Last year during February I wrote about Eating Disorder Awareness Month. This is something that so many teenagers struggle with, but is never uncovered.
Middle and high school students really begin to try and fit into a place where they feel they belong, and sometimes this means experiencing bullying or trying to become someone they are not.
Students begin to have high expectations for themselves and how they want their bodies to be, and this can cause them to develop unhealthy habits that turn into extremely hard patterns to break.
According to the website Psychology Today, attacks on self-esteem can be broken down into four selective categories…
- Chronic abuse & criticism
- Adverse childhood Eexperiences
- Societal pressures and expectations
- Attacks on identity
This website notes how important it is for teens to experience compassion, empathy, and encouragement to help them learn to value themselves and their potential.
Social media really impacts students nowadays because they see all these people online with a “picture-perfect lifestyle,” which then makes them feel inferior and that they need to do more to gain all this popularity and fill this void inside of them with praise and attention.
When kids develop and learn who they are, they get verbally attacked by their peers making fun of how they dress, what grades they get, their weight, their athletic abilities, their home life, etc. … it degrades kids to the point where anything that they felt confident about in themselves has been washed away.
This all leads to internal changes within the growth of a kid. They could continue to grow and feel as if they are pointless and have no purpose in life and can develop depression.
Kids could have less confidence in who they were created to be, or begin avoiding having to take healthy risks because the only comfort they feel they have is in the place in life that they may currently sit in, which means that these kids could develop severe anxiety.
They could develop bad behavioral patterns making choices that they may know are wrong, but they have this inner longing to fit in so bad that they make these choices to gain their peer’s approval, which could then result in them becoming addicted to substances.
Lastly, these students may isolate themselves from society, feeling like they need to disappear completely, which results in extreme loneliness because we as humans are created to be in a healthy community.
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Psychology Today outlines the four common reasons for low self-esteem: |
Kids are going to be kids, whether those kids are the ones who lift others up or the ones who break others down is out of our control. Here’s what we can control …
As parents, raise your kids to learn affection, kindness, love, and compassion. Let them know how proud you are of them every day and tell them how loved and valued they are. If your kids begin to step out in a way of becoming a bully, address the behavior, don’t ignore it because that could lead to a student feeling like there’s no hope left for them.
As for teachers, coaches, etc., watch out for all your students, and make sure to check in on them, even the ones who seem perfectly fine and like they have it all together. Give them praise and positive reinforcement in the moments where you can, and if a student tells you about their feeling or how another student may be treating them, don’t ignore them. Instead sit down with them and talk through everything so that they know they have someone on their side who believes and hears them.
Kids shouldn’t have to suffer with feelings of loneliness, anxiety, depression, and feeling like they are worthless and their lives mean nothing, but it is also very real and common in many kids that you pass by day-to-day.
Everyone is going through something and everyone has their own story to tell, and you won’t truly know what it’s like for them until you take the time to sit with them, and talk to them.
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