Everywhere you look, teenagers are making bad decisions. Whether it’s with drugs and alcohol, or taking to crime, or dropping out of school, or anything else that’s counterproductive to the normal teenage years; something must be going wrong with our youth, right? Well not so fast. Teenagers have always had stress and anxiety. This is a time when their bodies are changing, they’re going through puberty, they’re dealing with identity crises, they’re having to worry about sex and peer pressure, making good grades in school, fitting in, and all the other things that may seem like the whole world to them. It’s just that in the past, teens coping with stress used to take to sports or other activities that allowed them an outlet to deal with that stress. These days, kids are eating poor diets, they’re spending most of their time in front of the TV or video games, the schools are failing to stimulate them and many parents aren’t home as they’re out working and trying to support the families. What you’re left with is teens coping with stress who have no supervision and no outlets for their stress so they try to drown their sorrows in drugs and alcohol, they take to crime because they give into negative peer pressure and, generally, they just don’t care anymore to try and do good.

A Support System

Teens coping with stress need a support system. They need someone to turn to when they feel the weight of the world on their shoulders. If they’re getting picked on by a bully at school, they need to be able to voice that to someone so that it doesn’t seem as though the world is over. When that support system isn’t in place, teens coping with stress can oftentimes feel as though they need to take things into their own hands. That’s why you have school kids shooting bullies who abuse them instead of going to the authorities who may be able to stop such behavior. It’s our jobs as teachers, parents and adults to make sure we offer a support system to all teens coping with stress so that they know they have someone to turn to when things seem as though they’re all going horribly wrong.

Relating To Them

Think back to when you were a teenager. You felt as though your problems were unique. Nobody is going through this horrible thing you’re going through. Well, you couldn’t have been further from the truth. Many teens coping with stress are going through the same things we all went through as teens. We liked that girl who rejected our advances, we all got pimples, we all got teased for something and we all felt as though we didn’t fit in with this crowd or we all felt as though we were failing that course or we all felt as though our lives were over. Talk to your teenager and let them know you went through the same thing. Give them examples. By relating to teens, we can help them overcome their problems and not feel so stressed out. When they see you and how you turned out, despite going through the same things, they’ll be able to handle stress much better and they’ll be able to learn and take pleasure from their teenage years because it only comes along once.

There is nothing like embarking on that new step in your life. When you graduate from high school, starting college seems like a great adventure. A lot of people constantly tell you that college is going to be the best experience of your young life. But as soon as you step foot in college, you realize just how stressful the whole “best experience” can be!

Stress in college comes in many forms. You become essentially responsible for yourself: doing laundry, preparing your own meals, cleaning your own rooms. This is of course in addition to studying hard to achieve good grades. You also have to deal with peer pressure, dating predicaments and drinking situations. Coping with stress can prove to be a daunting task.

This Too Shall Pass

Coping with stress in college, just like any other stress coping mechanism, is seeing past the negativity of the moment and embracing the potential for good in it. Being on your own, doing those tasks while studying makes you a responsible person. As cliché as it sounds, stress in college prepares you for the real world. Every trying moment that you encounter in college is only temporary. Coping with stress in college is part of life, if you can hurdle over your stress, you will surely become a stronger and tougher person. Such that when you are absorbed by the workforce, you will be better equipped to face the challenges of your job.

It Never Hurts to Seek Help

Stress in college is an unavoidable situation. Students deal with stress differently. Some cope easily while others have a tougher time coping with stress. If you are one of these students who have a hard time coping with stress, you should not be ashamed to seek the help of others, especially your counselors. They are there for a reason: to counsel. If your grades are low or they are quickly dropping and you’re finding that you can’t even get out of bed in the mornings because your stomach is in knots, go see a counselor.

Colleges usually have counselors specifically to assist students in coping with stress in college. Colleges know that stress in college is unavoidable so they exhaust all avenues to help you. And the things they teach you are going to be invaluable lessons that you can carry with you so that you can deal with the stress of the real world.

You can easily make these four years the best of your life as long as you learn to take it one day at a time and you view stress in college as a learning experience rather than sign of the end of the world.