studies, our experiences of working with young people, and the experiences of young people like Phoebe and what they have found most helpful. You will probably find some of the approaches helpful and others not so much; we think that’s OK as what works best for one person might not work so well for the next. It is also important to remember that we need different strategies at different times, so keep an open mind. We hope that you can try out some of these ideas and put together your own personalised Survival Plan (see Chapter 13), which you can share with people whom you are close to, to help you feel in control of your anxiety and able to face anything.
Understanding Where
My Anxiety Comes From
If you are really struggling with your anxiety, you might be thinking, “Why me?!” When we look around at our friends, teachers and even our families, it might seem like we are the only ones who are struggling with these feelings of fear or nervousness, and the only people whose lives are limited by them. We know from research that you are definitely not alone. Anxiety affects the lives of many people each year, both young and old – so why does it often feel so isolating?
In many modern cultures we teach our children not to show weaknesses or sore spots to others. Lots of us have learned from school, or from our parents, that when we feel negative emotions such as anxiety or sadness, we should hide it and “put on a brave face” so that we don’t “look like a baby” and are seen to be “acting our age”. We learn that it is OK to show fear when we are little, but we are taught that this is something that is not acceptable to show to other people when we are grown up. In many cultures this is particularly true for boys and young men, but we can all feel the pressure to be seen to be coping, or even thriving, all of the time. Now that everyone uses social media to represent their lives to others, there is even more pressure to be seen to be successful and happy all the time.
Sometimes it is helpful to use a brave face to get through difficult or scary situations, as we learn from this experience that actually it isn’t as bad as we thought and we can manage the anxiety more easily than we had anticipated; this is called “Fake it ‘till you make it”. However, sometimes, when we feel that it is unacceptable to show a part of ourselves or our true feelings to others, we then hide our fears. We end up feeling totally alone with these awful feelings and then they often get a greater grip on us and the choices that we make in the future.
There are lots of reasons why you might be feeling more anxious than the people around you at this point in your life (although it is important to remember that other people might just be better at hiding their fears!).
WHAT CONTRIBUTES TO WHY YOUNG PEOPLE SUFFER WITH ANXIETY?
Biology
We know that some babies are more sensitive than others and have different responses to new sensations and experiences. Psychologists would say these babies have an “anxious temperament” as they are more easily upset than other babies at something new and then take a bit longer to calm down. We know that some of the differences in babies is due to the combination of genes that they inherited from their parents. Some come from the environment in the mother’s womb and yet more come from the early environment once the baby is born and how this affects the genes. It is most definitely complicated and we won’t go on about it too much. The environment and people around you when you are a baby affect the way that your brain biology develops, which affects your bodily sensations and how you interpret new things that happen in the world. No one gene or factor decides whether we will be more anxious than others or not. It depends how lots of things come together to impact the complex person who is unique you. It just seems that some inherited genes make you more sensitive to new things, and make anxious bodily responses more likely. These things can put someone at greater risk for problem anxiety.
Biology does not explain everything; it might be that you did well in the gene lottery, but life has simply thrown more stresses at you than you have ways or resources to cope with. If you are usually a calm and easy-going person who rarely experiences anxiety, you can still experience times of high stress and your threat brain then quickly becomes more active and sensitive. Everyone has times in their life when they feel like they are “going under” and this is OK. It’s OK to not be OK. If you are used to being a “coper”, then these stressful times, and feeling that you are not managing, can be a big shock and make you question some of your ideas about yourself. This challenge to how you think about yourself can be even more unsettling and stressful.
We know that we cannot do much to change the genes that we inherited; however, we like to remind ourselves and the young people whom we work with that the genes that make us more prone to anxiety can also be a good thing. Being sensitive and responsive are great qualities that have many benefits for you and those close to you; it just means that you might have to take more time to learn about and understand your bodily sensations and your thoughts, so you can find ways to manage them effectively and feel more in control.
Early experiences
Although we often don’t remember the things that happen to us when we are very little, they can still have important and lasting effects on our brains and how we feel about ourselves, others and the world around us. We know that if life was tough for us and our parents when we were babies, this can have a lasting impact on how we grow and develop. Just like our genes, we can’t do much to change this; however, it can be extremely important to acknowledge that even if it feels as though our fears and worries “come from nowhere”, they do come from our experience, even if we don’t remember it. Usually difficulties with anxiety can be understood by looking at our current environment and/or the difficult things that happened when we were little. If things were hard when we were little, this can have an impact on important relationships, like those with our parents or caregivers. It can make it hard to trust others, which means when life gets stressful it is hard to reach out. We know from research that the best way for people to manage stress is to have a trusted person close to them.
You might not know much about your early life and maybe you don’t wish to right now. It can be hard to think about difficult times and it’s not always necessary to understand exactly why we feel the way we do to find effective ways to manage anxiety. However, if you are finding it very hard to trust others and this has always been a problem for you, it might be worth talking to a professional about these issues to try to build your trust and ability to relate to other people so that they can help you when times are tough. There are lots of people who might be or become your trusted other or adult. It might be a parent or carer, or it could be a teacher or school counsellor. Many people will have an aunt, uncle or sibling whom they feel more able to turn to for comfort and