STRESS ANXIETY & DEPRESSION …

Three COMPLETELY NORMAL emotions for tween and teen girls (and EVERYONE) especially during COVID times! 

I am not a therapist, I am a confidence coach. 

The purpose of this article is to give girls accurate understanding of the differences between these three things, and a quick tip for how to help manage each of them. 

STRESS

Stress has to do with tension or pressure that you feel about a specific situation. Many people have stress when it comes to tests, but any isolated circumstance or life situation can cause stress (pressure or tension) in your life as you figure out how to deal with it.  

DEAL WITH STRESS by …

Journaling! Get out your journal, set a timer for five minutes, and just write down all the things you are thinking and feeling about this specific situation. 

All of them. 

When the timer goes off, stop. Look at what you’ve written. And then come up with three or four action items to help alleviate the pressure or the tension. 

STRESS EXAMPLE

If you are looking forward to a big audition for the school play. Write down why it is giving you stress. Then write three action items you can do. 1. You can rehearse more. 2. You can ask someone to help you. 3. You can get more curious and find out exactly how the audition is going to be conducted so that you feel very prepared going in. 

Now you have an action plan which helps alleviate some of the stress that is specific to that situation. 

ANXIETY

Anxiety differs from stress, although it is still completely normal. Anxious feelings or anxiety is a more persistent and generalized type of stress. Anxiety usually has to do with something that’s happening in the future that we feel uneasy about because we don’t know how it’s going to turn out. Often when we have anxious feelings, we’re actually not even sure exactly what we are anxious about. Anxious feelings can be more pervasive – touching every part of our lives. If we have multiple stressful situations, that can make us feel anxious. Again, this is very normal, very common. 

DEAL with EVERYDAY ANXIETY by …

When you are anxious, the best thing you can do is get with a trusted person. If you are a teen or a tween, I recommend getting with an adult, either a parent, mentor, or therapist and talk through these feelings. The trusted adults have so much more perspective to help you identify your anxious feelings and pull apart where they’re coming from. When you do this  the goal is to transition anxiety into low level stress that you can develop action plans for. 

DEPRESSION

Depression is feelings of sadness, it’s feeling really down, sometimes even hopelessness. Similar to anxiety, we don’t always know exactly why we feel down or why we feel sad. But it happens to all of us at some point or another.  And I cannot stress this enough – you.are.normal. When you get into that place where you just don’t feel good, you just don’t feel like yourself, and you’re not sure why… it’s different than anxiety. SIDENOTE: Anxiety and depression often go hand in hand even though they are not the same thing. 

DEAL with EVERYDAY DEPRESSION by … 

Grab that journal again and make a list of 10 things that you love, that make you feel better, happy, secure, and safe. The next step is to ACT on two or three of those items. Sometimes not all of them are going to be things that you’re able to do immediately. 

HOW I DEAL WITH EVERYDAY DEPRESSION…

Right now, I would love to be able to go to the mall, hang out with friends and just blow off some steam. But it doesn’t feel really safe during COVID. So I need to do some of my other backup items for self care, like taking a long, hot shower or listening to an audiobook by myself in my room.Those are some of the things that I like to do when I’m feeling down or when I’m feeling like I’m not exactly myself. These self care-activities almost always make me feel a little bit better. (This is why we make a list of TEN things, at least one of them we can hopefully do right away.)

WHAT’S NEXT…

Once you have made your list and you’ve started to take a little bit of action on those depressive feelings, the next step is to take action by talking to someone. (Just like with the anxiety.) Trusted mentors, parents and sometimes medical professionals can really help you determine if you are depressed or anxious. The goal is to demote the more severe feelings  to regular old stress, and then make the action plan to help alleviate the stress. 

DISCLAIMER…

To be clear, I am not a therapist, I am not a medical professional. 

What I am, is a normal woman who went through a fairly normal childhood, tween, teen, and college years. Like most of the population, I have dealt with all of these things. 

I have dealt with stress, feelings of anxiety, and feelings of depression.

I have never been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or a depression disorder. 

The advice that I’m giving is not for diagnosed anxiety disorders or depression disorders. If you have any indication that the type of anxiety or depression that you’re feeling is on a larger scale that needs treatment, you should talk to a therapist, or other medical professional and get help. 

When you enroll the help of a trusted adult. They can give you accurate feedback as to whether you need medical attention, so please listen to them. Please take their advice. 

This article is intended to help you determine the difference between stress, anxiety & depression. As well as to give you ideas on how to move forward in the midst of those feelings. The earlier you get curious about how you’re feeling and get started on an action plan, the faster you can get back to feeling like yourself.

When you feel comfortable and confident in your own skin you can then choose the thoughts that are positive, grateful, and life-giving. Which enables you to create a life that you love, that you want to live, that you’re excited to live. And then… you can go out and change the world in the way that only you can.