With the current COVID-19 pandemic, many teens are experiencing overwhelm and a more acute state of stress. High schools can be a wonderful learning environment for experiencing new challenges, rigorous academic curricula, and well-equipped staff that assist in student engagement for best adolescent growth outcomes. A recent study that interviewed and surveyed students’ stress levels indicated that over half of the students surveyed were seen to be chronically stressed. These results are not altogether alarming with parents noticing an increased rate of homework applied in Honors and Advanced Placement coursework, time management needs between sports practices and games along with extra-curricular activities as musical performance and student government, and also preparing for the standardized Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT). Having opportunities for down time are rare for the modern high school student. “These experiences can cause kids to burn out by the time they get to college, or to feel the psychological and physical effects of stress for much of their adult lives,” says Marya Gwadz, a senior research scientist at New York University. The current dilemma within the high school landscape demands that parents, teachers, and administrators respond to the growing needs of students in a culture of stress due to the growing competitive edge of students that desire a strong college-ready portfolio.

With a little stress, this can motivate students to perform better, navigate their relationships with clarity, and appropriately react to time management needs in a healthy manner. Too much stress for young adults have already proven to lead to elevated stress hormones that lead to gastrointestinal problems, heart issues, deficiencies with the immune system, and chronic bouts with anxiety and depression. “Colleges are complaining that kids are disengaged, they’re dropping out, taking a long time to graduate. It’s not developmentally appropriate for them to work so hard,” states Gwadz. Each individual has a different and unique psychological fingerprint related to the amount of stress that can be taken on in any given season of life.

Even though academic outcomes in grades, school work, and college admissions can play a significant role in contributing to chronic stress, the medical community also acknowledges school culture as another contributing factor. The school culture itself can cause a student to experience chronic stress and internalize pressure from administrators, teachers, and even peers. Many see chronic stress as the new cultural currency for how students equate a student’s stress level with the rigor of the curricula at their school. “School cultures reflect the greater competitive environment of global capitalism,” Bo Paulle, a sociology professor at the University of Amsterdam says. “Our current system is a warped manifestation of our general anxiety about downward social mobility and what it takes to move up.” Paulle is determined to see the equipping of kids learn better coping strategies that will ultimately help them to thrive within the school system.

What Causes Stress in Adolescents?

We must reflect on the origins of the stress theory to better understand the association of stress and its impact on the brain and body. Austro-Hungarian Canadian endocrinologist Dr. Hans Selye first coined the term stress to reflect what would occur to animals that are injured or placed under unusual or extreme conditions, based on his studies in the 1950s. Stress can be seen at the physiological, psychological, and social levels of interaction for many. As an umbrella term, stress is typically seen as both the stimulus (the cause of the experience of stress) and also the response to the stressor’s effects. Selye defined stress as “the non-specific response of the organism to any pressure or demand.” Moreover, from a mental health standpoint with the physiological implications in mind, Selye understood that there could be diseases that result from failed attempts of adapting quickly to these stressful conditions and based upon the stressor’s response. Prior to the growing field of psychoneuroimmunology, Selye stated: 

Significantly, an overwhelming stress (caused by prolonged starvation, worry, fatigue, or cold) can break down the body’s protective mechanisms. This is true both of adaptation which depends on chemical immunity and of that due to inflammatory barricades. It is for this reason that so many maladies tend to become rampant during wars and famines. If a microbe is in or around us all the time and yet causes no disease until we are exposed to stress, what is the “cause” of our illness, the microbe or the stress? I think both are – and equally so. In most instances, disease is due neither to the germ as such, nor to our adaptive reactions as such, but to the inadequacy of our reactions against the germ. 

As understood by his pioneering efforts in his research, Selye affirmed that an organism can undergo a generalized physiological response to stress in order to adapt to both external and internal pressures (and their demands) that are being experienced. Moreover, there was a new construct that came forth from Selye’s studies that emphasized a stress-based response, the general adaptation syndrome, that sought to understand how an organism responds to stressors while maintaining a personal fitness to life, threat, trauma, and even change. The opposite might resonate as true as well in which organisms were seen to negatively respond to their stressors in circumstances, which in turn led to inadequate coping and dysregulated attempts to avoid the stressful experience.

Currently, more than 60 years after this research – much more has been identified and made known about the key roles that the brain, emotions, cognitions, and nervous system all demonstrate in their interplay in response to stressors. As many in the medical field would attest, clinicians consistently highlight that it is not the potential stressor itself but how you perceive it and then how you handle it that will determine whether or not it will lead to stress.

There was a 2014 study by the American Psychological Association that found that U.S. teens are more stressed than adults. Statistically: 30% of teens in the survey felt sad or depressed due to stress, 31% felt overwhelmed, 36% felt tired and 23% skipped meals due to stressors. Managing homework load: requires closer scrutiny as to acknowledging tangible academic benefits but negatively impacting students with stress and sleep deprivation. Early start time: studies demonstrate that schools starting at 8:30AM reported fewer socio-emotional concerns and less physical complaints. Competitive culture: high-stakes testing and high academic achievement and “college seems to be the finish line.” High school students have the capacity to modulate their internal resources to cope with stressors and exercise their experience to the degree that they can overall consciously and intelligently navigate these stressors. 

How Does Stress Affect Our Children?

Here are important considerations in understanding how stress can impact the brain regions of:

• The amgydala, a small almond-shaped structure that acts as the brain’s alarm system. When experiencing stress, the amygdala interprets the stressors as a potential threat to status, security, and well-being and puts the body and brain both on high alert. 
• The Hyopthalamus, the operations manager of the brain that controls and releases various hormonal stress-based responses. This causes hormones to become secreted within the blood stream and maintains the balance of cortisol levels before they get too high from stress states. 
• Your Hippocampus, the seahorse-shaped structure of the brain that stores and organizes conscious memories. When faced with intense and life-threatening stressors, the hippocampal region can go “offline” and not store the event or situation in an organized manner. The hippocampus also stores memories of stress-based responses in a meaningful manner. 
• The prefrontal cortex (PFC), seen as the CEO of the brain’s executive center, evaluates, navigates, and responds to the stressors in effective and mindful ways. The PFC is seen as the ally that assists in shifting attention, solving complex problems, controlling impulses, calming intense emotions, and adapting to uncertain, new, and changing stressors. 
• The hormones epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine both interplay when the amygdala notices a stressor. These are secreted into the bloodstream to ready the body for fighting, fleeing, and increasing in a heart rate and rushing blood overflow to keep the brain in alertness as well as glucose for an extra energy provision. Continuous surges of epinephrine can become toxic to the body in that there is a greater vulnerability to high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and ultimately heart attack. 

The stress-based responses of the brain and body are innumerable with their impact. Damaging levels of increasing cortisol can create vulnerability for us to become more reactive with a lessened ability to calm down when experiencing stressors through logical problem-solving and clear thinking. It will become even more important to think through stress-reduction strategies to increase the connectivity between the PFC and the amygdala. Feeling emotions without necessarily identifying with them requires learning how to direct attention toward or away from our emotions in a flexible manner. When heightened in stress and emotional, grounding strategies are what help us feel awake, solid, connected, and soothed. They deliberately move our body into focus on our current position with our surroundings, attend to our sense of touch, taste, smell, or sound and causes us to engage the logical part of the brain to better express ourselves.

Here are several grounding strategies when feeling stressed:

• Take your shoes off and walk slowly around the room, feeling the physical sensation and connection between your feet and the ground with each step. With every movement, feel your toes, soles, and heels connecting to the ground. 
• Rock from one foot to another; as you rock, keep notice of your toes, the pad, sides, middle, top, heels, and back of each foot as well as your lower leg, ankles, and calf. 
• Describe three things in the room according to their sensory qualities of shape, color, size, smell, etc. 
• Read poetry while listening to soothing instrumental music. 
• Accomplish a jigsaw puzzle. 
• Smell lavender, suck on a peppermint, and/or color a pattern using a coloring book or from abstract art. 
• Put an ice pack on your neck or place a cold washcloth on your forehead for some time. 
• Drink a cup of tea slowly, deliberately, and intentionally while feeling its warmth and smelling the aroma of its nature. Let each sip swirl in your mouth and flow down your throat as you taste of it. 
• Go for a nature walk or somewhere outdoors to be close to nature. Walk barefoot on the grass. 

These grounding strategies can cause you to feel more solid and return to the moment, to better assess a stressful situation without getting your feelings so overwhelmed and distressed. Grounding strategies put the brake on the amygdala’s activity with its “flight, fight, or freeze” internal response and the parasympathetic nervous system returns you back into a more relaxed state.