Her Body Knows What to Do: Understanding how Stress Shows Up in Teen Girls

0:00 Stress doesn't live in her head. It lives in her body. Every part of it, from her muscles to her bones, to her ligaments, to her tendons, everything, her fascia, it's stuck in her body. It's stuck in the organs, it's stuck in her lungs, it's stuck absolutely everywhere. And until she moves it through her body and out, it's not going anywhere. Not one iota, not one centimetre. It's literally stuck in her body. So hiya and welcome back to the Teen Whisperer. I'm Rach Friedley, play specialist and fellow mum, and today we're talking about something that I genuinely wish someone had told me years ago.

0:51 It would have saved me loads of those pointless conversations trying to get something through to my daughter's head. So here's the deal: stress is not a thought. It's not something she can think her way out of. And I know this is gonna sting a little bit, it's not something you can talk her out of either. I know, I know. We love a good chat, don't we? We are mums. We love that connection, we love that communication. Talking is basically our superpower. But for this particular problem, completely the wrong tool.

1:26 And by the end of this episode, you are gonna understand exactly why and what to reach for instead. So let's go. Right, I want you to picture this. Your daughter is home from school, college, education, work, whatever. She's either on her phone in her room or she sat at the table looking like she's auditioning for a documentary about the end of the world. She looks like doom and gloom. You foolishly ask her how her day was. I say foolishly because I'm talking about me. She says, Fine. You ask her what happened.

2:04 She says, nothing. You ask her if she's okay. And she looks like you've either got seven heads or you've personally offended her entire existence and says, I'm fine, mum. And you're stood there thinking, what the friggity frig did I just do? What did I say? Should I try again? Should I leave her? Should I make a snack? Should I not make a snack? Is the snack the answer? Is she hungry? It's probably not a snack. Sound familiar? Yeah. We've all been there, haven't we? When we've worked through things in our own heads trying to figure out what the frick is going on.

2:42 So here's what I actually want you to know. Here's what's going on, and once you hear this, I promise it's gonna make complete sense. Her body has been full of stress all day. From the minute she got up to the minute she's gone to bed. It is full of stress, and it has absolutely nowhere to go. So think about what a day actually looks like for one of our teen girls. She gets up, gets in the car, or on the bus if you like it. She sits down. She then goes to lessons, goes to lectures, goes to work.

3:21 She moves between rooms, moves between jobs. Still basically sitting, possibly a bit upright and a bit walking, obviously, because you're not going to move when you're sitting. Then she gets home. So she gets back in the car or the bus, gets home. And then what does she do for damn time? She sits on her phone, has dinner, guess what she's doing? She's still sitting, and then she goes to bed. There is almost no moment in that entire day where her body gets to do what it was actually designed to do when stressed, which is move.

4:01 And because here's the biology bit, and I'm gonna keep it quick because I know you've got stuff to do, when something stressful happens, and for a teenage girl, stressful can mean anything from something that's teeny tiny weeny to something massive or a look from the wrong person, the body floods with adrenaline and cortisol. Her heart rate goes up, her muscles are ready for movement, the whole system goes right, we're doing something, we're moving, we're handling this, and then she sits in double mass.

4:43 Or sits down for four hours on a computer, whatever it is, and does nothing with any of it. That stress, it hasn't disappeared, it's still in there, all of it. It's just sitting stuck in her body with nowhere to go. It's building, and by the time she gets home, she is absolutely wired and possibly doesn't even know why, because nobody's ever explained this to her either. And this is why talking doesn't work. Because the part of her brain that does talking, ye old, prefrontal cortex, yet again, the bit that manages language, logic, emotional regulation, organisation, risk assessment, and being able to say, actually, mum, I'm feeling overwhelmed because of X, Y, and Z, that part goes offline when the nervous system is dysregulated.

5:36 It literally cannot function properly when the body is in that state. So she's not refusing to talk to you. She just can't. The lights are on, but the wordy bit of her brain has completely left the building. Again, it's like that Wi-Fi has been pulled from the wall, it's like the electricity has been turned off at the transmitter. It has literally gone poof. Which means more conversation is not the answer. Moving the stress through the body is. Now, and I want to be really clear here because I know what you're thinking.

6:13 I am not talking about exercise. I'm not talking telling you to send her on a run or sign her up for the gym or suggest she gets some fresh air in that hopeful way, we all do, because if she's dysregulated, that suggestion is gonna land like a lead balloon, and you know it. I'm talking about movement with absolutely no goal attached, no performance, no fitness outcome, just the body moving because the body needs to move. I mean, think about it when she was a toddler, when she was overwhelmed. Did she sit still and not do anything?

6:49 No, of course she didn't. She ran, she flapped her arms, she threw herself on the floor, which honestly I understand completely. They shake, they cry, they move it through, they climb trees, they splash in puddles, they jump up and down, they bounce. Nobody taught them to do that. The body just does it because the body knows. And our girls are still those toddlers, they still have all of those instincts within them. Yeah, okay, she's not a toddler, she's a teen. So we're not teaching her anything new, we're giving her permission to do what her body already knows how to do.

7:31 But here's the thing that absolutely gets me time and time again. Girls specifically are trained out of this from a really young age. Sit nicely, inside voices, don't make a scene, don't be bossy, be calm, be good, hold it together. But boys get to be physical and loud and a bit feral, and that's fine. That's just boys. But girls, girls are just expected to cope quietly, and so they do. And the stress just stays. It builds, it gets more and more, and then we go, oh, she's got anxiety, she's got anger issues, she's self-harming.

8:13 Something must be wrong with her. But here's the truth: nothing is wrong with her. She's just never got permission to shake it out, to get it out of her body. So, what can you actually do with this? So, this week I want you to try two things. Yep, you heard me correctly. Two things. First, notice when she's already doing it without realizing that jiggling leg, the picking of her skin, the pacing around the kitchen when she's supposed to be doing something else, the bouncing her heel off the floor.

8:45 It's not bad habits. This is her nervous system trying to discharge, doing exactly what it's supposed to. So internally, just notice it, don't correct it, just let it happen. And secondly, this one is for you as much as her move yourself. I'm serious. If we want to see these types of behaviours in our girls, we need to mirror it for them to understand. So before you try and get moving, get her moving, you move. Put a song on, walk around the block, shake your shoulders out of the kitchen like you're a complete idiot.

9:22 Because your nervous system is carrying this too. You've been stressed about her being stressed, and that stress is also sitting in guess whose body? Yours. And a mum who's moved some of her own stress out, way better placed to help her daughter than one who's been holding in since Tuesday. You don't need to explain any of the neuroscience to her. You don't need to say, right, we're going to discharge your cortisol now, because she'll look at you as if you've got 12 heads. And that's okay, I would too.

9:52 You just create a moment, a silly one, ideally. The lower the stakes, the better. So right now I am currently balancing on my yoga ball. Both feet are off the floor and I am just jigging around. This is my way of regulating my body. I can't be in my brain whilst I'm eating my body, and this is freaking awesome. So next week we're going straight into the tricky bit. What do you do when she will not leave her room? When even the suggestion of movement makes her look at you like you've lost a plot.

10:23 This one's good, and so don't miss it. So if this episode landed for you today, please hit subscribe so you don't miss what's coming. And if you want really simple body first tools, sign up for my email. Literally, just sign up for my email. I will send you regular tools on my emails. So yeah. Links in the show notes or finally at the3w13wisperer at co.uk. And take care and remember you are doing way better than you think. See you next week. Bye.