Stress for Life? Habits of Stressed Out Kids

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Have you been stressed for life? Seriously!

Because today, I want to talk about something. I’m going to talk about habits. Bad Habits. Specifically, the behaviors I’ve engaged in since I was a kid. And, though I don’t feel like I should have to say this, it’s the internet, so I will—be nice! I’m sharing this because I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering about this and I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling this.

For as long as I can remember, I have ground my teeth when I sleep and bit my fingernails. And then, in college, I started to develop these little red, dry spots on my skin. When I went to the doctor, they told me they were stress-related. It was almost a decade later, and these red spots came back with a vengeance, covering almost the entirety of my elbow. It was during this “flare up” that I found out that these “stress-related” red spots were eczema.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but then I wondered about how some of these habits and behaviors were related to stress. So, I started googling the relationship between stress and teeth-grinding. And I found a ton of data points…

Then, curiosity made me wonder the relationship between nail biting and stress. Again, I found a ton of data points…

I mentioned this to my mom offhandedly, and her response still makes me laugh. “Damn, what did we do to you as a kid that made you so stressed out?” Obviously, I’m paraphrasing here, but it’s worth asking what might have been some of the things that made me stressed out as a kid…

• Even as a kid, there was definitely pressure to be a “good kid”

• I have an intense dad who I constantly was afraid of disappointing.

• I played on my first competitive soccer team in 7th grade and there was pressure to perform.

• There was comparison in my family—whether it was conscious or not—and not just comparison between me, my brother, and my cousins. There was comparison amongst strangers. Comparison about what careers and majors were and were not impressive.

• And the closer you get to high school, the more you feel the need to be “impressive” for college

It made me think, how many of us have had stress-related behaviors since we were kids? And no wonder, right? I’m sure these things that occurred in my life weren’t unique. I’m sure many of us felt these pressures, whether they were explicit in our lives or not. We felt them. And we had to have some place to channel these stressors and anxieties.

I’ve said it for years in my business: when you do stress and burnout recovery work, it’s not just your job that’s to blame. When we do this work, we’re doing decades worth of mindset, behaviors, and habits. We’re undoing beliefs we’ve held and ways that we’ve been conditioned to behave since we were teenagers. Maybe even before.

That’s why this work is so important. That’s why I know in my bones that the burnout and stress that my clients are recovering from isn’t just because of their jobs.

We’ve been trying to find ways to manage the day-to-day stressors and, when we were kids, our bodies found ways to deal: through nail biting, teeth grinding, eczema, etc. These behaviors and stressors run so deep.

And it’s only through doing this work that we can prevent burnout and stress in our futures.