Xambgii,

I can see your a fairly new member here at PC. So welcome to PC. Hmmm, your question. Well, the answer to your question depends on a lot of different things Xambgii.

How old are you, what is your family atmosphere like, what kind of relationship do you have with your parents, what is going on in your life now, are just a few of the questions that need to be answered.

What your describing sounds like an anxiety attack that began to frighten you and because you were frightened you fed into it instead of working right away at just quieting down and taking slow deep breaths.

When we get filled with anxiety we produce a chemical in our bodies called cortizol.
That chemical is produced to put us in a high alert mode so we pay attention to see if there is some kind of danger and we may need to fight or flight.

If someone feels anxiety for some reason and doesn't understand what it is or how to deal with it (which many teens struggle with) that person can become alarmed and that small amount of anxiety can get out of control. When that happens many of the symptoms your describing can happen. And, the fact that listening to music and taking a nap helped you, what happened there is those activities allowed you to calm down and hense the cortizol levels in your body lowered and the sense of high alert is gone.

When we are children and get upset our mother or another nurturing presence is there to serve our needs. So, many children somehow begin to understand that there will be a presense there to protect them and in that there is less encounters with anxiety and more freedom to learn about their environment.

When children become teenagers there is a growing need to become independant and self sufficient and how well teens adjust to that depends on how well they were slowly taught how to do this growing up. A sense of safety and independance and value is instilled in all of us in childhood and if that environment is not there the teen years that deal with stress in learning how to be independant can struggle more and become confused, even depressed and tired.

Our bodies are designed to ebb and flow with chemicals that are brought on by our environment. We all learn from an early age, for shear survival, how to feel and interpret our environments and people around us. We are designed to react to our environment with the help of our parents. Our parents are supposed to provide us with warmth and nurturing early on while we are growing so we can remain calm and feel safe while we ARE growing and learning about our own bodies and begin to also slowly explore our environments. We all look to our parent's facial expressions and signals that tell us we are doing well, we are safe, and yes, it is ok to look at that and touch this and try that and yes you are doing fine.

Human beings are one of most fragile of all living things. Human beings take the longest to grow and develope and become independant and self sufficient. And we are all designed to chemically react to our environments to ensure survival.

I am trying to give you an overall understanding here of how to understand the times when you can be stressed and what it may mean and that you have to learn how to know what it is and not be so frightened of it. Because, if you don't know that, YES, you can begin to think there is something very wrong with you and feed into it unknowingly.

No one here can diagnose you simply by what you have discribed. But what I am doing here is talking about stress and how to understand it better. We all encounter stress in our teenage years and it CAN frighten us and challenge us. It is important to calm down and not jump to conclusions. If this continues you may need guidance in how to learn about anxiety and how to self sooth and calm instead of letting it frighten you into making it worse.

Because you somehow did find a way to calm down with music and rest, that is a good indication that you are dealing with stress/anxiety and need to understand more about what it means and that you CAN control it.The other things you did try during the lecture were efforts to self sooth, only you were not truely consciously aware of that, but you did use some things that children learn to use. If you take time to look around at the other students your age you will begin to notice all different kinds of self soothing methods that they too unknowingly begin using. Some sit and shake a leg, some chew pencils, some rub their forheads, some chew their fingers or bite their nails, some twittle their hair, some pull at their eyebrows,
some doodle while they listen to the lecture, some clear their throat a lot. These are all attempts to self sooth, many are done without a real conscious knowledge about what it really means.

Perhaps you could take up doodling while listening in a lecture. Learn that stress/anxiety is a normal occurance and that you CAN learn to control it on your own, it is a part of growing up, something all teens deal with. I don't know why they are not told this, would help so many to avoid thinking they are misfits or are impaired somehow.

It isn't easy being a teenager and somehow have to learn how to interact in a very different independant way. And as teens are slowly trying to become independant they do look at all the expressions that other teens present to them, and in that they are trying to understand how to gain some kind of approval and acceptance. ALL teens struggle with this and at the same time their bodies are changing hormonally and they are trying to learn too. There is often an overwhelming feeling that they seem to have to know how to be independant, self sufficient and know who they are and what they are going to be in life. It is an extremely vulnerable time in life for so many. And many struggle so much that they begin to think that they are some kind of failure and in that they become stressed and inturn depressed.

My advice to teens that struggle, is slow down, this is definitely a challenging time for all teens. Know that anxiety is something that does challenge all teens and it IS normal and there ARE ways to learn about it and work on self soothing and reducing the pressures of thinking you have to know it all right now. Accept that you will NOT know it all, you are only beginning to learn and you CAN learn to relax through stress and anxiety and it is ok to slow down and grow at what ever pace your body needs to go through this growth period of changing hormones and moods and uncertainty that ALL TEENS EXPERIENCE.

Open Eyes