If you are a teen or a helper for teens and have picked up this book, I applaud you. You are here seeking answers to address teen stress, and what you will find here will help you in ways you have probably never imagined. This stress solution only requires a little bit work of and commitment. These techniques and exercises are based on the hard science of our brains and bodies. They have helped other teens manage stress and find success. I know them to be truly effective because they have helped over a thousand teens in my programs.
Today’s world is an increasingly stressful place for teens. Youth today are faced with immense and increasing stresses, including bullying, divorce, drugs, and even violence. The digital media world swamps us with information and can be like taking a bath in stress. Regardless of the form of stress we are facing, our brains react in a pattern that has been established over time. This book, with its Heartmath solution, offers a healthy alternative pattern to counter those established patterns and master stress.
I found HeartMath’s solution to managing a stress-filled world when I had been working with extremely troubled teens, as well as high-level adolescent athletes, for about eight years. This introduction included HeartMath’s techniques and its accompanying easy-to-use technology. I had never encountered a more scientifically sound yet simple way to manage stress. I began to experiment and discovered various ways to teach the information successfully to adolescents. Even the most resistant and stressed youth told me they could feel it working. In my programs, we have done this work with large groups of youth, individuals, and even families for the last eighteen years. All of this work has created the same result: mastery of one’s internal world while navigating the rough seas of the adolescent stage of life.
Through the years I have seen many youth heal from various levels of stress, anxiety, and even trauma through the power in HeartMath’s techniques. One particular young man comes to mind. He suffered from depression and struggled socially, his parents were divorced, and he managed stress poorly. When he completed our program he believed in the Quick Coherence technique so deeply that he went on to train his entire Post Wilderness Program therapeutic school’s staff and all of the students there. He even presented on the original HeartMath book, Transforming Stress. HeartMath transformed his life and he carried it on to help others de-stress.
I have often wished that, during my time navigating the rough seas of my own teen years, I would have had these solutions. I was a teen with a divorced family, an angry father. All of the stresses of life built to the point of my needing relief. I was desperate for a way out but had no healthy solution, and I grasped for any way out I could find. Unhealthy endeavors became a short-term solution that led to more stressors and more alienation.
Do yourself, and the teens you care about, a favor and reach for this healthier, effective HeartMath solution!
—Steve Sawyer, LCSW CSACChief Clinical OfficerNew Vision Wilderness Therapy Programs