It’s August. That time of year is here again. You may be looking forward to the routine and steadiness of the school year, but you may also be dreading the same battles with your teen that come at the end of every summer.
When avoidance, emotional outbursts, preoccupation, fear, and overall dysregulation are an annual part of your family’s back-to-school reality, you know your teen needs help. They need the kind of help that will support them to manage their emotions and increase their resilience in the face of school anxiety. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT-A) for teens at Suffolk DBT can provide that support.
What can cause school anxiety for teens?
Teens are facing a lot of pressure these days. Pressure at home to succeed (and behave), pressure in school to perform well, pressure to ace standardized tests, social pressure to fit in and to make friends, and the pressure to consider their future in an increasingly uncertain world is hard on a teen.
School can be a minefield of “what Ifs” and “why aren’t you…” questions that can keep a teen stuck in a high-stress, fight-or-flight mode that leads them to chronic, disruptive anxiety. This can be particularly hard for teens who are emotionally sensitive, neurodivergent, or dealing with an additional mental health challenge like BPD, depression, or an eating disorder.
This chronic anxiety can lead to emotional, behavioral, and interpersonal dysregulation for your teen. It can cause fights at home and with friends. It can discourage them from trying in class, it adds stress to schoolwork and the classroom environment, and it keeps them from embracing social opportunities.
Your teen needs the social and learning environment of school to grow into a well-rounded young adult capable of facing life, even when it’s difficult. And you, as a parent, need to know how to help your teen while encouraging their independence. DBT-A’s distress tolerance skills can help you and your teen to fully participate in school AND make it through even their most anxious moments.
How can DBT distress tolerance skills help teens stay regulated in school?
How can DBT distress tolerance skills help teens stay regulated in school?The goal of distress tolerance in DBT is to help your teen make it through stressful, anxiety-inducing situations. When they feel that familiar anxiety creeping up, and their emotional dysregulation is pushing them to avoid, shut down, or blow up, they can reach for distress tolerance skills to make it through these emotional challenges.
Alternate rebellion
This is an especially useful distress tolerance skill for teens; as part of their growing independence, teens often look for opportunities to assert themselves and be contrary, to give them a sense of control. Often, school refusal and other acts of avoidance are an attempt to feel in control.
To help your teen cope with school anxiety and academic avoidance, help them choose activities that feel rebellious, but aren’t damaging to themselves, their environment, their future, or others.
- Instead of refusing to attend school, your teen could attend school in clothes of their choosing (that don’t break dress code), or dye and cut their hair in an edgy style, so they feel more like themselves.
- Instead of clamming up and staying silent in class, your teen could speak up and get involved in school, trying to change things to better accommodate students like them.
- Instead of avoiding homework, your teen could do their assignments out of order, on colorful paper, or with weird fonts.
ACCEPTS
School is full of anxiety-inducing, potentially embarrassing moments for emotionally sensitive teens, and no matter how well they manage their school anxiety, they will go through some distressing moments.
The ACCEPTS skill helps teens make it through these tough moments without lashing out or shutting down. It gives them things to focus on so they can manage their thoughts and behaviors and make it through intense emotional distress, giving them confidence as they face the prospect of school.
ACCEPTS includes:
- Activities
- Contributions
- Comparisons
- Emotions
- Pushing away
- Thoughts
- Sensations
Self-Soothe
When your teen is overwhelmed with anxious emotion, it’s not always easy for them to redirect their thoughts to the present moment, so the dread and fear of anxiety can feel like it’s all there is to focus on.
Self-soothing helps your teen to use their senses to ground themselves in the present moment, using sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing to reduce their distress by focusing on sensory experiences. Make a list of sensory experiences your teen can reach for when distressed, and put together a little “self-soothe” kit to keep with them at school to help when their school anxiety spikes.
Self-soothe can include:
- Sight: Look at beautiful photos of nature, architecture, or art, or images of things your teen enjoys. Even just looking out the window and noticing the view can help.
- Sound: Calming music or soothing sounds like waves, birds, or wind can reduce your teen’s distress.
- Taste: Chewing gum, sour candy, a favorite tea or coffee, or a favorite lunch can help calm anxiety.
- Smell: Favorite perfumes, colognes, or fragrances can help comfort your teen.
- Touch: Fidget toys, soft fabrics, craft projects, or even just focusing on the textures of your teen’s clothes, desk, backpack, etc. can refocus their attention.
Comprehensive DBT-A therapy at Suffolk DBT can help your teen navigate school anxiety
Dialectical behavior therapy for adolescents (DBT-A) combines distress tolerance skills with mindfulness, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness skills to provide your teen with a well-rounded set of tools to manage their anxiety.
Confidential individual therapy can help them understand what they’re feeling and what to do about it, and DBT skills group therapy can help them practice their new life skills before they try them out in everyday life. They’ll also have access to on-call therapist support between sessions, to coach them through crises, reminding them how DBT distress tolerance skills can help them get through this difficult moment.
As parents, you’ll learn DBT skills alongside your teen as part of their DBT-A therapy in DBT skills groups. Learning DBT can help you support their therapy success by integrating DBT skills like ACCEPTS and Self-Soothe into your household routines and your parenting approach.
At Suffolk DBT, our expert therapists will help you and your teen start to work as a team to help manage your teen’s school anxiety. To get started on tackling school anxiety for your teen, contact us to schedule a free consultation today!
Frequently Asked Questions about School Anxiety in Teens
Do all teens with school anxiety act the same way?
School anxiety doesn’t show up in the same way for all teens. Teens who seem like total opposites, like the kids who skip class and don’t bother to do homework, and the class president who spends hours meticulously studying and working on their appearance, can both be showing signs of school anxiety.
Your teen might be the kind of kid to shut down and act like they don’t care about school, grades, friends, any of it. They ignore you when you ask about school, they don’t participate in class, they conveniently “lose” their homework, and you’re worried they’re falling behind.
Alternately, your teen may be the kind of kid to stress out about school so much their stomach hurts most of the time, they’re preoccupied with grades, their emotions seem out of control, and they seem frantic and restless.
Both of these kinds of teens, and many others who present with different symptoms, are trying to ease the symptoms of school anxiety the best way they know how.
What can school anxiety look like for teens?
School anxiety for teens can look like:
- Constantly worrying about school
- Becoming extremely distressed when something doesn’t go the way they expected at school
- Avoiding class, homework, friends, extracurriculars, and even refusing school altogether
- Mood swings, irritability
- Refusing to go to school at all
- Shutting down emotionally when at school or thinking about school
- Making a big deal out of something that didn’t used to bother them much
- Lashing out at others, especially about school topics
- Struggling to concentrate, make decisions, or sit still, even when they’re doing something they’d usually enjoy
- Sleep disruptions; staying up late, or sleeping excessively
- Stomachaches, headaches, joint pain
As a parent, it’s important to look for signs that your teen is struggling to cope with the pressures of school. Good grades aren’t necessarily a sign of good mental health, and your teen is much more likely to sustain their success if they know how to manage their school anxiety.