by Jane Pendry

Published in the Association for Solution Focused Hypnotherapists’ Blog

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Extreme Anxiety in teens and young adults is on the rise. In addition to the normal stresses associated with hormones, studying and exams, our young people have had to deal with the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, the challenges of social media, and endless images and news of wars in Ukraine and Palestine.

As a Solution Focused Hypnotherapist, I know that even the most anxious adolescent can learn to manage their anxiety and take control of their thought processes.

Why is it a worsening problem?

How can young adults manage and resolve anxiety related issues and flourish in our ever changing world?

Neuroscientists agree that brain development continues until at least the mid-20s, and possibly until the 30s. Frontal lobes in adolescent brains - needed for executive function, impulse control and judgement - are not fully formed in young adults.

Explains a lot, doesn’t it?

The young developing brain is much more vulnerable to stress and anxiety than the fully developed adult brain.

We know young adults and adolescents need to work out answers for themselves. We also know they are facing an unprecedented number of challenges and they need our support more than ever.

Giving back control

Solution Focused approaches use skilled open questioning to help young clients work out what they want and how to get there. For adolescents this feels respectful, supportive and empowering. They can find their own solutions.

Plastic minds!

Young minds are more plastic than adult minds. New wiring and connections are being made and unmade all the time. Unhelpful patterns of thinking, habits and behaviours, can be easily learned; and just as easily unlearned and replaced with more helpful behaviours.

When Laura*, aged 16, came to see me, with her concerned mother, she was terrified of travelling to and from school. She was tearful, and extremely anxious about walking down the street; even accompanied by her family.

Yet, three sessions later, Laura was travelling to school on the bus, walking along her street at night, and even travelled to a music festival.

I’d like to think this incredible result was due to my skills! However, it had much , more to do with the plasticity of Laura’s young mind.

Why do young people get anxious?

Anxiety triggers the production of stress hormones that make us take action when we need to; when we need to study harder, prepare more carefully for a meeting, presentation, or a first date. But that’s a healthy level of anxiety. We can manage anxiety for a short time during this stressful period. The anxiety eases once the exams are over, the presentation is delivered and the first date is over.

Emotions writ large

For adolescents, emotions are, as you may have noticed, WRIT LARGE.

Frances Jensen M.D, and Amy Ellis Nutt in ‘The Teenage Brain’ explain what is different about the adolescent brain and what that means for managing anxiety and stress.

Hormones and moods

Hormones impact on the teenage mind, and result in moodiness, impulsivity and sometimes poor choices. Jensen and Ellis Nutt explain, - “… there is more at play in the teenage brain, where new connections between brain areas are being built and many chemicals, especially neurotransmitters, the “brain’s messengers,”are in flux.”

The brain’s messengers in flux

This mind ‘in flux’ has some benefits. Teenagers see wonder and excitement in events and experiences where middle-aged brains can barely muster a flicker of interest: from boy bands and Ariane Grande, to heavy metal and rave; from go-karting and paragliding to fashion choices and academic interests. Whatever the focus of their attention, their experiences, good and bad, are heightened. 

Life is just more exciting; and a bit more scary!

Revisiting Romeo and Juliet

When we are young, we see Romeo & Juliet as the greatest tragedy of two young lovers kept apart by warring families with tragic consequences.

As an adult, remembering Romeo first loved Rosamund hours before he fell for Juliet, we know that the real tragedy is that this young love is a passing fancy, founded on nothing more than pheromones, the thrill of climbing a balcony, and the frisson of the elicit.

Now we have perspective.

Flexibility, growth and exuberance

Jensen and Ellis Nutt add, “Because of the flexibility and growth of the adolescent brain, adolescents have a window of opportunity with an increased capacity for remarkable accomplishments. But flexibility, growth, and exuberance are a double-edged sword because an “open” and excitable brain also can be adversely affected by stress, drugs, chemical substances, and any other number of changes in the environment.” They conclude that these influences can have dramatic consequences.

So we know a young mind is both open to learning, and exciting new experiences, but much more vulnerable to stress and environmental change.

The Stresses of a changing World

We also know that the world in which adolescents now live is changing at a dramatic pace. Let’s look at some of the challenges our young people face:

There is the old ones

… been there, done it:

• Social anxiety: a desire to fit in and find your ‘tribe’

• Sex hormones: the complexities of the dating game

• Exam anxiety: choosing subjects, revising, university interviews

• Career choices: thinking about careers, interviews, training and so forth

And the new

• Social media: air-brushed images and friends or celebrities with ‘perfect’ lives; cyberbullying and endless gossip; the sheer volume of tweets, and the constant flip, flip, flip of images and snippets of text.

• Computer games: often highly addictive and stimulating; violent and highly realistic images can help process feelings, or over stimulate young minds.

• The internet: easy access to extreme and sometimes violent porn, hyper-sexualisation of young people, which creates social anxiety and unrealistic expectations around sex

• TV: endless fascinating TV shows on all channels. There’s no obvious break point for bed time.

Need I go on.

You all know what the external stressors are because you see the impact on the young people you love and care about.

Or you experience them yourself.

Anxiety is a natural state

As a Solution Focused Hypnotherapist, my first initial consultation focuses on how the brain works.  

Anxiety: a normal emotion

Anxiety is a natural state; a signifier that there is danger.

For tribesmen living in a rain forest or a jungle, the danger will be real, present and physical; snakes, tigers, alligators. Tribespeoplein these environments need to be on high alert. If they see an animal they know to be dangerous, they fight, flee or freeze. But when they respond to danger in the moment, they are not using their intellectual brain.

However, people adapt to an environment over many generations. They are likely to be knowledgeable and skilled, knowing where danger might lie, how wild animals behave, how to cooperate, lay traps or fight if they need to. There’s a whole hinterland of experience and intelligence that helps them deal with the dangers around them.

The primitive mind

Responses to anxiety and fear all come from the primitive mind, which we know cannot innovate, solve problems or create new solutions.

The pea-sized amygdala is the ‘flight, fight, freeze’ part of the mind. It is closely connected to two other primitive parts of the brain: the hippocampus that stores the patterns of behaviour, both helpful and appropriate, and unhelpful; and the hypothalamus, which regulates hormones in the brain.

When the amygdala is responding to stress or fear, the hypothalamus floods the body with stress hormones like adrenalin and cortisol, giving enough short term energy to take instant action.

Fear, stress and survival

Now if our adolescents were living in the jungle, that would be hugely useful for their survival. In our more complex modern world, anxiety can develop over time.

Stressors, such as exams, aren’t just related to the day the exam is taken. Months of revision prior to exams increase stress and anxiety. Add to that social anxiety, bullying and cyber bullying, hormones, peer pressures and unrealistic role models. It’s no wonder young people can suffer from stress and anxiety .

Freddy’s story

*Freddy, aged 17, couldn’t stop playing computer games. Some were violent; all of them had an addictive quality. His mother was concerned that his obsessive playing was impacting on his mental health, and on his future as he was not sleeping, nor studying for his A Levels. He became ‘wired’ and developed chronic sleep issues and, almost inevitably, chronic anxiety.

When anxiety develops over time, it no longer has any useful function. It becomes debilitating, and can lead to exhaustion, chronic depression and obsessive behaviours.

What can we do about it?

You can be there to support and listen. You can provide food and help create routines. You can set boundaries.

You can try giving advice! Good luck with that.

However, it’s your trainee adult child that needs to help themselves.

The good news is that the teenage brain is particularly plastic. Young brains continue to make connections. They have the capacity to learn extraordinary quickly, whether academically, creatively or practically.

Solution Focused Brief Therapy and Hypnotherapy

As you know from the adolescents and young adults in your life, you can’t tell them anything. And that’s great for a Solution Focused Therapist as we don’t tell them to do anything at all.

The great thing about Solution Focused approaches is that they don’t require the practitioner to dig in to the past or to ask lots of personal and penetrating questions, nor do they require the therapist to give any advice.

How does Solution Focused Hypnotherapy work?

We all know that lovely, warm, affectionate children seem to wake up one morning and turn in to mono-syllabic, uncommunicative, eye-brow raising teens that find parents just the most annoying, pointless and frustrating people on the planet. Just like Harry Enfield’s Kevin (for those of you old enough to remember).

That makes young teens very hard to help. They know everything; you know nothing. Yet you see them suffer with anxiety about things they either don’t want to discuss, or can’t articulate.

Instead of exploring ‘problems’ and looking for reasons, Solution Focused therapies and coaching turn that idea on its head.

We don’t worry about what caused the anxiety. We don’t need to know if the boy who caused the pain and despair is called Ryan, Brian or indeed, Romeo. We don’t need to know who said what to whom and when. We don’t need to know anything (although I am happy to listen when clients need to talk but it isn’t actively part of the therapeutic process).

Exploring Best Hopes

I ask specific questions that focus on, ‘What’s been good about your week?’. These questions move a young client out of their primitive mind, and into their left pre-frontal cortex - the intellectual mind that searches for solutions.

Through tears, and after a series of skilled questions, Laura said, “I want to be able to go to school on my own without feeling anxious. I want to feel calm and in control. I want to be able to see my friends and come home without being terrified about getting home.”

You can imagine it was easier for Laura to focus on what she wanted, rather than what she didn’t want. Her subconscious mind subtly began to create a picture of what was possible and what might have been better. She started to feel hopeful and the tears dried up. She was no longer focusing on what was causing her distress.

That was Laura’s first shift in thinking.

For *Hamza, aged 19, getting rid of his crippling social anxiety was his priority. Hamza wanted to be able to go to the pub or parties without feeling his heart thumping in his ribs, and without finding it hard to breathe and feeling a hard lump in the pit of his stomach. Now that was a good description of what he wanted but it was still framed in negative terms.

What did Hamza really want?

I asked him to turn his thinking around, and a few questions later, this is what he said, “I want to look forward to going out with my friends. I want to be at ease and to not worry about what I am going to say, or whether I am liked or not. If I see a girl I like I want to be able to speak to her in a normal way…” Through further open questions, he was able to build a full, colourful, experiential picture of what he wanted.

Then we were ready to make the changes Laura and Hamza wanted.

Hypnotherapy: Rewiring the Brain the Painless Way

Parents and their older children often have concerns about hypnotherapy.

But I am not Derren Brown, or Paul McKenna. Stage hypnotists use hypnotic techniques and are highly skilled. But they are entertainers. I cannot make your child do anything they don’t want to do. The trance state created through suggestions is similar to the dreamy feeling of watching an absorbing film or listening to a favourite album.

The SF Hypnotherapy uses Ericksonian language, which is hypnotic language primarily centred around suggestions that can be accepted or rejected by the subconscious mind.

After a brief relaxation script to help the body unwind and the mind let go, I deliver a script focused on walking down stairs to a room where ‘nobody goes but you’. This is an imaginary place where your child can ‘rehearse the person they want to be’. Once they are in a state of deep relaxation, similar to being absorbed in a book or film, they remain conscious and aware, but deeply relaxed.

I then deliver tried and tested scripts focusing on creating firm boundaries, or being in control of their thoughts or whatever is appropriate to their circumstances.

Parents can stay in the sessions

Parents are most welcome to stay in the session with their children and often enjoy and benefit from the experience.

Prior to the first active session, clients listen to a recording of a hypnotherapy relaxation session daily to prime their minds for the tailored  hypnotherapeutic process. Usually we then have two to four sessions, sometimes more in the cases of OCD, embedded anxiety, or sensory overload due to Aspergers’ or depression.

So for Hamza, it took just the initial consultation and three hypnotherapy sessions before he was able to comfortably socialise.

For Laura, it was three sessions in total before she was able to go back to school on the bus.

Laura’s outcome

Laura’s mother wrote the following, “I have had the experience of getting support from Jane Pendry, at Sense Ability, for Laura and I would highly recommend trying her approach to unblock issues. She has helped Laura feel more in control of her situation and reduced her anxiety to an appropriate level”

“After two or three sessions each, Laura has had, what I would term as, a remarkable improvement. She now feels comfortable taking the bus to and from school every day.“

For others young clients getting back in control of overwhelming anxiety may take more sessions. One young client was so overwhelmed by anxiety she hadn’t sleep for many days. Two sessions later she was right as rain. I have also worked with young clients for over 10 weeks.

Tammy’s story

For my client *Tammy, her issues were more profound. She had been diagnosed with BPD and in her early twenties found she was unable to work full time. She frequently felt dissociated and was often tearful and depressed.

Ten months later she was a feisty mentally healthy young woman on her way to university. So the process still works for profound and embedded issues.

From Anxiety to Calm and in Control

There are many ways to help your older children, adolescents and young adults with anxiety issues, including CBT, which is highly effective with a well-trained therapist who can tailor their approach to your child, and some hard work on their part.

Counselling and more traditional talking therapies, and medication prescribed by a doctor (as a last port of call) are all effective. But Solution Focused therapies are uniquely suited to help young minds create resilience and overcome anxiety related issues, without drugs, and with relative ease.

I am fully trained, accredited with the Association for Solution Focused Hypnotherapists, DBS checked and insured.

To find out more about Solution Focused  Hypnotherapy please see: www.AfSFH.com

See Sense-Ability Therapies for more about Solution Focused therapies.

*The names and some details used in this article have been changed to protect the identity of my clients.

Jane Pendry
Sense-Ability Solution Focused Hypnotherapy
Jane@sense-ability.co.uk
+44 (0) 8843 813 833