Does my Teen have Anxiety?
We are seeing Teen Anxiety at unprecedented rates these days. Why are teens anxious? How can we tell if our teen has anxiety? What can we do to support a teen with anxiety? These are the questions parents and teens are seeking answers to.
Learn more about Teen Anxiety and how you can help
Is your teen suffering from anxiety? What are they signs and symptoms of anxiety in teens? Is what your teen is thinking, feeling, and doing normal or is there something going on?
There are many reasons why teenagers are suffering from anxiety and more importantly, there are things we could and should be doing to support them.
Is it anxiety or is it normal?
Let’s be clear - some level of worry, concern and yes - anxiety - is a NORMAL part of being a teenager. Being stressed about exams, worrying about what your friends think, or feeling worried about fitting in and new experiences are all normal thoughts and feelings in the teen years.
Anxiety becomes a concern when it:
Feels constant or overwhelming
Interferes with school, sleep, friendships, or family life
Leads to avoidance (not going to school, social events, or activities)
Causes significant physical distress
What are the signs and symptoms of anxiety in teens?
Anxiety in teens doesn’t always look like worry alone. Many teens experience anxiety through their bodies or behavior rather than words.
Emotional & Behavioral Signs
Excessive worry or “worst-case scenario” thinking
Irritability, mood swings, or emotional outbursts
Avoidance of school, social situations, or activities
Perfectionism or intense fear of making mistakes
Withdrawal from friends or family
Physical Symptoms
Stomach aches, headaches, nausea
Rapid heart rate or shortness of breath
Trouble sleeping or frequent fatigue
Difficulty concentrating
Many parents are surprised to learn that anxiety often shows up as physical complaints, especially in teens who struggle to express emotions verbally.
Why is my teen anxious?
The reasons for teen anxiety can be a variety of biological, social, psychological, and environmental factors.
Common sources of anxiety include:
Academic stress
Normal Brain Development - our emotional brain dominates at this age - the thinking/reasoning brain takes longer to catch up. In fact, they say we don’t go fully into our thinking brain until age 35!
Hormones - the part hormones play is REAL. Everything is felt 200x more at these ages.
Social Pressure to Fit In - It’s all about finding your tribe in these years. The safety of parents in the younger years is now replaced with a need to fit in with and be accepted by our peers in the teen years. It’s biological - we are wired this way - don’t take it personal parents! Social issues contribute greatly to anxiety in the teen years (friendships, dating, peer acceptance, bullying,, and identity development).
Social Media. You were waiting for me to say this and you know I’m not wrong. Social media brings constant comparisons, fear of missing out, and online conflict/bullying. It is addictive and consuming and distracting.
Life transitions - Lots of change happens - new school, new friend groups, etc. Family and friend stress. Changing dynamics. We’re not in Kansas anymore!
What your teen needs to know: Anxiety is not a weakness — it’s their nervous system responding to perceived threat - too intensely and too often.
Questions Teens Are Asking Themselves About Anxiety:
Many teens quietly search for answers online before they ever talk to an adult. Common questions include:
“Is my anxiety real or am I just being dramatic?”
“Why do I panic over things that seem small to others?”
“How do I tell my parents I’m struggling?”
“Can therapy actually help me?”
It’s important for teens to know: your feelings are real, valid, and treatable. Anxiety doesn’t define who you are — and you don’t have to manage it alone.
How Can Parents Support an Anxious Teen?
Parents play a powerful role in helping teens feel safe and supported.
What Helps
Listen without minimizing: “That would be really upsetting to think or feel that way”. Rather than giving advice or minimizing your child’s concerns, empathize and validate what they’re feeling. Bonus points if you can share a story of a time you felt that way at their age.
Stay curious rather than critical: Ask open ended questions instead of jumping to solutions. Tell me more about that? What do you think about that? How did that make you feel?
Encourage coping skills: Breathing, grounding, routines, and balance.
Model calm responses: Teens take cues from adult nervous systems. If you get excited and upset, it will add to their anxiety. If your child is struggling, you may benefit from your own therapy to help you and your nervous system to keep calm and regulated so that you can better help theirs do the same. Think of the putting your own oxygen mask on first analogy.
What to Avoid
Saying “just don’t worry” or “it’s not a big deal” - it doesn’t feel good when someone tells you not to feel how you’re feeling. It feels dismissive and like you “don’t get it”.
Pushing avoidance or forcing exposure without support - telling someone to just suck it up or ignore their feelings isn’t the best advice and can exacerbate the anxiety. It adds pressure and fuel to the fire.
Assuming anxiety will simply pass on its own. - Acknowledging anxiety as a normal feeling and part of life and learning how to take care of oneself when feeling that way takes a lot of the fear around being anxious away. We can get anxious about being anxious and wondering if we will always feel this way. Rather than hoping it will go away or trying to dismiss it - we want to acknowledge it and take the fear out of it. We want to empower our teens to be able to self-soothe and handle the emotions they feel rather than avoid them. Many adults have not learned these skills. We can all benefit from learning distress tolerance and emotional regulation skills. It should be taught in schools.
When Should You Seek Professional Help?
It may be time to reach out for professional support if your teen’s anxiety:
Persists for weeks or months
Leads to school refusal or significant avoidance
Causes panic attacks or intense physical symptoms
Impacts mood, self-esteem, or relationships
Is paired with depression, self-harm thoughts, or substance use
Early support can prevent anxiety from becoming more entrenched over time.
How does Therapy Help Teens with Anxiety?
There are different types of therapy that are excellent for helping with anxiety.
CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy)
DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy)
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy
Therapy helps teens to:
Recognize and understand their anxious thinking patterns
Learn coping and grounding strategies
Build confidence and emotional regulation
Gradually face fears in a supported way
If you think your child might benefit from therapy, we encourage you to book a free consult call to learn more about the different types of therapy offered for teens with anxiety and how they can help.
Additional Support Available:
In addition to individual teen therapy, we also run a TEEN DBT Skills Training Group. This is a great complement to individual therapy. These groups are psycho-educational and teach teens how to use the skills of mindfulness, emotional regulation, distress tolerance and interpersonal effectiveness in their lives. These are LIFE SKILLS that aren’t taught in school but SHOULD BE.
Each week your teen will learn a new skill, how to use it and be assigned “homework” to practice the skill. When they meet the following week, the session will start with a mindfulness activity (to model that and ground them - mindfulness skills are very powerful for those with anxiety) and then they will share with each other how the skills worked for them and what they learned over the past week. They will then learn a new skill to use for the next week.
Past participants of our DBT Skills Groups have shared how helpful it is to have dedicated time and assigned homework to practice these skills. The accountability of having to discuss the homework at the next session really helps to keep everyone on track and actually USING and practicing these skills. The benefits are felt quickly and a feeling of mastery and competence over emotional well-being is really empowering. I can’t recommend these groups highly enough for your teen!
If you’re thinking that this sounds great and you’d like to participate also, you’re in luck. We also have ADULT DBT Skills groups. It is an added benefit if you are learning the same skills as your teen so that you can model and support the skills with them!
