One of the most difficult parts of adolescence is navigating the complex social life as a teenager.
Whether it’s tests, auditions, dating, or life in general, teens fear failure — just like adults. While it is normal for teens to experience a bit of anxiety or fear in certain situations an irrational and excessive fear that affects daily life is called a phobia, which affects about 10% of them, and contributes to much of the depression and anxiety that teens are diagnosed with each year.
Many simply don’t want to disappoint their parents, friends, teachers, or themselves, which is why it’s considered one of the top fears in 2020.
The media likes for simplicity the lump everything together and just call it social phobia or social anxiety, while it is actually one or more of the following phobias
Fear of failure:- Atychiphobia or Kakorrhaphiophobia is a pervasive emotion for teenagers,
Fear of negative evaluation Atychiphobia, is a psychological construct reflecting ” apprehension about others’ evaluations, distress over negative evaluations by others, and the expectation that others would evaluate one negatively”. Individuals coping with Atychiphobia often have rigid or unrealistic expectations and/or excessive standards of behaviour.
Kakorrhaphiophobia is the intense fear of failure. Those exhibiting this phobia may suffer from very low self-esteem and may find themselves to be very anxious. Their anxiety may be paralysing to the point to where they are unable to challenge themselves even slightly as they are extremely fearful that they will fail.
Katagelophobia – fear of ridicule, can be defined as an intense fear of something that does not actually pose a threat. They themselves may already be very self-critical, so when someone else ridicules them or when they perceive that they are being ridiculed by someone else, this may only confirm what they already believe about themselves.
These phobias often first appear during childhood or adolescence and females are twice as likely as males to suffer from these phobias.
The symptoms of phobias can vary from mild to severe. They can include:
- Fast, shallow breathing / shortness of breath
- Pounding heart
- Hot flashes or chills
- Sweating
- Chest tightness or heaviness
- Nausea, Numbness or tingling
- Sense of danger or impending doom
- Feeling as if you’re outside your body or in a dream
- Intense fear that one is dying, losing control, and / or “going crazy”
- Feeling like fainting is imminent
- Feeling an intense need to escape
- Feelings of overwhelm or panic
Treatments
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
CBT is a psycho-social intervention that aims to improve one’s mental health.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
MBSR is an 8-week evidence-based program that offers secular, intensive mindfulness training to help people who are suffering from anxiety, stress, depression, and other sorts of mental anguish.
Meditation
Mindfulness has the potential to significantly help those suffering from phobia’s by refocusing their attention onto something else that does not have any sort of emotional baggage attached to it, eg focusing on the breath for example.
Exposure Therapy
Is one of the a common way to treat anxiety disorders. It can be an efficient way to help desensitise the patient to their specific fears.
Exercise
Exercise has been shown to be extremely beneficial for people suffering from anxiety disorders. Specifically, cardiovascular exercise can significantly help to relieve one’s stress.
Reducing Caffeine
It is no secret that consuming large amounts of caffeine throughout the day can aid in making you more anxious.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
DBT is a very effective form of treatment for people struggling with emotion regulation. It is often used to treat people suffering from borderline personality disorder.
Anti-anxiety meds
Not a long term solution
Antidepressants
Very short term just to assist with depression
Supporting and Encouraging Your Teen
It can be challenging to know the best ways to support and encourage your teen who’s struggling with a phobia. You want to help, but you don’t want to enable. Following are some helpful tips:
Educate yourself about specific phobias so you can have a better understanding about what your teen is going through
Reassure your teen that his or her fear isn’t an indication of a flaw or personal weakness
Never ridicule, criticise, or admonish your teen about his or her specific phobia
Pay attention to signs that your teen is using alcohol or other substances to self-medicate his or her anxiety
Be willing and available to listen and talk to your teen regarding his or her fears and anxiety
Pay attention to how you express and manage your own anxiety, as your teen will look to you as a role model
Don’t enable your teen’s avoidance behaviour by lowering your expectations or constantly “rescuing” or protecting him or her from the feared object or situation.
If your teen starts to become anxious or feels a panic attack coming on, encourage and instruct him or her to use the coping skills learned in treatment
If you can’t overcome your fear with practice alone, consider seeking professional help.
Sydney Phobia Therapy has an online therapy for the fears and phobias around peer pressures and not fitting in.
We currently use a 3rd generation version for fear of public speaking phobia therapy based on the original Fast Phobia Cure initially created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the 1970’s.
Now when I say fast, I mean typically one session only, no homework and its content free.
Content free means you don’t talk about, and you certainly don’t tell me, because I don’t want it either. You’re seeing me online, so stay in the comfort of your own space and no travel time, to have it removed, not to see if we can talk it to death.