by Sissy Goff
The Roller Coaster of Development
I’ve noticed that when I tell younger girls the things outlined above about who they are—bright, conscientious, caring—huge smiles spread across their faces. I’ll say, “Is that true?” And every one of them nods and says, “Yes!” For girls your age, however, it’s different.
I tell someone your age the wonderful things I believe are true about who God made her to be, and the most I get in reply is an “I guess.” I would guess that you would say the same thing. It’s complicated. Yes, those things are true. But you know, as we just talked about, they also trip you up sometimes. Or you’re not even sure you believe them anymore. Or one day you do and the next day you don’t. Up and down. Up and down . . . just like a one-loop roller coaster.
More than 1,300 girls ages eight to eighteen were surveyed in a recent poll. They were asked to rate their confidence on a 0 to 10 scale. Between the ages of eight and fourteen, the confidence levels of girls dropped 30 percent, from 8.5 to 6.8 That’s a pretty significant drop.
Where would you rate your confidence level today?
What about when you were in elementary school?
Why do you think your confidence might have dropped?
What has changed about you?
I would guess that nothing has changed about you, other than that you’ve gotten a little taller, you’ve gotten a lot smarter, and how you see yourself is different. I hope that poll reminds you of another very important truth: The changes are completely normal. You’re not the only one whose confidence dropped with the beginnings of puberty.
I’d also love for you to stop reading right now and Google Always #likeagirl. It’s an advertisement I show at parenting seminars all over the country to remind parents what it’s like to be a girl your age. Can you relate? I’ve literally seen thousands of girls who experience that drop in confidence during puberty that the girls in the ad describe. I would imagine that you also feel less confident, less free to share your opinion, less sure of yourself in relationships, and a whole lot of other lesses too, in these post-puberty years. We’re going to talk about that again in chapter 8, but here’s something important for you to know: Those lesses are not any more true about you than the too muches and not enoughs we talked about at the beginning of the chapter. You are exactly who and where you’re supposed to be.
The shifts in your perspective have to do with changes going on in your body and in your brain, which influence how you think. We’ll talk more about your thinking later, but let’s talk about what’s happening in your body for now. There are some significant changes taking place as you enter puberty and even as your period is getting regulated. And, no, don’t worry—I’m not going to talk a lot about your period and embarrass you. I’ll only say that from a scientific perspective, it’s not only known to affect your emotions, but how you feel about yourself too.9 You know that. You experience it every month. But I want to talk to you about something you may not know.
When you were a little girl and learning to walk and talk and all of those important things, as you can imagine, your brain was growing really fast. Then, when you were in elementary school, it had a period where the growth slowed down. It’s different for every girl, but as you moved closer to puberty and hormones started wreaking havoc on your brain, the growth started up again. It began growing so fast that it was like too much electricity running through the wiring of an old house. Have the lights ever flickered when you turned on your hair dryer? There is more electricity than the wiring can handle. Your brain, in these years, short-circuits. There is more growth than your brain can handle. When it short-circuits, it primarily affects two things: your memory and your confidence. The ironic thing is that we’re going to talk about how anxiety ALSO affects your memory. Anxiety affects your confidence too. So you’ve got a double whammy from an anxiety and a developmental perspective. Both cause your confidence to dip, on top of some of the other ways your brain thinks in these years that we’ll look at later. For now, though, let’s just say you’ve got a lot of knocks against your confidence. You’ve got a lot of reasons NOT to see your gifts and to live in and dwell on the flip side of those very gifts. And I want us to flip that record right back over.
You are bright.
You are conscientious.
You care deeply.
Things matter to you.
You try hard.
I would also guess that you’re really kind.
And I KNOW that you’re brave.
The Worry Whisperer tries to make you think none of those things are true. The definition I came up with in the book for your parents is that anxiety is an overestimation of the problem and an underestimation of yourself.10 The Worry Whisperer wants you to live in the too-much and not-enough and less places—the underestimation of yourself. If you live there, you won’t fight him. You won’t believe you can, and he can keep you right where he wants you . . . worried and defeated. I know that’s not where you want to be. I know you want more. I know you want to be able to face the things that make you afraid. I know you want to have freedom from your worries. I know you want to experience the you that you know is somewhere deep inside and the gifts God has placed within your bright, brave self.
I want you to take a minute and do a little homework. I want you to make sure you keep the Worry Whisperer completely out of the room. We’re not going to give his voice any power. And I want you to try really hard to listen to that voice inside of you—God’s voice saying who you are.
Draw a circle. Inside that circle I want you to write ten ways that you believe God has gifted you—who He has made you to be. Don’t worry about bragging. It’s not a thing here. They’re His gifts—remember, He’s the one getting credit. Now, out to the side of the circle, I want you to write down five to ten lies you believe that the Worry Whisperer tells you.
This book is going to help you live more in the middle of that circle. That’s what we’re going for . . . living where his voice doesn’t have the power to define you. And it doesn’t. Only God does. So let’s talk a little more about why and how this book can help you see and experience the gifted, bright, strong, brave young woman God uniquely made you to be.
A Few Brave Things
to Remember
One of Worry’s worst tricks is that he tries to get us to blame ourselves for things that are either out of our control or that aren’t blameworthy to begin with.
Most of the reasons you struggle with worry are externals—they’re in your family makeup, they’re a result of something hard that’s happened in your life, they’re related to the pressure surrounding the lives of girls today, or they’re even a result of the effects of screens on your brain.
You’ve been through hard things—and God can use those very things to create more resilience and strength in you. Often the worry gets worse in the short-term, but God can and will redeem every hard thing you’ve been through. It’s important to talk about those things with a trusted adult, especially if you’re in the season when those things seem to be making the worry worse.
Technology use has been connected to higher rates of anxiety and depression among teenagers, and these are five common ways it impacts our lives: it creates a false sense of security; it creates a false sense of relationship; it feeds the comparison monster; it actually creates anxiety-like brain activity; and it leads to an overwhelming pressure to keep up.
All of the girls I’ve ever met who are anxious have a few things in common: they’re bright and conscientious, they care and feel deeply, and they try hard. Those very gifts are sometimes the things that make us more anxious. It can be hard to turn down the volume knob on all of the caring and aware-ing.
You’re at an age when girls’ confidence dips naturally—even the girls who look confident. It has to do with the way your brain is growing and your hormones are changing. It’s completely normal, and those feelings you’re having of not being enough are simply not true.
Anxiety is an overestim
ation of the problem and an underestimation of yourself. Worry’s voice does not have the power to define you. That job belongs to you and the God who loves and delights in you.
3. How Will This Help?
Think about a time when you got really anxious recently. What was it about? How did you respond? How well did your response work?
Spoiler alert: Most of our attempts to deal with worry and anxiety on our own don’t work. Well, I should say the natural ways we deal with anxiety don’t. At best, we delay the anxiety. At worst, we push it down and give it a chance to fester and grow inside of us.
Now think about that same story in the context of fight, flight, or freeze. If you had to fit your response into one of those categories, which would it be?
I am a flier. I have been since I was a little girl. I’ll never forget being at a haunted house with my dad and my Brownie troop. We were standing in line, listening to the screams of other people in the house. I saw a poster of a vampire—it wasn’t a real vampire (and by real, I mean a real person posing as a vampire) or even a super-scary image. I think it was an outline of a vampire that, in my mind now, looks more like the Count from Sesame Street. But within moments, I was down on all fours, backing my way out of the house between the legs of other people in line. My dad didn’t even realize it had happened until I had exited the building.
I could say the same has been true in my life as I’ve gotten older, and in deeper areas too. It’s not just a reaction to a silly sense of fear. It’s a reaction to worry, anxiety, and stress. At times when things feel hard or scary, such as conflict with a friend, I often disappear. I back out and avoid that friend, conveniently unable to get together. In the last few years, I feel like I’m finally learning to stay in the scariness and talk things through. Not haunted houses—not ever again—but the more important scary things. The things that matter. I actually believe all of us, in silly ways and in deeper ways, lean toward fight, flight, or freeze.
What about you?
Sometimes fight, flight, and freeze are what are called involuntary reactions, which originate in the amygdala, the more reactionary part of the brain. But we also fight, flee, or freeze as a choice with the thinking parts of our brain, or at least the subconscious thinking parts of our brain. This kind of fight, flight, or freeze is more of a learned behavior than a survival reaction. It might have started as survival, but by now, it’s gotten relatively entrenched.
Think of one story from your childhood that reflects a fight, flight, or freeze response. Write about it here.
Write about a more recent story.
Looking at those stories, do you think you’re more of a fight, flight, or freeze kind of person? To get to where we’re going, we have to start where we are. In other words, we have to start with an understanding of what doesn’t help before we can get to what does. As we said in the beginning of this chapter, the fighting, fleeing, or freezing we do doesn’t work—at least not for long.
The Path of Least Resistance
Fight
I’m writing this in the midst of a pandemic. Many businesses that were required by the government to close to prevent the spread of the virus are now reopening. At this stage, it’s fascinating (and tragic as well, in terms of the loss that’s occurred all over the world). In Nashville, we’re required to social distance, wear masks, and gather in groups of fewer than ten. As you can imagine, though, that’s not happening in lots of areas. In fact, it’s making more than a few folks angry. I saw a sign outside of a restaurant that said something like “Open and should have been all along!” I think the owner must have been more of a fight kind of guy.
If it’s hard to tell, think about your first reaction to conflict. And be honest about your first reaction. When someone confronts you about something, do you get defensive? Do you fire back, trying to explain your side? You may have heard the saying “The best defense is a good offense,” which really means “Attack them before they can attack you.” Can you relate?
What about your fears? When you’re afraid of something, do you make yourself do it anyway? You’re afraid of heights, so you’re first in line to try the ropes course at camp. Or maybe your fight comes more in the form of sabotage. You actually set up the thing you’re afraid of happening. For example, you’re really afraid your two best friends are getting closer to each other than to you. Instead of talking about it, you tell them they should just go on without you, and you hang back to see if they’ll try one more time to include you.
Sabotage doesn’t work. You end up being left by the two friends you were afraid would leave you out. You get up on the highest pole of the ropes course and then realize you should have learned on the lowest. You end up hurt, and the thing you were afraid of actually comes true.
Flight
There are a lot of ways those of us who are flight risks choose to carry out our plans. The main three are denial, distraction, and escapism.
1. DENIAL
Denial and pretending could be the same idea. When we lean toward that method, we make statements like these:
“I don’t really worry about things. I just get a lot done.”
“I’m not rechecking the lock because I’m worried. It just makes me feel better.”
“I don’t want to think about it. I’d rather think about the good things.”
With younger kids I’m counseling who lean toward denial, I take them outside and bring a Coke bottle with me. They’re typically girls who are in the middle of their parents’ divorce or something else hard and anxiety provoking. We sit outside and talk about how “great” things are at home and school and in their lives in general, and all the while I shake the Coke bottle. At the end of the conversation, I open it—and Coke spews out everywhere. To deny or pretend is the same. We squash those feelings down and squash those feelings down, but they have to come out sooner or later. Often, they spew out all over your mom or little sister. Or they come out in the form of headaches or stomachaches. If you’re a deny-er, you know exactly what I mean.
2. DISTRACTION
My counselor referred to this as brain candy. It was one of those sessions when you’re not sure you even like counseling, because they tell you something hard about yourself. But in the long run, you’re glad. In fact, I think it’s part of our job, as counselors, to help you see the parts of yourself that you might not want to. Otherwise, you keep doing the things that don’t work, and that ends up hurting you in the long run.
What he was saying was that I can get into a routine of work, brain candy, sleep. Work, brain candy, sleep. I wonder if the same is true of you sometimes. School, brain candy, sleep. School, brain candy, sleep.
He didn’t actually tell me what brain candy means. (That’s another sign you have a good counselor—when what they say makes you connect the dots on your own.) Here’s my interpretation. Brain candy is something that’s appealing and fun and distracting, but too much of it makes you sick.
What would be your distracting brain candy? Mine often is TV. Or playing a silly game on my phone. Or Mexican food. Or Coca-Cola. Now, candy is not a bad thing, and none of these things are either. But when I lost the first dog I ever had and really loved, all I did was cry and drink Coke. Somehow, Coke was comforting for me, but it wasn’t helpful. I wasn’t eating, and I wasn’t drinking water. Just downing Cokes through my tears. Not terrible. Just not helpful. A lot of brain candy is like that.
What are your most common types of distractions?
Then there’s the brain candy that is more on the terrible side. I’d use the word destructive. I hear about that kind of brain candy in my office too. Alcohol, drugs, pornography—anything that can be addictive. Eating disorders are also a destructive form of distraction that quickly becomes addictive. Again, anything we do that’s for the purpose of distracting us from our feelings can become destructive and only works to distract us for a little while. The feelings just come back after the distraction is over, and sometimes they come back with more destruction in t
heir wake.
3. ESCAPISM
Escapism is a harder one. It’s harder because it’s often something you’re taught. And I’m not at all trying to call your parents out here, but you may have to respectfully tell them it’s time to do something different.
I’ll never forget the time I saw a mom teach this form of flight right in front of me. I was walking through the Daystar lobby with Lucy on my heels. Let me just say, so you can put yourself in the scene, that Lucy weighs nine pounds. She’s approximately ten inches tall. She’s more fluff than form, but don’t tell her that. And she’s eleven, so she’s missing most of her teeth. She is NOT an anxiety-provoking dog, as dogs go. Again, don’t tell her I said so. She thinks she’s quite scary. As Lucy and I were walking through the lobby, a little girl started screaming. I looked around to see what could possibly be wrong when I realized she was pointing at Lucy. Her mom snatched her up, held her daughter’s face to her chest, and yelled at me, “Keep that dog away from us!” She was teaching her to escape.
What I wish her mom had done is get up and walk over to Lucy, even leaving her daughter at a safe distance on the couch. I wish she had crouched down (way down, since Lucy is so small and not scary) and petted Lucy, saying, “What a nice dog.” I wish she had modeled what it looks like to face your fear—not fight it, but face it.
