For teens with social anxiety, the high school years can feel particularly challenging.
Trying to cope with expectations, changing bodies, and meet their school demands places a lot of pressure on students. Fortunately, there are ways to fight social anxiety and enjoy being a teenager.
Successfully managing social anxiety doesn’t happen overnight. The first step is being willing to do something about it and not just accept it as reality.
Once your teen has made the commitment to overcome their social anxiety, these 7 tips to help them get there.
1. Remember You’re Not Alone
It’s easy for teens with social anxiety to feel like they are suffering by themselves. But the reality is there are a lot of people who have similar fears.
Feelings of anxiety are normal. It’s a natural response to fear and discomfort embedded in our DNA for as long as we’ve been here. In fact, more than half of Ontario’s youth has admitted to missing school because of anxiety disorder. And while there are many different reasons triggering this epidemic, struggling teens can take some comfort in knowing that they’re not alone.
The next time they encounter a tough social situation and feel those familiar anxieties creeping in, remind your teen that those feelings are natural and common. Other teens with social anxiety have conquered their fears, and they can too.
2. Practice Breathing Exercises
Stressful situations can affect breathing which, in turn, adds more stress and triggers a chain reaction of physical problems. Anxiety can lead to dizziness, lightheadedness, feeling disoriented, and even fainting. In fact, your teen’s social discomfort can easily become a medical issue.
For teens with social anxiety, it’s important to face fears head-on or there’s a strong risk of becoming adults with social anxiety.
Simple breathing exercises will help your child stay calm and reduce the anxiety they’re feeling at the moment. When stress creeps in, that’s the moment to pause, breathe, and get centered.
Encourage your teen to close her eyes and slowly take a deep breath. Count to 10 on the exhale and visualize all the tension evaporating with the breath.
Techniques like mindfulness meditation benefit those who prefer a guided meditation. In a few minutes, they’ll feel calmer and ready to handle whatever situation they’re facing.
3. Face Your Fears Head On
Avoiding a difficult situation isn’t always the best solution. Sometimes it’s not even an option at all.
Desensitization is a tactic many cognitive therapists have used with strong results. Teens with social anxiety learn coping tools by being exposed to difficult, triggering situations. Through repetition, with patience, the impact these triggers have can be greatly reduced.
Facing your fears head-on doesn’t mean that they go away completely. But it gives you a way to fight them and the confidence in knowing that you survived them before and can do it again.
4. Fight Negative Self-Talk
Help your teenager learn to check their interior monologue. The more they tell themselves that they aren’t good in social situations, the truer it will be.
There is a lot of power in the words we speak. And for teens with social anxiety, it can be natural to recall past experiences through a negative lens.
But there are documented medical benefits to positive thinking. People who regularly engage in being optimistic have lower stress and depression levels, healthier hearts, and longer lifespans.
Dwelling on the negative could literally be making people sick. If you want to help reduce social anxiety, it will take practice and diligence.
Be your teen’s biggest cheerleader. They may not be able to resist the urge to beat themselves up over something that didn’t quite work out. But you can champion them and help them develop an alternate self-image through positive reinforcement.
5. Encourage Your Teen to Find a Support Group
Being surrounded by allies and supporters will lower your teen’s social anxiety as much as possible. If the voices that have the greatest influence on you are supportive, you will be better equipped to drown out the negative ones that arise.
Be aware of who your child’s friends are. Encourage them to hang out with people who reinforce the positive things they like about themselves.
Help fight against non-supportive tendencies within their group and keep an eye out for if and when your teen is really struggling with feelings of isolation.
If they need someone to talk to who can listen without judgment, consider making an appointment with a therapist. They’ll be able to help them process their feelings in a safe space and give them tools to cope with anxiety.
A therapist can also help you support your teen better by providing you with a welcoming environment to share your own frustrations and fears.
Click here to learn more about our group for teens with social anxiety.
6. Embrace Discomfort
When you’re suffering from social anxiety, stepping into a new situation can feel like staring into the deep end of a pool. The temptation is to tiptoe into it and run back at the first sign of discomfort.
Sometimes it’s better to just jump right in. After the initial shock wears off, the water feels refreshing and your fear of being too cold is no longer relevant.
Your teen won’t be able to avoid every triggering situation, and there will be some initial discomfort. However, embracing it can help them recover quickly and realize that most of it was self-created.
Help your child get used to being uncomfortable and not being able to control everything around you. It’s important they learn to go with the flow. Know that you can’t protect them from every uncomfortable situation, but you can help them embrace it.
7. Practice Makes Perfect
The more often you expose yourself to a situation, the more routine it will become. Though your teen’s instinct may be to avoid social stress at all costs, resisting the urge to flee will make them stronger and better equipped for future stress.
Practicing their response to your triggers can help them feel more comfortable in the moment. Help your teen think through all the possible triggering scenarios they might face and formulate a game plan that ends in success.
It will build their tolerance to anxiety, much like a vaccine.
With practice, they’ll begin to realize that the worst of their fears are largely impractical and, even when things don’t go perfectly, it’s not the end of the world.
Hope for Teens with Social Anxiety
No one has to be a slave to social anxiety. Your teen can enjoy life to the fullest and connect with others if they practice these tips and give themselves permission to grow.
We’re here to support you however we can. From helpful tips on our blog to our well-trained team of caring therapists, our goal is to be there when you need us.
Read how our child psychologists team can help your child’s anxiety.
Additional Reading For Teens With Social Anxiety
Book An Appointment
If you are interested in therapy for social anxiety in Vaughan, Thornhill, Markham, or the GTA, please call 905.597.4404 or fill out the form below and you will be contacted within 24 business hours.
