Anxiety is a common complaint of students in high school. There is the kind of anxiety that comes from not studying enough for a test, or not knowing how to study effectively. This is easy enough to fix if the student is a willing learner. But the other kind of anxiety is more complex, and it is worthy of time and attention if it is an issue in a person’s life. For example, the symptoms of anxiety can look like ADHD. If a student is very anxious, it interferes with focus and memory. However, the stimulant medication given for ADHD may be the wrong medication in this case.
To understand anxiety, a basic understanding of how the brain works is necessary, so at the risk of over simplification, here is a quick lesson. Humans have lots of brain cells – some resources say 100 million, others a billion. Regardless, brain cells are called neurons, and the important spaces between them are synapses. The “messengers” that carry information from neuron to neuron are called neurotransmitters. If messages have difficulty being transported, received and interpreted across synapses, one of the outcomes of this can be anxiety expressed as constant worrying, panic attacks and/or social fears. For the purposes of this blog, we will stick to constant worrying because it gets in the way of academic success not to mention social and physical health.
A little situational anxiety is a stimulus, and a helpful thing for motivation to succeed; however, too much anxiety is a detriment to performance and quality of life. Many things can cause a person to be anxious. For example, serotonin is a neurotransmitter and if there is not enough serotonin in the brain, messages can't get across the synapses or be received correctly. The result is a person who can’t stop worrying. Or, a person can have too many neurotransmitters, in which case everything seems hugely important and the person seems to be in a constant crisis. The person wants to “calm down” but they can’t do it, at least not for very long. Another neurotransmitter called GABA acts to “slow down” the brain, and if it can’t be “received well” the brain stays over active and the person feels stressed and hyper all the time. So neurotransmitters are important. If there are too many or too little of them, a person likely will have problems with their behavior, thoughts or moods. Besides serotonin and GABA, other neurotransmitters are dopamine, norepinephrine and glutamate, and they have to be in working effectively as well or, you guessed it, a person is overly anxious.
The front part of the brain, called the cortex, develops at different rates for different people. A frontal cortex that is slow in developing may be one reason why some children/young adults might be deemed immature, disorganized or thought to have poor social skills or poor working memory. For example, children (especially boys) with ADHD often are 3-5 years behind in the development of their frontal cortex. Different parts of the cortex have different jobs, all having to do with how we think about our emotions, remember information and experiences, and how we filter and respond to information. So if parts of the frontal cortex are not well developed yet, neurotransmitters don’t get a fair chance to do their job. Add to this too many or too little neurotransmitters, and you have someone stuck on negative thoughts, oppositional behavior, and inflexibility, along with significant anxiety.
The part of the brain that creates emotional responses is called the limbic system. This happens without our conscious awareness, like the stress response. When we need to get out of the way of danger this is a good thing. However, when too many neurons in this part of the brain respond to everything as stress this is not good. If you hear someone say, “She over reacts to everything!” You might say, “Perhaps some part of her limbic system is overactive.” Okay so you wouldn’t say that, but you get my point. Brain science is an exciting and popular topic today that is getting a lot of attention. This blog is just a taste, but the point here is to know that it is not hard to have a better understanding of how the brain works which is important for people who are challenged by anxiety, ADHD, depression, and other mental challenges.
So what to do for the anxious person? People today frequently go to a doctor, and often start taking medication. What is important to know, however, is that talking to a person trained in helping people/children manage their anxiety can be very helpful, regardless whether or not medication has been prescribed.
Stay tuned for the next installment of this blog series -- to be published on Monday -- which will include some suggestions in this regard. If you want to know more right away, Margaret Wehrenberg’s book, “The 10 Best-Ever Anxiety Management Techniques,” is a great resource.
