5 Common Teen Anxieties & How Parents Can Help
From Awkward to Confident: Guiding Your Teen Through Common Fears
Have you ever noticed that teenagers have lots of anxieties? Groundbreaking news, right? Sometimes, it seems like being a teenager is a full-time job managing anxiety. Part of the journey into adulthood is learning to overcome these anxieties to become a healthy, well-adjusted grownup. Today we will look at five key fears that most teens struggle with and discuss how with a little parental guidance, your teen can manage these common fears.
1. Being Awkward
Nobody likes being in a socially awkward situation. However, in teens, this natural aversion is elevated into an anxiety-inducing fear. For most teens, having an awkward situation is the worst possible thing that can happen in any given circumstance, and teens will often do absolutely anything to avoid creating what they perceive to be an awkward situation.
This is understandable; nobody really enjoys social awkwardness, and such situations can be very unpleasant. Teenagers’ aversion to awkwardness can have negative consequences, however, leading them to avoid difficult conversations or put off tough but necessary decisions for fear of creating social awkwardness. Ultimately, we cannot structure our personal decisions around avoiding awkwardness. Life is messy, and there are inevitably going to be awkward situations that cannot be avoided—especially for adolescents, who are inherently awkward people. If we are too afraid of uncomfortable situations, we may miss out on some really great things that can come out of them.
It is, therefore, important to help teens understand that they need not be afraid of doing or saying something awkward. Honestly, the more they step out in this way, the less unpleasant the awkwardness becomes. Awkwardness isn’t a bad thing; it’s just unpleasant when we are too self-conscious.
2. Hurting Peoples’ Feelings
It’s absolutely a good and praiseworthy thing to be concerned about how we make people feel through our words and actions. As far as it depends on us, we should always strive to be considerate and thoughtful people, especially about the feelings of others. Despite our best intentions, however, there will always be situations in life where we need to hurt people’s feelings, either because we disagree about something important, or can’t fulfill someone’s expectations, or we have to be honest about a painful truth, or need to put someone out of our life, or because there is a fundamental conflict that just “being nice” won’t resolve. There are so many reasons people’s feelings can get hurt!
This is important to understand, as many teens equate hurting someone’s feelings with “being bad.” The truth, however, is that sometimes, despite our best efforts, we are going to have to hurt people’s feelings in life. This isn’t a bad thing, and it doesn’t make one a bad person. In fact, it is unavoidable in certain circumstances.
3. Advocating for Themselves
Advocating for oneself means speaking up on your own behalf. Most of us don’t want to be troublesome people. Generally, it’s a good idea not always to complain about everything. However, one behavior I constantly see among teenagers is a reluctance to advocate for themselves in situations where they really need to.
When something is wrong, it sometimes feels easier and safer to just brood on it privately (or maybe blow off steam online amongst friends) rather than stand up for oneself. This is especially the case when adults are involved, as many teenagers are petrified, terrified of advocating for themselves or speaking up before adults, sometimes to the point that essential issues go unaddressed. I have personally had situations in my teaching career where I accidentally gave a teen a poor grade they did not deserve, and the teen said nothing to me. When I caught the mistake later and asked why they didn’t say anything, they often said they “didn’t want to be a bother.”
Teenagers need to understand that advocating for themselves before adults is not a bad or troubling thing. It doesn’t make one look bad (in fact, it often reflects well because it demonstrates initiative and a sense of justice). It may also be the only way we boneheaded adults have to understand what you truly need.
4. Disappointing People
It’s common not to want to disappoint people, especially loved ones. Heck, I feel this myself all the time and put a lot of burdens on myself because of it. However, as was said above relating to hurting people’s feelings, we will inevitably disappoint people from time to time. Plenty of people in our lives have many expectations of us. Expectations and reality will simply not always line up. Disappointment will occur, even with the best of intentions. Teens will attribute a moral value to disappointing people, as if disappointing people means we ourselves are failures. That’s not at all the case. Even Jesus Christ disappointed people!
Disappointment isn’t necessarily related to failure but more from misaligned expectations— that is, a situation not playing out the way somebody else wished it would have. It’s not a reflection of your character. It is just a reality of living in a society with many people wanting many different things. So, help your teenager understand that they shouldn’t be afraid to disappoint people sometimes. It’s really okay. After all, living with disappointment is part of life.
5. Looking “Stupid”
Kids are often far more intelligent, creative, interesting, ambitious, loving, thoughtful, and talented than they let on. Still, they will often keep things to themselves because they fear that putting themselves out there might “look stupid.” In my teaching career, I frequently deal with students who have fantastic insights or questions but are afraid to speak them because they don’t want to “look stupid.” This is unfortunate, as teens are capable of truly wonderful things when they are not afraid to show their talents.
The teen fear of “looking stupid” is generally a reflection of their own self-consciousness about… well, just being an awkward teen or appearing vulnerable (such as when asking a question because they don’t know something). Teens should be reassured that they will never look stupid for discussing their interests, seeking information, or sharing insights. If anything, it will make them more interesting people that others will want to know. Sure, we all make mistakes. Sure, we will all look dumb in public now and then. But I think we forget that people have their own busy lives and things they are focused on. They will not spend their whole day thinking about someone else’s mistakes.
Encouragement to Step Out
These fears are all common to human beings. They can never be entirely done away with, especially in teenagers working through that transitional phase between childhood and adulthood. That being said, there’s no reason your teen has to let these fears dominate their decision-making. With parental encouragement and a little courage, your teen can step out and learn to act with greater confidence.
If you’d like to continue the discussion and share your thoughts on this or other topics, I invite you to join me and other parents at our Homeschool Connections Community or our Facebook group.
