Welcome to today's episode of the Socially Motivated Podcast. I am your host, Jake Walker. I want to personally thank you for tuning in to this podcast. This podcast is a motivational and self improvement podcast to help you step out of your comfort zone. In each episode, we discuss different topics on how changing your daily mindset can help improve your mental health.
Are you well known for being that shy, quiet, awkward person? If you suffer from depression, anxiety disorders, or being an introvert and you want to find ways to overcome those conditions, well, I was in the same situation as you not long ago and I'm here now to help share my advice and self experiences on my journey to overcoming those invisible barriers.
Let's break you out of your comfort zone and get you to be more motivated to face all the social interactions we must face on a daily basis. So let's get started. On today's episode, we are exclusively going to be discussing the 101 on controlling your anxiety during high school. With back to school season starting back up, I wanted to create an episode tailored around making a starter guide on getting you mentally prepared for the back to school season.
We're going to start off by going over a closer look at anxiety in high school teenagers. Anxiety disorder affects about 12% of adolescents between the ages of 13 to 18 year olds. Only about 16% of teenagers who experience Anxiety related conditions receive the necessary help they need. As teens grow and develop, they begin to experience the troubles of life.
Worries like, what will I, will I ever make the basketball team or cheer squad? Or when should I start dating? Or what should I do once I graduate high school? All of these questions and what ifs start to pile up during your time in high school. It is a completely normal For everyone to have these type of worries from time to time in their life.
For teenagers, this is the start of what is to come, aka the rookie of adulthood. Anxiety in high school teens can lead to a number of problems. Anxiety can cause lifelong issues. It can be detrimental to academics or social progress in a teen's life, causing him or her to miss out on learning how to relate to others, key important subjects in school, and other important milestones that happen during this stage of life.
Now, the biggest thing that holds teenagers back is the ability to ask for help. Like the most of us listening during this stage of life think they have a full grasp and control of anything and everything the world will throw at them. And boy are they about to be in a full rude awakening later on in life.
That should give you a good starting point of what teenage anxiety really is. Now, let me start by discussing exclusively about the starting point of teenage anxiety, which typically starts freshman year of high school. You are about 13 to 14 years old at this point. Everything starts to come into motion, you are going through puberty, your body is changing, and you are about to experience a new school, new surroundings, different teachers, more advanced subjects, extracurricular activities, and more.
You probably heard stories of what high school is going to be like, you might watch a day in a life on YouTube, you probably have different You know, different types of feelings and emotions, like being excited about new experiences or being nervous about the unknown on the journey you are about to embark on.
Now, for how to control your anxiety during your freshman year, varies for everyone, especially for males and females, but I'll try to give you a few pointers that should work for just about everyone. Understanding the concept that everyone deals with anxiety in their life. If you are an extrovert or if you're an extrovert, everyone faces anxiety at some point in their life.
So understanding that you are not alone is really a good starting point for addressing and controlling anxiety. When someone feels like anxiety is controlling them, typically means they are scared of failure, scared to embarrass themselves in some type of way. or not having any sort of control over a certain situation.
So the biggest advice that I can give to, say, an incoming freshman is, for you to be able to control your anxiety, having the ability to stay organized and plan accordingly can make things a lot less stressful. Now, for example, If you are the type of person that fears that you won't be able to make friends during your time in high school, some key advice is to start off small.
If you find a few classmates with whom you might share a similar class schedule, trying to, try talking to them to see if you have any common interest or have, Any good personality skills that you might like to be around. The biggest mistake that many people make when you are starting high school is you want to be liked by Anyone to everyone.
And you want to fit in no matter what the circumstance is. This is when anxiety can really kick start off and really, you know, spiral you out of control to the point where it's going to be very difficult to overcome. You'll experience firsthand that some people might have No desire to become your friend with you for some reason that you might never even learn being able to start small and not Have hopes that everyone's going to be your best friend is really good starting point Another way is by finding people that share your hobbies and interests so if you like particular sports if you are a person that likes band or If you're a drama person, if you like engineering, finding those hobbies and interests are going to be very valuable because you can be able to build up relationships and everything.
This is something that you will be able to develop. Being able to develop it now is so valuable because this is how you make it in the real world. If you can be able to find common ground and you can be able to connect with others, this is how friendships. Can be started in, uh, you know, in a business environment if it's in a personal environment.
So being able to start this off in high school and being able to recognize it is just key success. And it allows you to not have so much anxiety of will I be able to make friends? You know, isn't everyone going to like me having those worries and what ifs? is what's going to drag you down no matter what the circumstances.
Now getting off the topic specifically about You know, making friends, or I should say the example of it. The best way to describe what I mean by organize and to manage your time is, you know, a successful key in controlling your anxiety during high school. So, making sure that your plate isn't too full.
You're gonna have You know, say seven, I don't know, eight classes, depending on where schools you go to, and you're going to have so much on your plate of, you got to do this assignment. You have to do this test. You have to, you know, do this certain project by this certain time. So micro managing your time is valuable because if you're stressed, because you forgot about a test, you forgot about a, you know, certain project that you had to do is adding to your stress levels.
So being able to micromanage your time by, you know, say writing things down in a notebook or a calendar or being able to have a good memory of what is to come. And that's just simply, you know, just schoolwork. I'm not even, even including on that part of. You know, say you're an athlete, say you're a football player, say you're a volleyball player or a cheerleader, you have cheer practice, you have these cheer events that you have to do, you might have to volunteer because it's a requirement, or you might be a band member, whatever it is, that just adds to your stress levels, you're adding so much to your plate, if you want to play a sport, great, that's great.
Thank you. You know, going to give you a million memories to have, you know, down the road, but to understand that you need to micromanage your time to be able to not put too much on your plate to where it stresses you out to the point where you push yourself in a corner or a really just. drives you insane to the point where you want to quit everything.
Being able to set those boundaries at, you know, a young age, 13, 14 years old, is very vital for your success in the future when it comes to, you know, becoming a sophomore, junior, and senior, and, you know, high school. All right, now let's go beyond just being a freshman in high school. You know, what is the stress levels like when it comes to being an upperclassman or a sophomore?
If you are the, you know, an upperclassman, you're gonna have even more responsibilities than, say, a freshman. You know, if you are a junior and senior, you are starting to get your license. You're starting to, you know, get a job. You know, it might be during the summer, but it might also be part time after school.
And after extracurricular activities, you are adding to the stress levels. You're adding more. exposure to the world. So you're going to be adding and building up more stressful situations and more anxiety to your workload and, or I should say, work life balance. So the, basically the starting point that I want to kind of introduce to you on how you can control your anxiety during high school is the first one it might sound very cliche and obvious but is recognizing the issue being able to address and understand that you are going to have a ton of stress and a ton of anxiety when it comes to, you know, wanting to be perfect when you have so much things that you have to do.
This is your first kind of time where everything is starting to come to fruition. This is really the starting point of what adulthood is going to be like. Now you might be stressed because you have to study to get a good grade for the ACT and SAT. You know, you are very confused and anxious about like, what am I going to do in the future?
So all of these things are very, very common that everyone goes through when they go through high school. And understanding that you are not alone in this is absolutely vital. So recognizing, hey, this certain thing has me stressed out. What can I do? Or how can I Get help to recognize and to get myself over this speed bump or over this, the crest of the hill.
So the first rule of thumb is pretty, you know, pretty easy and distinguishable. So making sure and recognizing whatever situation that's stressing you out. If you can find a way to at least acknowledge it and to, you know, make sure that you can find the help or resources that you need. The second one is managing and maximizing your time.
Like I said, for the height or the, for the freshmen, this goes for just about everyone in high school, doesn't matter what grade level or what age you are maximizing your time and effort. Now I'm not sitting here saying like, don't overload yourself to the point where. It is, you know, you're doing absolutely nothing.
You're just doing the bare bones. That's not what I'm referring to. You know, it is very valuable for you to be able to experience different things when you're going through high school. If it's going to homecoming, going to prom, if it's going to, you know, the Friday night football games, Friday night lights.
You know, if it's going to a basketball game to, you know, support your friend, if it's doing extracurricular activities to kind of get yourself around different things and around different people and just experiencing what certain things have to offer is very valuable. But when you start to feel overwhelmed to the point where.
You have no time to even think this is when you should start to kind of slow down and take a deep breath and understand that you might have to take some things off your plate to make sure that you can fulfill your time wisely when it comes to your academics and for your mental health itself. So being able to maximize your time, I believe is one of the biggest steps for success into Managing and controlling your anxiety during your high time in high school.
Now the third step is asking for help when you need it and even when you don't need it. So this is kind of going off of the first step, but we're going to add a little to it. For me, the third step is probably one of the biggest steps. And when the third step is the kind of. The one that I regret the most when I was in high school was I never asked for help.
I was so controlled by my social anxiety that I never stepped out of my comfort zone. I never did extracurricular activities. I didn't play a sport. You know, I was kind of just this. Walking corpse that didn't really have a purpose didn't really know what he wanted to do in his life had zero clue whatsoever what his drive and purpose was.
So asking for help and getting myself out there, which is the third step is very, you know, is what kind of eats me alive. And that's what I want to kind of make sure it comes across to you on this podcast is that. Asking for help isn't that bad. You know, if you have, if you're suffering from anxiety, if you feel like certain things are holding you back in life, being able to, you know, obviously like listening to this podcast is one benefit, listening to other podcasts, going on Google and researching things.
And if you have enough courage, being able to ask, you know, An advisor or ask someone a counselor at school or ask a teacher or ask your parents about having or having or getting help to get you to be a better person and not have this. Anxiety control every aspect of your life to the point where it puts you in a depression.
It drives you to the point where it's like you want to stop and do nothing with your life or you have zero drive or desire to pursue Certain things in life and it's just going to lead you to a very Very difficult and challenging path once you graduate high school, you know, the best way to look at it is that If you are in high school, you're in the minor leagues of, you know, a sport, so you are kind of learning the basics.
You're starting to rise in the ranks. You're starting to become more educated. You're perfecting your craft. You're perfecting who you are as a person, because once you graduate college or once you graduate high school, I'm sorry, you are basically going to be at the professional leagues. You are going to be everything is gonna be on your plate.
Everything is gonna be under your control. So Understanding at this time is it's all a learning curve Anxiety controls pretty much everyone even if you're an introvert or an extrovert Understanding how to control it is the best way for you to get the foremost like best experience out of high school So kind of to repeat what we went over This during this podcast is being able to recognize and understand that anxiety controls just about anyone to everyone and Understanding it's going to affect you in many different ways But being able to recognize it is the first step in this whole process managing and maximizing your time Enjoying your time in high school is very valuable being able to go through all the experiences and different You know, ups and downs that it has to offer, but making sure that you are not overloading yourself, overloading your plate to the point where anxiety really pushes you into a depressive state.
The third is the most important, which is seeking help when you need it. And even when you feel you don't. It is okay to ask for help. It is not going to kill you. It is not going to negatively affect you. It's only going to help you and it's going to make it way easier for your time. Once you leave, you know, high school, all of this is just maximizing and helping you benefit you in the future to become successful a lot sooner than most because You're getting a jumpstart right when you should be.
That is going to conclude this episode. If you enjoyed listening to this podcast and you have not done so yet, please leave a like, share, and subscribe and rating for this podcast so you never miss any future content. By doing so helps this podcast boost this podcast so more people can be shown this podcast.
This podcast is on all major streaming and podcast platforms. Also, you can follow me on social media, my social Twitter is at Social Motive, and my Instagram is at Social Motivated Pod. All of your support is greatly appreciated. My hope with this podcast is that I can bring awareness and shine a light to help spread these better strategies on strengthening your daily mindset.
I wish you the best of luck on your journey to improving your mental health, to help you have a happier, healthier life that you've always wanted. I'll catch y'all on the next episode.