Page 16 - My FlipBook

Social media creates the mirage that everyone around you is living
a life of effortless perfection—which is a load of crap.

Is it any wonder then that so many teens turn to partying to escape
or to self-medicate, or, as my son calls it, Type I fun? The problem
here is that smoking pot, doing harder drugs, and drinking might
make you feel better for a couple hours, but they actually keep you
stuck in the same quagmire of anxiety and depression in the long
term—and sometimes pull you deeper. As someone very wise once
told me, “It’s like every morning you get to walk out the front door
into a new day, and walk down the front path toward the road.
Then you drink or smoke or whatever, and you wake up the next
day and find yourself back on your front stoop. You never make it
down the path. You always end up in the same place.”

So what does work? Learning real tools to cope when anxiety strikes,
such as deep breathing techniques, meditation, and reorienting, that
can actually counteract the fear response—or kicking it up a notch
and finding a mental health professional or counseling group to
help you work through some of these behaviors and feelings. On a
macro level, aligning your behavior with your core values—or what
really matters to you right now—is an anxiety-squelcher. It will cut
through a lot of mind tricks and BS from other people and help you
make tracks down that front path. You may never be able to control
outside events, but if you start honing in on who you are and what
is important to you, you’ll know you can trust yourself to act with
clarity and integrity and not cheat yourself of your momentum. This
is real strength, and strength is the antidote to fear.

28 undecided.