Stress needs a rebrand. When I was in health class as a teen, I distinctly remember my teacher saying she would rather her daughter smoke cigarettes than be chronically stressed. And she had a point—chronic stress and cigarettes both wreak havoc on our bodies.
But what if only talking about stress like Voldemort is doing very little for our teens? Maybe there’s a better conversation to be had—one that I could take a few pointers from too.
The Anxious Generation and How Our Talks on Mental Health and Stress Aren't Helping.
If you work with teens—or have them at home—I highly recommend reading The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. It offers great strategies for improving teen mental health, like:
Delaying phone use for kids
Increasing unsupervised free play, which helps teens build social skills and solve problems independently
But the thing that really stood out to me?
The surge in teen mental health issues.
Rates of depression, anxiety, and self-harm have more than doubled since 2010.
Some of this increase may be due to mental health being less taboo to talk about, but that doesn’t explain the 167% rise in suicide rates for girls and 91% for boys.
This is alarming! And what’s frustrating is that we talk about mental health more than ever, yet according to the data, it’s not improving. In some cases, it may even be getting worse. But Why?
What’s Missing in the Way We Teach Stress and Emotional Resilience For Teens?
When I took a closer look at the mental health resources available to students, I realized almost all of them focus on avoiding stress or teaching how to manage stress.
These are important, but something is missing.
We need to talk about emotional resilience—the ability to face stress, use it for growth, and turn it into motivation instead of something to fear.
Stress Isn’t Always the Enemy
Some of the things I’m most proud of in my life started out incredibly stressful. Going to college at 16 was stressful. Meeting new friends and talking to people I didn't know in a different state was stressful. Moving to another country was stressful X10. Even starting LifeFluent has been stressful. Yet, these experiences have been some of the most transformative moments of my life. They didn’t feel easy or effortless at first—or even most of the time.
If I had avoided stress or focused only on how to get rid of it while experiencing it, my life would look very different. Life with no stress might be me chilling in bed watching Netflix and ordering movie theater popcorn to my door. But hey, I'm not stressed, right?
Reframe Stress
When talking about stress and emotional resilience for teens, try pointing out how stress and excitement produce the exact same physiological response.
Sweaty hands
Increased heart rate
A spike in cortisol
Think about public speaking. It causes stress, but it also builds confidence, helps people develop their voices, and can create real opportunities.
Anything that helps us grow requires some level of discomfort—and that includes stress. So instead of talking about here's how to feel less stress maybe the conversation can change to, Here's how to transform stress into excitement. Which is basically another way of teaching the difference between Distress and Eustress.
How to Make a Stress Even Worse...
A fun activity I like to do is give my teens a scenario of someone experiencing stress. Like Nate, check it out...
Have teens explore worst-case scenarios that are fully in Nate's control. For example, he might try to manage his stress with alcohol or procrastinate by playing video games the whole time. Students will come up with endless terrible ways to handle his stress—some of which will be relatable to them. It’s fun and gets teens laughing but also realizing, Wait... I do this too sometimes. This is a great opportunity to talk to them about unhealthy coping strategies.
Game To Play In Class to Help Teens Learn About Stress
Don't just talk about stress—play a game that SHOWS teens what it means to build emotional resilience. I do this with a card game I made called Breaking Point.
Students are in groups of 3-5, and each starts with 3 stressor cards. Stressor cards represent different types of stress—both distress and eustress—and each card has a point value. More points = more stress.
The goal? Reach 10 stressor points—not zero. Notice that the game isn’t about getting rid of stress completely… because that’s unrealistic.
Each round, students pick up either: A stressor card to get closer to 10 points ot A coping skill card (which has negative points) to help relieve stress and also bring them closer to 10.
They play until the coping cards run out.
It’s a fun way to get teens thinking about stress management and also balancing the amount of stressors we take on. They start to see that taking on too many stressors (15+ points = breaking point) is overwhelming, but taking on too few (-5 points = no motivation) isn’t great either.
It’s super fun, gets students involved, and makes the stress convo way more hands-on!
Watch This Video For A Recap
hope you give some of these activities a try in your classroom! Here is the link if you want to try all these activities in your classroom!
Teach On
Katie
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