Authors: Minun
Teenagers have a lot to be stressed about: we’ve got to go to school, study hard, do our homework, have extra-curricular activities, do chores, get and keep a job or volunteer. We have pressures to date, go out with friends and spend some time with our families.
With such a long to-do list, it seems like there’s no time to focus on something very important in our lives: ourselves.
We neglect taking care of ourselves and doing things that’ll make us happy because it’s not a high priority on our lists. Instead we’re pressured to not have time for ourselves. We’re deemed lazy for not doing “productive” things or for taking a nap when really that’s just what we want to do sometimes.
Lately I’ve noticed a growing trend on social media. Students will post arguing that they have it hard with so much to do and so little time to do it and that we are giving kids an added sense of anxiety and stress. Then people will argue against this and say that students are just being big babies. They think that students (“kids”, specifically if I were to quote them) have it easy and need to suck it up.
My response to that is: Was that supposed to be helpful?
Telling someone that their problem isn’t real is something that we would never do at ConnecTeen.
We would never tell you to suck it up. We understand that people feel stressed and it can have very negative impacts on their health, both mentally and physically if not taken care of properly. Instead, there are these “adults” who think that life is easy for teens and that teens are taking for granted how good life is. They’ll say that looking back, their troubles weren’t as big as they thought and that teens will see that eventually their problems are the same. But once again that doesn’t help us now, while we’re in those moments of stress.
It’s almost like being stuck in a hole, and having people walk by and say that once you’re out things will look great. What we want to do at ConnecTeen for you is to come down into the hole with you and try to help you find a way out together. Or maybe we’ll just chill in the hole with you and be there for you, because sometimes that’s the best you can do at that time.
We want to understand the situation you’re in, not judge it from a distance.
I find that this is seriously lacking in my everyday interactions and it seems that only a select few people really want to understand the stress that I’m under.
So what I’m really trying to say is that: we’re all going to be stressed, we all have the right to be stressed and we should be finding ways to help each other through this stress instead of telling each other that their problems aren’t real.
Feeling stressed? Talk to us.
