Do fears, excessive worries and anxiety prevent your child from living what should be the best and most carefree years of their life? Wouldn't it be nice if you could just flip a switch and make his or her shyness disappear? Have the various strategies that you have used been useless, leaving you with the feeling that you have missed something? Adolescence is a tortuous path. Making friends, first loves, excelling at school, getting a job, dating and many other responsibilities and obligations fill this time of life with new challenges; stressful events that are not always easy to manage. We don't all react in the same way. It is normal for adolescents to feel worried or anxious from time to time, such as when starting school or moving to a new place. It becomes a problem when anxiety affects their thoughts and behaviour on a daily basis and interferes with their school, home and social life. Many parents go into ‘protection mode’ trying to help their children to solve their problems, helping them to avoid anxiety triggers and/or trying to design a worry-free lifestyle. However, this expenditure of effort may not be sufficient. But don’t misunderstand. Parents can do a lot to help get their children's emotional well-being back on track, but expert information and timely intervention is always the best way forward. I recommend that you read and have your child read this manual if, in the past three months, he has been overwhelmed by: - Nervousness and irritability: adolescents may feel nervous or angry for no reason. - Sleep disturbances: difficulty falling asleep, interrupted or shallow sleep or early awakening or, conversely, hypersomnia, or the need to sleep more than necessary. - Provocative behaviour: the inability to recognise and communicate what is happening inside can provoke the adolescent to express their discomfort through provocative attitudes that can be wrongly interpreted as rebellion. - Outbursts of anger: sometimes girls or boys, even quiet or introverted ones, may have outbursts of anger or fits of tears for no apparent reason. - Distractibility, loss of contact with the outside world: sometimes, some adolescents are so caught up in their malaise that they appear extremely disoriented or detached from reality. - Avoidance. This occurs when the adolescent avoids people, places and situations that, for various reasons, can cause anxiety or extreme discomfort such as school, peers, closed or crowded places. - Tendency to excessive programming and control: adolescents may try to control anxiety within themselves by obsessively controlling schedules, habits, times in their own life and that of others. - Depressed mood, negativity, pessimism and low self-esteem. - Physical symptoms: anxiety in adolescence often manifests itself mainly through the body. Headache, stomach pain, abdominal pain, chest pain, diarrhoea, muscle aches and the need to urinate frequently are just some of the most common somatic symptoms. Do they sound familiar to you? If not resolved in time, these problems cause impairment of social adaptation and social functioning, increasing the risk of anxiety disorders, depressive disorders and leading to potentially serious consequences that could otherwise be avoided with the right precautions. Unlike other publications, this book isn't just for teens. Anyone can use it. And it doesn't read like a college course, it'll let you know what's going on in a teenager's head. The worksheets and exercises that you will find inside this book will help you to learn to manage embarrassing social situations with grace and security, so you can establish real bonds with the people you want to meet. Based on proven Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), the skills you learn will also help you speak to yourself when you need them and remove the fear of class projects that put you in trouble. In reality, there is no aspect of your life in which this workbook is not helpful. So why let shyness and anxiety rule your life any more?
