Generalized Anxiety Disorder in Teens
Stress as a teenager comes from every direction. From schoolwork and post-graduation plans to friendship drama and family issues, it can all feel overwhelming. While it’s natural to worry, too much stress can lead to excessive anxiety that interferes with your ability to properly handle the problems you’re dealing with.
While feeling anxious is an emotion, having anxiety is a mental health disorder that requires proper support and treatment. If you find yourself worrying to the point where it’s interfering with your everyday responsibilities and your relationships, you may need to be treated for generalized anxiety disorder.
What Is Generalized Anxiety Disorder?
Generalized anxiety disorder, commonly referred to as anxiety or GAD, is a mental health disorder that causes overwhelming concern and stress, often without a valid reason.
Anxiety disorders affect approximately 31.9% of adolescents, while GAD specifically affects about 3%.
Anxiety can impact your entire well-being, causing problems mentally, emotionally and even physically. The excessive worrying can prevent you from being able to carry out daily responsibilities, such as schoolwork and extracurricular activities. Anxiety can also make it difficult to maintain healthy relationships with your family and friends, causing you to isolate yourself from others.
Symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder include:
- Excessive worrying, often unwarranted
- Lack of concentration
- Increased irritability
- Hyperfocusing on potential negative outcomes
- Trouble falling or staying asleep
- Constant need for reassurance and validation from others
- Headaches
- Digestive problems
- Panic attacks
- Depression
Factors that increase the risk of anxiety include:
- Trauma
- Drug use
- Heart disease
- Personality
- Family history of anxiety
How Can Lightfully Teen Treat Generalized Anxiety Disorder?
Anxiety makes you feel mentally and emotionally overwhelmed by stress to the point where you can’t think about anything else. But at Lightfully Teen, we help you look at your mental health from every angle to see how different parts of your overall well-being are contributing to your anxiety. That way you can see what your current needs are so that you can determine how to get where you want to be in the future with healthy cognitive and coping skills.
Our process-based therapy allows us to design a personalized treatment plan that’s tailored to your symptoms and medical needs. This clinical model helps us to treat you as a whole person, not just your diagnosis. Because you’re more than just your generalized anxiety disorder.
Process-based therapy walks you through integrated interventions, such as values clarification and motivational enhancement, to help you work through four core processes that can contribute to your anxiety:
- Difficulty with emotions
- Difficulty with thoughts
- Difficulty with behaviors
- Difficulty with relationships
Lightfully Teen Can Help Treat Your Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Being a teenager is stressful. But that doesn’t mean that you should let anxiety run your life. That’s why Lightfully Teen is here to help.
Process-based therapy can help your generalized anxiety disorder in our three levels of care: Residential Treatment, Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP), and Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP), also called our Day Treatment Program.
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We’re here when you’re ready. Send us a message using the link below or give us a call at 916.269.5371. Let us help shine a light on your path.
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