical psychologist who will bring this all together and give us some tips and tricks that anyone can use to keep our emotions from pulling us under. And for our parents listening, we have some specific tips for you. Let's dive right in.
Let's paint a picture of the first day at a private school in the state of Washington. It's a rare sunny day in the Pacific Northwest. Seniors are lined up all along the main road into school with homemade posters, unified in their classier t shirts, and cheering on the incoming underclassmen.
Just before the first turn, the board that announces the chosen theme captures your attention, and this year, the seniors chose shooting for the stars.
Day number one is filled with hugs and smiles and how was your summer? But the following weeks to come will be filled with rainy days and difficult tests and a calendar piled high with half finished assignments. From this first day to the end of the school year over, Lakers will navigate the halls of a high achieving school. But what exactly classifies a high school as high achieving? The general definition of a high achieving school includes students that score high on standardized tests, and a large percentage of those students go on to attend prestigious colleges. One such school goes beyond that definition. In their class of 2024, two thirds of the students taking AP classes scored a five, the highest possible grade on AP tests. The average SAT score of the 2024 class ranged from 1320 to 1540, and 35% of them were recognized by National Merit. Of the 54 different colleges that the 2020 class is attending, more than half have a less than 30% acceptance rate and a quarter of those colleges have less than 10%. And the achievements by the student body go beyond academics. Just looking at the sports program, this same school had four different sports win a state championship title this past year, and several student athletes qualified as individuals in the state tournament. Now that is what you call high achieving.
With a smaller class size, faculty with advanced degrees and a rigorous curriculum filled with unique experiences. Preparatory schools are designed to prepare students for the next step in education and life. So par for the course would be an environment with high expectations and standards.
So what is it like to be part of this high achieving student body? Let's hear from some current and past high school students.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Our parents are choosing to send us to these schools is because of this, like, system that, you know, pushes students to do better.
[00:03:20] Speaker C: I do think there's a difference, though, between healthy competition and drive and stress. When we're talking about stress, there's a lot of talk about changing the culture, shifting away from these grades and metrics that we're tested on every day. But at some point, we need to understand that this is kind of how it works in a highly competitive private school where so much is expected of the students.
[00:03:47] Speaker D: I did really well in college because when I was managing it in high school, my stress, it was about making sure I knew how to study, how to get good grades, how to make sure that I could physically just, like, succeed enough to get to the next.
[00:04:04] Speaker E: Step in the beginning of the year. It's also like a different type of stress. Like, you could be stressed out or nervous about the first day of school, but then at the end of the year, it's like, oh, you're stressed about finals and your final grade. So I think they're always under some type of stress.
[00:04:23] Speaker F: Everyone's so stressed. It's like you say, oh, yeah, you're so stressed. But then, because everyone at Overlake is saying how stressed they are all the time, you never know the level of stress there is because people are stressed constantly with the amount of work and everything going on in their lives.
[00:04:40] Speaker E: Like the first ultimate game last year, it was like my first varsity or high school game ever. And, like, I was sitting in, like, jenny's english class and I was like, I almost. I felt like throwing up. Cause I was so nervous about, like, how I was gonna play.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Hearing that these students have some level of stress every day tracks with data regarding high achieving schools across the country. An NYU study of students at two highly competitive private schools in the northeast showed that nearly 50% of the students described feeling stressed every day. In a recent national survey of 43,000 students from high performing schools, three quarters of high school students and half of middle school students reported often or always feeling stressed by their schoolwork.
On the surface, grades, schoolwork, and test scores seem like the main stressors in students lives. But what is truly fueling this? Let's deep dive by hearing more from our students.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: So I have a good example of that because, you know, I'm just chilling on the couch, and my mom comes along and she says, hey, hey, did you know that there's this one student he spends his entire summer doing as an intern doing animal rescue in Peru? Are you in Peru right now? And I look at myself just sitting on the couch reading my comic book or watching an anime, and like, I'm not in Peru. I'm not doing animal rescue. I just kind of feel like a bit of a failure right now.
[00:06:11] Speaker D: And especially since my parents knew that I wanted to be a doctor one day, there was a lot of pressure and it was a lot of expectation when you have dreams and goals that you'd be putting in a lot of work and time and effort.
[00:06:28] Speaker E: My parents definitely have expectations of me to get certain grades, but for the most part, they're pretty understanding that they know it's an academically based school just to maintain good grades, nineties and above. If my grades are dropped, they want to talk to me about why that's happening, or they want to try to understand what else in my life could be impacting me.
[00:06:54] Speaker D: Sometimes my mom would say, I can't want this more than you do. Just the idea of, I want this so badly for you and I expect so much out of you.
You need to have that same internal drive and want to do everything and more is really stressful and caused me a lot of stress.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: We just heard three examples of pressure placed on teens from their parents. Whether it's grades, drive, activities, or lack of activity, I think it really goes to show that parents and guardians have a loud and powerful voice in their kids lives. A parent's voice is the one teens have heard the most in their few 14 to 18 years of life, and at that age, they don't have a lot of life experience to dilute their words. There's a 2016 study that I think really shows this. It compares teen parents who emphasized results such as academics or getting into a good college with parents that emphasized character traits such as kindness or being respectful. Kids with parents that focused mainly on results overall had lower grades, poor teacher ratings, and showed higher risk behaviors such as cheating.
So having a strong parent voice in a teen's head is okay, but what makes a difference is what that voice is saying.
In addition to pressure from home, what else is below the surface when talking about teen stress?
[00:08:19] Speaker F: I get stressed about a lot of things, but honestly, at least related to school, the most stressful thing for me is being compared to others, and that comes with the grades. Like, if that aspect of being compared wasn't there, I do not think I would be so stressed about each and every assignment.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: I honestly think that it's a good thing, because I think that, like, whatever school you go to, there will be that stress of trying to, like, you know, comparing yourself to other students and getting good grades. There will be that stress.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: For me, the question that bounces around a lot in the back of my head is, am I doing enough, like, am I putting out enough effort? Am I. Am I doing all that I can to be a good student? And often that ties into comparison with other students, which is, in my opinion, unhealthy.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: There is, like, a good thing to that. And it's regarding standards. Like, if you never get, like, the next standard, the next higher standard, the next higher standard, you may be pushing for a bar that's too low. It does help push me to succeed. But I think there is a nuance and a difference between setting a healthy high standard and being surrounded in an environment where this kid is doing animal rescue in Peru, and this kid has won a Nobel Prize for designing a rocket for NASA. You know, there's just a big difference.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Both of these students are right. When teens compare themselves to one another, it can be healthy and a natural part of growing up, or it could be unhealthy and cause trouble. We all have an innate drive to evaluate ourselves. And according to the social comparative theory, a natural part of creating our own identity is to compare ourselves with others. This might be with money, sports, artistic talent, or the high score on asteroids, but these comparisons help us identify our own personal goals. And sometimes comparing ourselves among a friend group can lead to higher achievement, more effort, and self motivation. Unfortunately, living in a world of constant comparisons can foster isolation and create a more competitive, as opposed to cooperative environment.
[00:10:26] Speaker F: Yeah, I agree. And then also, like, no matter how many times a school can be like, don't post it, don't talk about grades, it's gonna happen. Like, you can't control what happens outside of school. And although everyone tells you don't compare yourself to others, naturally, internally, that's what our brains do.
[00:10:48] Speaker E: I don't think one test is gonna decide your entire future. It's just the test is stressful because you're worried about what grade you'll get, especially when you're going to compare that grade to your peers later.
[00:11:00] Speaker F: Something I know that's present in our grade is, for example, when AP test scores came out, people were posting their scores all over online, so you know what everyone's getting, and it just makes you feel awful about yourself.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And regarding about interacting with people, it's gotten to the point where I have to sort of separate the actual person themselves and their accomplishments in academic life to be able to talk to them.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Interesting. So you have to set aside people's accomplishments and grades so you can talk to them and you won't feel the need to compete.
[00:11:37] Speaker F: There's times, like after a test, after everyone's taken it and you've received your grades back, where sometimes you'll be, like, comparing scores. And I know we're told not to do that, but it just happens.
And someone will be like, oh, what'd you get? And you'll be like, oh, a 90. And they'll be like, oh, that's amazing. And then you ask them, what'd you get? And they'll be like, a 95. I didn't do that good. But then they're saying, that's so amazing for you and for me personally, that's one of the worst feelings. Cause you're basically just saying my standard, in a way, is lower. That can kind of hurt a relationship, too, sometimes.
[00:12:15] Speaker D: I compared myself so much in high school. Such a bubble of genius individuals, at least for me, I was like, I feel dumb. Like, I feel not as smart. I feel not as well rounded and capable and good as everyone.
[00:12:32] Speaker E: Like with my classmates, especially when people are sharing their grades that they got on a test, when they finally come out. If I get a better grade than someone, I don't want to be mean, but makes me feel a little bit better about myself. But if I get a lower grade, I don't really want to share like, that. Like, I did bad on the test when everyone else, like, did good.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: Let's recap. The top things that are driving student stress are number one, pressure from home. Number two, comparisons with other students, and a third one we just heard about is the smart ego, where a kid has been labeled by peers or family as smart, so their ego becomes dependent on maintaining that image. A fourth source of stress is the quote unquote all or nothing mindset, which is the fear that if they don't perform well on a singular test or assignment, their overall grade will tank. They won't get into a good college, they won't get a job, and Bob's their uncle. Their future's ruined. As you listen to these, you may think that one doesn't bother me, or that seems ridiculous, and you're right. Not each source of stress affects every teenager. Think of it like a Venn diagram where each overlapping circle is one of these pressures and the teen is in the middle. One circle may be bigger than another, but they all play a role. One giant circle that not only sets Gen Z apart, but every teen would agree is a major stressor is the pressure from social media.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, me personally, I go to social media just to, like, unwind. Even when procrastinating, I just do it to take my mind off the topic. And when I'm scrolling through social media and I see these, like. Like these videos saying, this student had this grades and this extracurriculars, and he didn't get into any of the Ivy leagues that he applied to, I'm like, okay, now it's just haunting me. Follow me around, and then the next swipe, it's saying, like, the SaT is ten days away and you are not prepared. I'm like, okay, I do not want to be worrying about the SAT right now. I just want to be unwinding. And I feel like this stress and this responsibility of colleges and grades is just, like, so overbearing to the point where it follows me everywhere. Even on TikTok, even on Instagram. Like, even in social media.
[00:14:44] Speaker C: I mostly use social media to turn my brain off and distract myself from anything else that's happening around me. Most of the time, that's school. And, you know, on my for you page or whatever that may be, sometimes I'll get these academic, like, whether they're ads, like, you know, you should take this quiz if you want to know what you want to do as a career, and. Or our tutors will help you get so good at all of these AP tests and whatever else, I've just gotten to the point where I'm, like, saying, don't show me any more of this content. Like, I don't want to see it.
[00:15:14] Speaker F: As someone who, honestly, for, like, all of high school, has spent a significant amount of time on social media. I spent a lot of time on Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. I got to a point towards the end of my junior year where I honestly have to take a break, but it also was kind of hard to do because I used those to stay in touch with my friends and kind of have fun with them.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: What you just heard is true for a lot of teens, where social media is a large source of stress, but our entire social life lives on platforms like TikTok or Snapchat. We live in an online world of terms like, quote, unquote, onread. Which means reading a message but choosing not to respond or on delivered, which means missing the message altogether. While millennials and Gen X might use random encounters and dating apps as a chance to meet someone new, teenagers instead use Snapchat or Instagram to add mutuals, which is like being introduced to a friend of a friend at a party. But instead of a party, it's their insta.
Parents might use life 360 to keep track of their kids whereabouts, but we use Statmap, which has a bobblehead avatar of each of our friends that pinpoints where they are and who they're hanging out with. Social media is our social life. So when it starts to become a source of stress and a large circle on the Venn diagram of teen stressors, we start to feel like there's no escape.
So how do these privileged but pressured teens escape?
[00:16:47] Speaker E: If I'm lying in bed and I just like, can't fall asleep and I'm thinking about too many things, I think writing them down helps.
[00:16:54] Speaker F: I get in my bed, I get like my favorite stuffed animals and I kind of just watch TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, or whatever.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: The first thing I do when I come home is I eat. I stress eat. There's like a tub of vanilla ice cream in the freezer, so I like to eat some vanilla ice cream.
[00:17:09] Speaker C: As much as I love vanilla ice cream, I find myself, whether I'm stressed or I'm struggling with something, whatever that may be, I procrastinate. My brain finds comfort in procrastination, and sometimes that means my, you know, scrolling for a while. Sometimes that means doing something completely unrelated, like, you know, spending two and a half hours at the gym.
It depends. Sometimes that means doing a daily homework task, but my brain likes to think about literally anything else.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: I'm pretty sure there isn't anything more frustrating for a parent than seeing their teen being unproductive and procrastinating. Parents and adults work hard to give their children all the things, a safe home, food security, and that can also include an opportunity to go to a high achieving, often private school. Adults get thrilled by hearing the words AP coursework or IB program or varsity sports team because they know what their teens are capable of, know what they can do, and are desperate to have them feel their potential. Yet according to a Robert Wood Johnson foundation report, a pressure cooker environment that pushes teens to excel was named a risk factor for poor mental health in teens. Specifically, a CDC survey of 4000 students found that almost half of high school students reported feeling persistently hopeless or other symptoms of depression, with over 20% of those students considering suicide and 9% making an attempt in the past year.
Where is the line between pushing too much and meeting potential? To help us navigate teen stress, we are turning to an expert.
Doctor Elizabeth Dexter Maza has a doctor in psychology and is a clinical therapist with a private practice that specializes in not just individual therapy with teens and young adults, but also in coaching parents in how to help their troubled teens. Doctor Dexter Maza has written countless book chapters and done research at the University of Washington and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Shes been featured on several podcasts including the therapy show and the social Work podcast and NPR. Shes here to help us make sense of this all and show us a healthy path with science based tips and tricks for teens, parents, teachers, really, anyone? So when tackling this broad topic, lets first better understand the word stress.
[00:19:26] Speaker G: Stress is such a generalized term and that's one of the things that your students talked about. Like everybody's stressed that it almost has no meaning, right? It's like when people ask me like how are things going? I'm like, oh, I'm so busy. I'm busy all the time. Sometimes that busyness causes stress and chaos, and sometimes it's just my everyday. We have to define more specifically what we're talking about. When I think about the way you compare Eustress and de stress, I think of what we call the Yerkes Dotson curve around anxiety, that there's a prime amount of anxiety. If you have too little anxiety, you're not motivated to do anything. If I have a big test coming up, but I'm not anxious about it at all, I don't need to bother studying. But if I have too much anxiety, then every time I look at my notes, my materials, or get ready to take the test, I freeze, I panic. We need to have that moderate amount of anxiety and that's what pushes us through. If we can identify it as anxiety, then we can come up with strategies to manage anxiety.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: When doctor Dexter Maza says Yerkes Dotson curve, she is talking about a bell shaped curve on a graph comparing productivity and stress study increases in stress can initially push you to succeed or get work done and therefore be helpful, but only up to a certain point. Thats the top of the curve. From there, higher levels of stress only lead to mental breakdowns and productivity falls. So some stress can keep you motivated, but too much does the opposite. We also heard doctor Dexter Mazza use the word anxiety instead of stress. Often when people use the word stress, theyre referring to the emotion that they feel. But stress isnt an emotion. They're really referring to a mixed bag of shame, guilt and anxiety. So in order to understand stress better, we need to know what exactly are these emotions?
[00:21:25] Speaker G: The way I think of guilt and shame is that guilt is the emotion you feel when you've done a behavior that goes against your own values, and shame is the emotion you feel when you've gone against the values of the community or the group and you're at risk of being judged or kicked out. When somebody was being bullied or teased in school and I didn't stand up for my friend, I feel guilty about that. Shame can be that I raised my hand in class to answer a question and I was so off base and everybody laughed at me. And now I don't want to raise my hand. I'm not going to participate anymore.
I worry that the picture that gets lost when you're at a high achieving school, when everybody's already at this very high level, that you're lesser than right, where you are all so academically percentile wise, so high above.
It's as if being in the 95th percentile, if you're at 96 versus 99, 96 is not good enough.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: Now that we've named our stress as guilt, shame, or anxiety, can we get rid of them? Can we eliminate these emotions from our lives?
[00:22:39] Speaker G: I never want kids to think like, oh, I've got all my anxiety go away. Like I tell people all the time, like, I actually get anxious doing public speaking. I'm able to speak in public and tolerate my anxiety. And that's what I want kids to be able to learn how to do, is how do I have my emotions and tolerate them and know how to regulate them up and down to help me be more effective in doing the things I want to do and reaching my goals.
I guess I moved away to looking at the function of your anxiety. If it gets so high that you get panicked, right, and you freeze, you can't do the work, and then that spirals into increased sadness, shame, depression, other emotions, that would be distress on that side of it. If it's manageable, that allows me to kind of keep my executive functioning, my prefrontal cortex online, and then you can figure out how to problem solve what is causing my anxiety. And that's what we're looking for is that kind of middle path level, that moderate amount of anxiety.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: Let's review. We named stress as anxiety, guilt, or shame. Some anxiety can be useful and motivate us to step up our game while too much anxiety can tip us over the edge. So anxiety is here to stay, but we need to manage it. Anxiety itself is not the problem. The issue is our behavior when we're anxious. Psychologist doctor Alison Yeager of Harvard Medical School explains it like every thought has a feeling. In this case, that feeling is anxiety.
Every feeling has an urge to act. And with anxiety, that urge can be to panic, to freeze. Or as we've heard our students talk about the urge to compare time and time again, teens are taught not to compare grades or test scores, yet we heard they just can't help themselves. What's fueling this?
[00:24:36] Speaker G: The very first question that came to my mind have they taught you how to not talk about it? Because it's an inherent urge to I get excited about my grade or I'm disappointed in my grade. How did I do in comparison? Because that's how we check the facts. Should I be anxious about this or nothing? As humans, we are relational people and we thrive and grow in connection with others. So I think there's this inherent urge to compare on how we're doing to motivate us to move forward. And the problem is that sometimes those comparisons become problematic and ineffective. And when I use this phrase and the terms effective and ineffective, I think of things that are effective are behaviors that help me, that are in line with my long term goals. Ineffective takes me further away from my goals. I actually think there's effective comparisons and ineffective comparisons, and it depends who you are and the situation. So for some kids, comparisons help build drive and motivation. If this person can do it, so can I. If they can get through this, so can I. And for others are it's how horrible of me, how I'm doing, because I'm not doing as well as that person. All people, especially teenagers, need to figure out are comparisons helpful for me in this situation? And if they make you feel worse, then I would say they're not effective. If they help to build your drive and motivation to get you to the place where you want to be, then use them.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: If some level of anxiety is part of our lives and comparisons are instinctual, then we need to use both of them to help us reach our goals. Healthy comparisons are a natural and effective way for teens to achieve the goal of defining who they are. Once they know who they are, a teens mindset changes because of their confidence in their identity. Then they don't need to compare anymore. This is how anxiety kept in check and healthy comparisons are used to be successful. Let's flash back to a high school alum who describes this well, I compared.
[00:26:53] Speaker D: Myself so much in high school, but when I went to college I realized, like, I didn't have to do all that. And I think there's just a security that comes later. That's really hard in high school to have, especially when you're comparing yourself constantly to a lot of people. But there's a security in ignoring that. We also talk about medical school. Like, instead of saying like, I'm smart, switching to that like, I'm hardworking, I'm resilient, I can't handle anything that's thrown at me. I can adapt easily.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: Thanks alum. Now that we've conquered comparisons, what about the mountain that is social media?
[00:27:33] Speaker G: I think social media back to that question. Similar with comparisons. Is it effective or ineffective going on social media when you need to unwind?
Is it a get you closer to the goal of unwinding or further away? If your for you page, because of the targeted algorithms, are only going to show you information about what you need to do to get better test scores to succeed more more likely to get into one of these top schools, I would say that is not effective for unwinding.
This is where I'm always thinking about kids have to step back and see what's helpful at one moment might not be helpful at another. And it's not all or nothing with social media either. And so being mindful and thoughtful about when I get on it and for how long, one of the skills we teach is about taking a brief vacation as a way of managing high emotion urges and behaviors. And the idea of taking a brief vacation is like just crawling into bed, pulling your blanket over your heads, just shutting out the world for a little while, maybe just totally zoning out on watch tv or something. But the key is that it has to be effective in line with your goal and it has to be time limited and well timed.
Right? Like, I'm not going to take a vacation when I'm 2 hours away from a major deadline on that, and I'm not going to take it for, you know, 6 hours, maybe 15 minutes. And so setting up all those parameters to use social media or other ways to unwind check out has to be time limited and well timed.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: We're hearing the words effective and ineffective again, because that's step one. If my goal is to relax and clear my mind, to keep my anxiety in check, is scrolling on TikTok going to bring me closer to that goal? If yes, then it's effective. And okay. If it is filled with reminders of SAT prep or college apps, then it isn't going to curb my anxiety and so it is not effective. Step two is to make sure it's time limited. I don't want to spend 2 hours doom scrolling because that's not going to keep me productive.
Step three, it needs to be well timed. Watching reels at the dinner table is going to irritate my dad and so he isn't going to want to help me with my algebra homework later. But sitting in the backseat of a bus ride home seems like the perfect time to go on social media.
Parents want to help. When they see their kids seemingly procrastinating, scrolling social media, they can ask their teens these three questions. Is it effective? Is it time limited? Is it well timed? Unfortunately, the generational gap between parents and their kids can make talking about stress a challenge.
Parents believe they understand their kids stressors because they also went to high school, had finals, tried out for the varsity team, but Gen Z lives in a completely different world that is half physical and half digital. Let's explore one of these generational differences for parents.
[00:30:55] Speaker G: Many of us didn't learn how to support and motivate in a way that's effective for today's teenager as compared to what it was like for us 30 years ago and what our parents did for us. Because what I went through as a teenager was very different from where it is now. But I think the biggest thing that is different is the time and speed. That is, I think, a big part from when I was in high school 30 years ago to what you all are struggling with now. When I was younger and I was in high school and I did not do everything perfectly and I made lots of mistakes, I had time on my side to figure out how I was going to manage whatever blunder I did if I did something on a Friday night out with friends, I had the entire weekend to sit with my shame or embarrassment or my worry, to regulate to figure out who knows what before I showed up in school on Monday morning to feel the backlash. But I was already regulated by the time I got there.
Now, I think it's really hard for you all. You make a mistake, you do something embarrassing and it is on social media within the hour.
My son broke his wrist over the weekend and I took him to the emergency room and while we were in the emergency room, somebody came in on a gurney from the paramedics and he was like, oh, that person's in my whatever class that I'm in. They were highly intoxicated. And at that same time, while we were in the ER. Like an hour later, he and I are looking on social media, and there's the video of that same person who's in the ER next to us on the ground with their name across it. And I was just horrified for that student. Right. It happened so fast.
[00:32:54] Speaker F: Even if it's not posting, just like texting your friends, information can spread within, like, an instant, whether it's positive or negative, whether it's this person got into this college, Orlando, I don't know. Like, anything could happen. Like, it can be spread to multiple people within like, a second. And that can be scary sometimes.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: Main differences between high schoolers in the eighties and nineties and teenagers now include exposure to the Internet that broadens their world at an earlier age, expectations of technology, and as Doctor Maza and our student described, the speed at which teens share their lives through social media. So how can parents recognize this and support their teens more effectively?
[00:33:43] Speaker G: We have to step back. And as parents use the same strategies, we're teaching them to tolerate our urges and our emotions, to tell them how to do things as if they were us, when they are different people.
And it's a fine line because I want to motivate them without nagging and increasing experience of shame and guilt and anxiety over it. The very first thing we as parents, I think, have to do in all of our interactions with our kids is validate them, validate their experience while tolerating our own distress, and not put our fears and worries of, if you fail this test, if you don't get this good grade, you're not going to make it into college, and you're going to live in my basement forever, right? Because I think that's where actually a lot of parents go. Like, they worry of that all or nothing. And then we wonder, why do our kids have these all or nothing worries as well? Because sometimes we pass those on, and so we have to slow ourselves down. So take a breath, ask yourself, what's the worst thing that could happen in this situation?
And how do I validate them for where they are now so I have a better understanding of what's going on for them at school, rather than making assumptions that they're lazy, they don't care, they're unmotivated?
[00:35:11] Speaker A: All right, parents, let's break it down. The doctor, Dexter Mazzaway. Step one is how you are talking to your teen right now. Effective or ineffective in motivating them. Are you sitting with your emotions, or are you passing on your own anxiety in the questions that you ask or the tone of your voice step two, is it time limited? Are you repeatedly asking your teens about the same topic? Are you spending more time on your worry than needed when the point was already made? And step three, are you well timed? Are you starting these conversations when they've just woken up or gotten off the school bus and they themselves need to decompress? To help us start off a conversation with our teens, let's hear an example of a validating and invalidating response from doctor Dexter Mazza.
[00:36:02] Speaker G: You might come home and say, like, oh, I am really worried about this upcoming test or this project. And an invalidating response that can inadvertently happen sometimes is when a parent or a teacher, another adult, says, there's nothing to worry about, you're doing fine in school. Like, you always figure it out. You always do well.
By trying to make you feel better, we can inadvertently invalidate you and miss that moment of connection and understanding. The validating is to essay like, whoa, it sounds like there's something big going on, and this is different. I hear you. School can be stressful. It's not always easy.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: It's easy to say do step one, two, and three. But when SAT scores come out and you have a grumpy teenager who just heard everyone else's scores and might be feeling both anxiety and shame, plus a charged parent who is now worried about college acceptances, sitting with our emotions or controlling the urge to react doesn't seem so easy anymore.
[00:37:04] Speaker G: You know, there's a phrase we use a lot in our house is the idea that there is a difference between knowledge and behavior. It's one thing to know what you could do or should do, and it's another thing to be able to do it. The other thing that I think is really helpful is effective distraction. Right? Because we're going to distract with other emotions. Or you can distract by pushing away, putting your thoughts up into a box in your head, or writing them down on a sheet of paper and putting them in the desk. And that's how do you replace the thoughts in your head? I tell kids all the time, the number one thing I tell them to do often is to count the ceiling tiles in their classroom. If they're having urges to put their headphones on or look at their screens in the classroom, distract, but with other thoughts. By counting the ceiling tiles. Maybe count the number of times the color blue or any random color shows up in the classroom. A way to manage some of that is go get your favorite candy and eat it as if it's the only piece available in the world right now. It's not get a bag of M and Ms and just eat them and be like, oh, wait, what happened to my M and M? It's eating one at a time with so much mindful awareness that it brings joy and does something nice for you in that moment.
[00:38:23] Speaker A: So effective distraction is a swap. You can be substituting a negative emotion like anxiety, guilt, or shame with a positive one like joy or humor by watching an episode of SpongeBob or a video of a baby platypus. Instead of exchanging emotions, you could also try to alter the thoughts leading up to those negative emotions. If I'm feeling anxiety in math class and my head is spinning with numbers and formulas, then counting ceiling tiles, or how many people in the class have crocs that day might halt my train of thought and replace it with new thoughts on a different track.
That all sounds pretty similar to procrastination, something our students talked a lot about.
[00:39:09] Speaker C: I find myself, whether I'm stressed or I'm struggling with something, whatever that may be, I procrastinate.
[00:39:16] Speaker F: I also do a lot of procrastination.
[00:39:18] Speaker E: I just procrastinate a lot in general.
[00:39:21] Speaker B: Sometimes when I'm really stressed out and I want to procrastinate, I watch a quick episode of South park. Or when I was younger, I'd watch SpongeBob.
[00:39:29] Speaker G: I love that. All right. I love that. They watch one episode of SpongeBob, right. That's distracting with other emotions. Right? They're going in, I'm feeling stressed. I'm going to go joy, I'm going to do laughter. I'm going to just shut everything off. I don't have to think and process and use critical thinking to watch SpongeBob in this moment. Absolutely. That's great. Time limited, so you can watch SpongeBob episode. You're not going to watch, you know, three, four, 5 hours of it.
[00:40:01] Speaker A: So effective distraction can be procrastination. That is effective, time limited and well timed. But what do we do when our brains are completely hijacked and our emotions are so overwhelming we just want to run away and hide?
[00:40:16] Speaker G: We have a set of strategies that we call the tip skills for how to bring down the intensity of your emotion quickly by changing your physiology. The tip stands for temperature intensive exercise and paced breathing. And so the temperature skill is about using our physiology to hack our parasympathetic nervous system and kick it in. And we do this by mimicking what's called the dive reflex, which is what happens when you fall into a cold body of water, your heart rate and your breathing slows down to preserve energy for you. But what you can do is if you get a bowl of cold water and you bend over and stick your face in it and hold your breath for up to 10 seconds, and then to come out, take a breath and do it for a total of 30 seconds, it will activate that parasympathetic nervous system for a few minutes, slow down your breathing, slow down your heart rate, decrease that intensity of panic and big emotion for a few minutes to help you re regulate. And I know not all students, especially in the middle of the school day, are going to put their face into a bowl of cold water after they've done, potentially their hair and makeup. Getting a cold ice pack can work almost as well. The other one that I love, it's called paced breathing. This one specifically is, again, to activate that parasympathetic nervous system, slow down your heart rate, slow down your breathing. And the way we do that is by making your exhale longer than your inhale for a few minutes. So it may be like you inhale for four and exhale for six or in for five out for seven. We also don't want it to be too short. We don't want it to be like in one out two or in two out three. That's too short.
[00:42:05] Speaker A: Hearing this, if parents want to help their teens during a crunch time like finals week, a survival kit might include a cold pack or have a frozen washcloth, some sour candies, like a sour patch kids or jolly ranchers maybe kitchen timer to keep the distraction time limited. We've heard some great ideas about what parents and teens can do. So the final piece is the environmental factor itself. The schools.
[00:42:33] Speaker G: I think it depends on the school, right? On what the school and the school community, not just the administrator and the teachers, but the whole school community. What are the expectations in what success looks like? Because like I said earlier, you are all already successful. That's how you got into your school. So how do we help keep us up here or move us together through this rather than feeling like we're pitted against each other?
[00:43:00] Speaker A: Many high achievement schools do recognize the importance of student well being and are trying to help. For example, you might see structural changes such as time carved out in student schedules, specifically for wellness and elimination of class Reich. This is also translated out of the classroom with community building events like Friday night football games, retreat days, and school musicals.
Despite this, in and out of school, there is still a permeating stress culture where students brag about the stress but hide their true overwhelming emotions. So as not to appear as if they can't keep up. How do we as a school move on from comparisons, respect the work and time put in and stop stress? Flexing?
[00:43:45] Speaker G: First and foremost, telling everybody how to relax the week before gives them knowledge.
If we're not practicing and using it regularly so that it's effective in the moment, they're not going to be able to do the behavior. I would hope that the teachers are modeling stress and difficulties and failure. Are we modeling vulnerability to the students? Can we say, like, ah, I'm just like really dysregulated right now or stressed out in the classroom? Can we all take a mindfulness break? Can we all do an activity to help bring us back to being centered? I think that is a really big piece in the school, is that we have to model it and then we have to teach it and practice it.
[00:44:31] Speaker A: Let's pull it all together. In the last few minutes of this episode, we've heard some initial thoughts from students past and present about stressors like grades, social media, and comparisons. Then we addressed those concerns with doctor Dexter Mazza by naming our stress as anxiety, guilt, or shame, and learn to identify when we're feeling those emotions and the urges associated with them, like the urge to compare.
From there, we heard about some key strategies to minimize those negative emotions, keeping in mind that those strategies are effective, time limited, and well timed. All of these solutions are amazing, but not every tip or trick will work for everyone. So what are some real ways teens might incorporate this into their lives? Let's bring it back to the students.
[00:45:20] Speaker C: I also resonate with the idea of effectivist distraction. Particularly, how can we distract ourselves in a way that's consistent with our goals? So I think my tendency to distract myself with more menial tasks fits into that sort of emotion swapping idea, I guess, because accomplishment while I'm avoiding another task does feel good. But I think while I'm actively avoiding that other task, I need to be mindful of how much time I'm spending on other activities. And I think I need to do better about time boxing myself in those activities because it seems like, I don't know, minutes and hours sort of like fritter away as I'm still doing these positive activities, but I'm losing time where I could be working on other things.
[00:46:05] Speaker F: I would say it normally starts. My procrastination starts by achieving all those goals. Like in my head I'm like, okay, I'll turn it off at this point. So on and so on. And then sometimes I do like listen to myself. Like, I'll keep it time limited and turn it off when I need, but then I'll continuously go back to doing it. Like every 30 minutes I'll go back and do the same thing to like de stress or whatever. So I guess it will help with that goal. But it comes to a point where it's no longer time limited, if that makes sense.
[00:46:40] Speaker C: So if I remember correctly, the three steps are, or the three questions that one should be asking themselves is, does this activity meet my goals? Am I time limiting it? And is it well timed?
Personally, I'm going to apply these guidelines, I think, to alter my existing procrastination techniques for sure. I think going forward I'm going to spend less time distracting myself with a screen and more time talking to people around me and moving. That's where I feel positive emotions.
And I found, I guess, and realized, thanks to this, to the earlier portion of this podcast, scrolling forever is not in alignment with my goals, and it isn't usually time limited and rarely well timed. So all in all, scrolling on my phone for me doesn't meet any of the criteria for effective distraction. But I do have other activities and things to do that do fit within that criteria.
[00:47:39] Speaker B: Earlier this morning, when I was doing my statistics homework and after every single question, I'd give myself a little bit of a brain break by going on Instagram. And it did meet all of those goals because it took me my mind off the math. And I also time limited it because I was only on there for like 30 seconds.
[00:47:57] Speaker C: I aligned myself with how she talked about not comparing ourselves to others and how we are always told not to compare ourselves to others. But we're never really given that direct instruction. Like, here's how you don't compare yourselves to others. I think students can sometimes have a difficult time differentiating between what what good comparison looks like and what unhealthy comparison looks like. So while you're teaching us how to not compare ourselves, like, what do forms of positive comparison look like?
[00:48:25] Speaker B: I totally agree that comparison is natural. However, I think the difference between when it's unhealthy and then when it could actually help you is how you interpret comparison and like, what you do afterwards. For example, if you get compared to someone who's way more decorated than you are, there are some people who would just take that and become really jealous and feel terrible about themselves and then kind of just like hole up, I guess. And then there could be like this one student who sees someone way more decorated than they are and they use that as inspiration to be even better than they actually are.
[00:48:56] Speaker D: I think in high school you should be figuring out how to study, how to make friendships, who you are, having your first relationship, learning how to socialize and talk to people and just doing all the things that like a high schooler should be learning how to do because you have so many years in college and all these other like times that you're gonna be stressing about school and how to study and getting good grades. But if you don't know how to talk to people and you don't know how to socialize and you haven't had all these like high school experiences, you're going to be missing out and you're going to have missed a lot of time.
[00:49:38] Speaker A: Hearing everything that teens and students, not just in high achievement schools but all over, are going through makes my heart hurt. Stress and within that, anxiety, shame and guilt are heavy weights that we all carry around. But those weights should never have to be shouldered alone. And hey, I get it. We're not always going to have sunny days. There will be times when those negative emotions will drag us down. But I hope that after listening to this episode, parents and teens alike have a better understanding of stress and how to manage it.
Thank you so much to our students and alum for sharing their thoughts and experiences and being brave enough to show some vulnerability on a topic that affects us all. Thank you so, so much to doctor Elizabeth Dexter Mazza of Mahsa Consulting, Doctor Megan Iyer of Seattle University and doctor Alison Yeager of Harvard Medical School for sharing with us your knowledge on stress and teens, and for helping us to break everything down and regulate our own emotions better. For some resources outside of school, try teenlink.org for a guide available in both English and Spanish. Another helpful website includes greatergood berkeley.edu filled with science based insights into multiple topics, including stress.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Spill the Tea, where we share real stories with real teens.
We hope you enjoy the music composed and performed by Varnika Zhamalmodka. This could not have been done without the support of chief editor Natalie Light, administrative support from Haruka Kuga, and our producer doctor Melissa Lee. The opinions expressed or views expressed do not necessarily reflect or represent those of the host. Such views are merely opinions expressed.
