The Stress Mess

“There aren’t enough hours in the day.” The distress call once attributed to overworked adults and frantic parents is now being sounded by teenagers everywhere. Just how stressed are today’s teens? And what’s stressing them out? A panel of teens gathered March 14 to talk about stress, and an excerpt of the discussion, moderated by Central Valley students Julie Kanago and Roxanne McPeck, is featured here today.

Julie Kanago: How do you define stress?

Brian Thorpe: I’d say that stress is probably the feeling that you’re in too deep and you can’t get out. It’s an overwhelming feeling that really pounds you into the ground. It bogs you down constantly.

Meghan Finley: Pretty much the quicksand effect.

Julie: Do you consider yourselves stressed?

Meghan: Stress is my middle name.

James Worhle: All of my friends are (stressed), like with schoolwork and stuff.

Brian: I think it really depends on who the person is. I know a lot of different people are so casual about stress and are very cool about everything. They just seem to go with the flow. They are like Teflon people — bullets just bounce right off them.

Alice Hale: Sometimes it takes a lot more to stress out different people.

Roxanne McPeck: Would you consider the teenage years as one of the most stressful times in a person’s life?

Alice: I think parents seem pretty stressed.

James: Yeah, with work and everything it would be harder than going to school.

Brian: I personally disagree. I think that school is actually probably one of the toughest times. Because you have your whole life ahead of you and if you mess it all up, you’re in trouble. So basically you have to keep your head above water. I think work is not as stressful simply because you know what you’re supposed to do. You have your guidelines. Whereas in school new things are constantly bombarding you.

Julie: What things cause you stress?

James: I think there’s a lot of stress that your parents put on you about getting good grades and stuff and achieving higher goals than what you’re achieving.

Brian: Women.

Meghan: School is definitely a big one. There are those stupid pressures before graduation where 60 things always pop up. “Oh yeah, by the way, when you graduate, you’ll need these 60 things” … “But my SAT’s are next week…” Roxanne: Would you say the majority of your stress comes from required activities? Things you didn’t choose for yourself?

Brian: Yes. If I choose something, usually it’s going to be fun and I enjoy doing it, such as drama or playing guitar. So I make time for that and for some reason everybody I know has the same problem. Things that you enjoy doing you can always find time for, but you never find time for the things that really need to be done.

Meghan: There are never enough hours in the day.

Julie: In all the things that cause you to have stress, is it mostly self-imposed or is it caused by others such as teachers and parents?

Alice: I think it’s all of those people put together. There are teachers, and then there are parents expecting you to do chores right when you get home from school.

Amber Lenhart: I’d say it’s society, because society says that you’re supposed to get a job and do your homework and grow up, and maybe that’s not what everybody wants to do. But you have to do it because that’s what everybody says you’re supposed to do. But it’s not always that easy.

James: I feel that parents and teachers expect you to do a certain level of work or standards and that you try to meet or beat those standards to get rid of the stress. It’s hard sometimes to meet those levels.

Roxanne: When you feel stressed how do you deal with it?

Meghan: I write. Pages and pages of utter nonsense. It all comes out. A lot of my friends get e-mails about absolutely nothing, but it really seems to help. Little obscure references to the fact that the toaster was too slow this morning, which means I was late to my first class. Just little things like that that didn’t seem important at the time, but when all the stress builds up that’s what I think of.

James: Personally, I like to get rid of my stress by hanging out with my friends, getting away from it all, going out and doing something. Not sitting at home.

Alice: When I’m with my friends, I feel like it helps relieve stress.

Amber: Sometimes when my friends come to me and say what’s making them stressed, it can make me stressed. Like when two of my friends are fighting, that can really stress me.

Roxanne: Is stress always a bad thing? Can it be a good thing?

Alice: I think it could be a good thing. Once I took more homework than I thought I could really handle, but I actually did it all and it helped get my grade up, and then I started doing that much homework regularly. It can help you achieve more or do whatever you want to do. Brian: I think stress really helps us perform better, or we’d all be sitting around like a bunch of lazy people. It adds that extra motivation to get your butt in gear and do things.

Meghan: I know as much as I complain about all the stress in my life, I actually enjoy it and give myself more than I can take simply because of the challenge.

Our Generation editor: How does stress manifest itself in you?

James: I get headaches a lot when I’m stressed, or I’m just in a really bad mood and it puts a lot of other people in bad moods, too. But mainly headaches.

Brian: I usually get really tired. I just feel an overwhelming urge to sleep. I don’t know if that’s my body’s natural signal to me to shut down or what.

Meghan: I usually collapse. Usually you’ll find me at a point where I’ve set out to do something and I’ll have something such as homework surrounding me and I’ve just fallen asleep. Or I will be somewhere and can’t remember what I was going to do next.

Julie: Would you say that teens are under more pressure now than when our parents were your age?

Brian: Yes.

James: I think the expectations are a lot higher. Society has really high standards.

Brian: I think there are more people to compete with now. Back then you didn’t really have to worry about getting into that huge college. All you needed to worry about was getting into a college. My dad came from a small town, so he didn’t really have to worry too much about making it into an Ivy League school. Nowadays, basically with globalization we have to worry about national things as well as global things.

Meghan: Around here you have to think about what if you can’t find a job in Spokane. If we want to stay here, what kind of job are we going to have to look for to compete in the job market? We could get a degree in something that’s obsolete in two years because of new technological advances. I don’t think our parents had to worry about that too much.

Julie: Is there a specific group that is susceptible to stress?

Brian: High achievers. Straight-A students. Great musicians. Anybody who is skilled in a particularly area that seems to be among the respected group of society. Basketball players, star athletes, etc.

Meghan: Anyone who they’ve labeled as: You have to be like this; you’re the honor student; you’re the one whose always done everything right your whole life. We expect so much from you; when are we going to hear from you again? What college are going to? What are your SAT scores, your ACT scores?

Brian: I think maybe people at the other end of the spectrum, too. Like the outcasts, the ones who don’t fit in and maybe feel that pressure to fit in. I think that alone has caused many incidents in history. If you look at any major war or conflict, it’s almost always caused by a group that’s an outcast. So they manage that stress in not exactly a positive way.

Our Generation editor: Do you think adults generally misunderstand what teenagers are stressed about?

James: Yes.

Our Generation editor: What do you think adults think you are stressed about.

Brian: Superficial items.

Amber: It’s not just adults sometimes that think you’re stressing about things that you’re not. Your peers might think, “Oh, she’s stressing out about her hair because it doesn’t look right,” or “That guy over there must be stressing because of his girlfriend.” But like we were talking about earlier, lots of our stress comes from school, homework and getting good grades and getting into a good college.

Brian: Actually now that I think about it, going back to the issue about whether parents think teenagers are mostly stressed about superficial items. If you think about what you are normally stressed about, they are mostly superficial and it’s almost humiliating to that fact. But I think our excuse is we’re trying to figure out how our life is going to run and how to make decisions. So even though some of the items we’re stressing about right now do seem superficial, later on in life they become the basis for ground-breaking decisions that will affect ourselves and our society.

Julie: What can society do to help relieve stress for teens?

James: Lower standards. That would probably be a bad thing, but it would help a little bit.

Brian: Give me something to alleviate my stress, and that’s the only thing society can do. I’m not an advocate of lowering school standards. I think that’s horrible.

Meghan: They can start teaching algebra earlier. So by the time we get to it in high school, we won’t be freaking out about it.

Amber: It probably wouldn’t be possible, but if society stopped judging people, it would probably cut down stress a lot.

James: I think that stress would be a lot lower if the world as a whole was slower paced. Like we’re really fast now - you do this and right when you’re done with that, you have to go do this. We should just slow down and take it day by day.

Brian: How about more hours in the day?

Meghan: I vote for that.

This sidebar appeared with the story: Read it all The full text can be found at http://ourgen.spokane.net. Speak out Next month, Our Generation will host a panel discussion on Teens and Religion. If you are interested in participating, please call Laura Crooks at 459-5456 or (800) 789-0029, extension 5456 before next Monday.