The high school years can be difficult enough without an anxiety disorder. If you have anxiety, even the parts of school that seem routine to other people may be really hard for you. There are a few things you can do to make your high school years easier on you, however.
You probably have some idea of the types of situations that trigger your symptoms. It may not be possible to avoid those situations altogether, but a lot of times you can predict when they will happen. There are predictable times at school when you will be in large crowds, have to do public speaking or be exposed to scary movies, for example.
You have to be careful as you anticipate hard situations, though, because it’s easy to start getting anxiety about the fact that a situation is coming up that might cause anxiety. That’s not helpful at all.
Your goal in predicting what scenarios are going to trigger your anxiety is for you to be able to plan for them. One great technique for this is the “PLAN” technique. PLAN stands for: Predict, Let Go, Accept, Notice.
First, as we’ve already discussed, you Predict when something is going to trigger your anxiety. Next, and this one is really important, you Let Go of worrying about your reactions. Everybody has their issues, and yours happens to be anxiety. That’s not good or bad, right or wrong, and their isn’t anything you can do about the fact that it’s your issue, so don’t sweat it.
Next, Accept that this situation you’ve predicted is going to be hard. You don’t have to like it, you just have to work with it. It’s ok to feel some anxiety about it. There’s no sense pretending it’s not there.
Finally, Notice the skills you have to deal with it. Here’s where you make your actual plan. What sorts of things help you stay calm? What can you do before, during or after the situation to help yourself? Do you need to take your “rescue med” before you give that oral report? Does your best friend need to sit in the front row – or definitely not in the front row? Can you put something in your pocket that you can fiddle with? Can you do a relaxation exercise? You already have skills, you just have to use them!
Find an adult at school who you feel comfortable with. This should be someone who you’re willing to tell about your anxiety (if they don’t already know) and who you feel like you could go to if you were having a problem. It might be your guidance counselor, but it can be anybody at the school: a teacher, a custodian, a secretary, or any other adult.
This is your “safe person,” and when all else fails and you’re having a real issue with anxiety they’re the person to go to. Just knowing you have this person may help you deal with your anxiety better. In other words, having someone to go to may make it less likely that you need someone to go to!
Anxiety is a very unpleasant emotion, and a lot of us don’t handle it very well. It feels uncomfortable, and so we try to not to feel it by feeling something else that is easier for us. For most people, this takes the form of either anger or sadness.
A lot of times, kids with anxiety disorders act in ways that seem more like they’re angry. When something makes them anxious, they get mad at the people who are responsible for it, or just the people who are around when it happens. Other people start crying when they don’t have a reason to be sad.
It turns out that most of us are more comfortable feeling angry or sad than anxious. We know more what to do about it. If you’re angry, you lash out, either with words or actions. If you’re sad, you cry. No problem.
If you have an anxiety disorder, it’s important to know which of these you tend to do. You might even do both, or possibly neither. You just need to know. When you find yourself feeling angry or sad at school, stop yourself for a minute and look inside. Ask yourself, “What just happened here? Am I really angry, or is something making me anxious?” If it’s really anxiety, you need to implement your best strategies for dealing with anxiety.
The reason this is important, particularly if you’re a person who goes to anger when you’re triggered, is that your teachers, in particular, are not going to put up with your anger. They’d much rather deal with your anxiety, because it’s less disruptive to class and it’s less threatening to them. If you can’t tell the difference between angry and anxious, you’re going to wind up with all the bad consequences of being angry in school but you’ll never have done anything about the actual problem, which was the anxiety in the first place.
If you have a diagnosed anxiety disorder, there may be a formal plan in place to help you. This could be either an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) or a Section 504 Plan that your parents or guardians worked out with the school. If you’re in high school and have problems with anxiety, it’s important that you know if you have a plan and what it says.
If you have a plan, it’s designed to help you be as successful in school as you can. It specifies things that you are entitled to and that the school has to do for you to help you succeed. But you can’t take advantage of those things if you don’t know what they are!
As you get older, you can also request to be at the meeting where your plan is discussed. Nobody knows better what you need than you. A plan might look great on paper, but if it doesn’t work for you then it’s not a good plan. Go ahead and ask your parent or guardian or your guidance counselor when the next meeting will be, and tell them you’d like to be there.