Anxiety Treatment Centers For Teens 

Teens struggle with anxiety for a number of reasons, and it can take a variety of forms. Anxiety may come from daily life, relationships, or even changing up their schedule. Whatever the cause may be, anxiety often limits self-esteem and can make teens feel stuck and hopeless. Anxiety itself represents a challenge that often must be overcome with professional help. Unfortunately, this condition rarely exists on its own. Instead, it often leads to other problems, such as withdrawal, depression, and/or self-medication. Because of this, it’s crucial to understand the underlying causes of all these problems. Anxiety treatment centers for teens such as Red Mountain Colorado can help.

General Anxiety

Those who suffer from general anxiety experience excessive worrying, often without any true cause. They project their thoughts into the future and imagine that something negative will happen unless they can find a way to prevent it. While it may be healthy to plan ahead and prepare for tomorrow in a thoughtful way, generalized anxiety can paralyze the person who deals with it, so that they actually fail to take action to mitigate the situation that concerns them.

Social Anxiety

Social anxiety is common to many people at different ages, and it is often mistaken for simple “shyness.” However, it is really much more debilitating than being a little uncomfortable with others.

Young people with social anxiety experience an acute awareness of what their peers think of them and where they “fit” into the world as they pull away from their parents and begin to forge their own identities. A healthy respect for the opinions of others can, however, easily escalate into a deep fear of being judged in social situations. For some, the obvious solution to social anxiety is to avoid or minimize interactions with others. While this relieves the immediate stress, it cannot be a long-term solution because all of us need to find effective ways to function within the broader society.

One way to manage excessive anxiety is to stick with a rigid routine. If a person is worried about what might happen on a given day, it can be comforting to establish a fixed schedule and stick to it. If all goes well, activities that have been safe in the past will be safe in the future. Having a routine and staying committed to it can be a healthy way for anyone to manage their time effectively, but the anxious person finds it difficult to cope with any disruption of their routine, and unexpected events are just a part of life. For this reason, effective functioning requires that anxious people also develop some resiliency in the face of uncertainty.

The Red Mountain Colorado Approach: Leading Anxiety Treatment Centers 

At Red Mountain Colorado, one of the leading anxiety treatment centers for teens, we do not take a one-size-fits-all approach to any of our students’ problems, and the same is true for anxiety. We treat different types of anxiety in different ways, offering significant opportunities for students to work on activities of daily living, self-care, and social interaction that relieve this crippling condition. Above all else, Red Mountain is a supportive community, offering numerous chances for adventure therapy, communal meals, and group activities. For anxious students, the realization that they will not be judged and that they are in a safe environment is a great relief and allows them, perhaps for the first time, to concentrate on their own healing.

These opportunities help our students to leave their isolation, reduce worrying thoughts, and reach a level of self-sufficiency with respect to both positive peer interaction and responsible self-care. Martial arts training, in particular, builds assertiveness and self-confidence. Anxiety is a form of fear, and martial arts students often report that they have not only overcome physical fears but also emotional and psychological worries.

The Anxiety-Unhealthy Choices Link

Young people who are suffering from excessive anxiety frequently use negative coping behaviors to cover up aspects of themselves that they dislike. The Red Mountain Colorado approach teaches students to live successfully, while also working on the emotional exploration and maturation needed to no longer feel the need to self-medicate. Over time, as a client’s self-esteem and coping skills improve, and the anxiety weakens its hold, the need to use negative coping behaviors often subsides.

Clinically, we use cognitive-behavioral therapies (CBT) to treat significant anxiety issues, as well as additional mindfulness-based techniques, such as meditation and yoga. The goal is to increase self-regulation and feelings of calm and focus while enhancing self-esteem. CBT focuses on finding solutions to psychological problems by modifying thoughts, behaviors, or feelings. From that starting point, we help guide the client over time into a greater sense of belonging in the world, as we help him or her to worry less while processing emotions in healthier ways.