Teenage Limbo

-Granthika Manirao, Nishika Chowdhary, Siddharth Shankar Singh 

Teenage, wonderful and stress-free phase of life, said no one ever! (Except our parents, they’re so darn optimistic). This stage of life is incredibly messy and confusing for teens as well as for the people around those teens. To cite an example, almost every teen’s favourite phrase is “No one understands me”,  but when someone tries to have a conversation, the favourite phrase changes to “I need my SPACE”. This behaviour is acknowledged in the name of hormones or mood swings, but the real reason behind it is ignored.

It is in our nature to express what we feel but sometimes people don’t listen to us and don’t pay attention. This pent-up need for self-expression takes the form of outbursts like the aforementioned. People like our elders always feel that they’ve also been in this stage and not faced any of this, so to them, it always seems like we are overreacting. They never understand that that was their time and this is ours. Things change, problems change, situations and solutions also change.

Mood swings happen, but more often than not there is a definite reason that lies behind 

it which people fail to realise.

When we talk about teenage pressures, confusion is the first thing that strikes blatantly. This state of confusion predominantly leads to identity crises in a teenager. Identity crisis is nothing but the question of “where do I fit in” in the minds of the teenagers. When this question goes unanswered it creates the subsequent issues of anxiety, self-worth issues and many more. The concept of ethical dilemmas, that is, confusions in making the “right” decisions gets introduced in their everyday lives, not just the major ones such as drug abuse or bullying but very small harmful lies along with it, which ends up being a major disaster.

As Indian teens, we can agree to the fact that the concept of sexual orientation or sexual preference is not understood or even accepted by Indian families. While there is a vast and still-growing movement of the LGBTQ community and a small victory in the form of section 377 being made unconstitutional, even today we have so many people who are still closeted, just because of the fear of not being accepted by the society or worse even their own families. And no one can blame them for it. Let alone the acceptance from the society, an individual struggles so hard with self-acceptance which is supposed to be the baseline of the underlying situation. When they finally figure out their sexual orientation, teens who are already insecure about themselves and have a hard time fitting in, find it incredibly exhausting trying to come out to their families and even after that the trouble doesn’t end. Family and friends are the major aspects of almost everyone’s lives, and when they turn their backs on the already confused teen, the problem is compounded making them take bad decisions,  such as depending on drugs for the temporary release of stress from this ever-burning judgemental fire of the society.

If this weren’t enough, there are myriad other pressures associated with teenage. As teenagers or adolescents, it is our tendency to try and be individual and independent, where sometimes we forget to be our own self and try to be different for the sake of being different.

These days every teenager is stuck in some social or ethical dilemma; be it a financial crisis or choosing a college for studies. Talking about studies, these people try to put their dreams and ambition on their children thinking it is their responsibility to do so. Kids face immense pressure from their parents to study for exams with inhuman levels of difficulty, made worse by the fact that wealth becomes a factor - some students can afford to coach and this makes them more likely to clear the exams, which places more pressure on children who can’t succeed.

The individual’s dreams and ambitions go out the window, and so does their social life, and they become zombies, shut-ins with only one goal in life, to clear the exam they are working towards. “Bas ek baar college chale jao, phir maze karna” is an oft-repeated phrase, but frankly, these kids forget how to have fun by the time they make it to college. For this, there needs to be reform in a lot of places 

Then there is anxiety, which is an all-pervading evil. Everyone suffers from one form of anxiety or the other, and it is exacerbated heavily in teenage by the hormones and emotions that have just begun coursing through a person. We (the authors) do not feel qualified to talk on this subject or its mitigations but we will leave some links below.

WHO fact sheet on adolescent mental health:

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/adolescent-mental-health 

The 4-7-8 breathing technique (for management of anxiety etc):

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324417 

How to help someone having a panic attack:

https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-help-someone-having-a-panic-attack 

How to help yourself during a panic attack:

https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-stop-a-panic-attack#breathe-deep

To deal with this delicate juncture of teenage, the first step is self-acceptance and self-love which helps in improvising the individual’s confidence. This could be catalysed by the support of family and friends to make it a little bit easier on the self-discovering teen. Most importantly, everyone should understand that each person goes through different situations in life and deals with it in a different way and hence, should never compare their problems saying that this isn’t even that big of a deal and making the other person feel unheard because being unheard is one of the most frustrating things that anyone can go through, specifically for the teens who already refuse to open up. So many issues related to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, agitation can be prevented by just hearing a person out, by being empathetic toward their situation and giving them a hand to hold until they get stronger.