At this time last year, my high school senior daughter was working on college applications, dealing with schoolwork at a rigorous school, doing extra curricular activities, working a part time job, and having an active social life. It was such an exciting and such a stressful time for all of us, and now she is across the country in her freshman year at college.
As so many people on this site are now in that same position, I thought I would pass on what I was grateful to have learned at that time about stress and anxiety and the brain with the hope it can help someone else the way it helped me last fall, and conversely, helped her.
I thought I was assisting by frequently asking and talking about colleges, about deadlines and essays and applications. Although all teens and family situations are different, what I learned, is that for my teen at least, the white board, the “helpful” questions, comments and reminders were in fact, a great source of her stress and were actually contributing to her procrastination. When the brain reaches a critical level of stress accompanied by the attendant stress chemistry, it goes into flight, fight or freeze mode. The realization of this phenomenon helped explain some of our patterns at the time. What I was calling procrastination, was actually her brain shutting down when stress got too high. Sometimes reaching for Netflix or Instagram when she had lots of other work to do right then wasn’t her being unaware or uncaring of what she needed do, it was her going into flight mode.
Just getting this understanding (which I outlined in a very general way), was such a relief, and such an opportunity for us to change our interactions with the ultimate goal of reducing the stress in general so that her brain chemistry (and mine!) didn’t reach those critical levels, overload, and then go into shut down or fight mode.
I learned that for us, the first order of business was for me to find ways to address my own rising anxiety about the process and to be really clear about not passing it onto her. Those white boards were giving me relief, but adding to her load. All of my “help” was making her feel less competent and less able to handle the process, which is not at all what I wanted her to feel. If I could not trust her to handle filling out an application for an elite school, how on earth could she feel that I trusted her to be able to attend one?
It turns out she was more than capable of handling it all, once the stress was deescalated and she had some breathing room. Instead of focusing on college outcomes, we tried to switch the focus onto calming down and enjoying the process, which was easier said than done, but a great goal for us. My mantra become “notice what you choose to focus on”, which really helped give me some much needed perspective. I still use it!
Good luck to all immersed in the process. Carve out time for enjoying your child and this year. It goes very, very fast.