Accepting the Moodiness of the Teenage Years

This is the first note I wrote in this book, and I’m revising it because after writing over 160 notes over a two-and-a-half-year period, I wonder if it’s more important than ever. When I wrote it first, you were not yet teenagers…close, but not quite there. Now that time has come. After much reflection, I see the teenage years as an amazing opportunity for self-discovery…and also as a challenging time. There’s a secret about teenage years that I’ll reveal to you at the end of this first note, and I think it sets a good theme for this whole work. If you are reading this as a teenager, then you might not quite believe the secret, but I think at least you’ll hear the sincerity in my telling it to you. It’s what I think I’d want to know if I was suddenly thrust back into my teenage years in some kind of a sci-fi movie, rom-com do-over.

A predominate feature of the teenage years is the moods. I’m sure you can see it in yourselves now, and you’ve both expressed seeing it in your friends. Our mood is just how we generally feel in the moment. Happy one minute, sad the next? Feel a real connection with friends today, then feel really lonely the next day? Feeling pretty good about yourself today, but feeling like your just worthless tomorrow? That’s it. That’s the moodiness I’m talking about. You’ll see it in your friends too…lots of emotions that sometimes run wild. They’ll be happy with you one moment and upset at you the next. Teenagers can also tend to seek out friends in a similar mood so they can all revel in their misery together. I certainly did it. I remember that much of my moodiness revolved around romantic relationships I was interested in, but just couldn’t seem to make it work, and there’s an awkwardness around that whole subject that can persist long after the teenage years are done.

A lot of moodiness can come from other things, like not feeling good enough or smart enough compared to your peers at school. When I was in school, everyone else always seemed to have it better together than I did…they had better clothes, they always seemed happier, their parents had better cars, they had two parents when I had only one, they seemed to do better in class than I did, their bodies always seemed to look better than mine…and my hair…I hated my hair. Everyone always seemed to have hair that just worked, but mine never did what I wanted, and I spent a lot of time worried that others would notice that my hair wasn’t just right. That’s a lot to carry around and it’s bound to affect your mood.

You may not want to believe this, but pretty much everyone in your age group feels this way. It’s really true. And the crazy thing is that this very same insecure spirit can stick with us throughout our lives. There’s an insecurity and comparative story that runs strong in the teenage years, and it can haunt us our whole lives if we don’t face it and make peace with it…and ourselves. That’s part of the secret. It’s real work, to be sure…and I promise you it’s worth it. You are ready to do that work.

Is there anything you can do to stop being moody? Well, there’s no magic, quick fix. This note is not about stopping our moods – it’s about accepting them. The thing is there’s nothing wrong with all the feelings that go along with being a teenager. It’s just part of growing up. Learning to recognize, accept, and manage your feelings is part of being a mature, functional adult, and it’s a learned process. And it’s not a competition with others, either. You’ll learn to manage your moods in time, but it may not be until you are in your very late teens and early twenties that you start to feel comfortable with yourself. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think a main reason is just that in your middle and high school years, you are kind of trapped with your peers – you have to go to school all day with them and you often don’t have a lot of control over that. This whole COVID thing that will be in the history books is a great opportunity for you to see a contrast there…the experience of online/home school is very different from the physical classroom…take note of that…a lot of your life will be spent alone, with you as the self-starting mechanism. Your physical “trapped-ness” in a crowded classroom can definitely add to your moodiness. Once you get out of high school and move into college and life, you have a lot more choices about the friends you want to have, and I think that makes a real difference. For me, the biggest change was that once I wasn’t stuck in high school, I did a lot less comparing of myself to others. One surprise was that of all the “friends” I had in high school, I kept in touch with only one or two of them. I know that it’s different with social media today, but I’m guessing that you’ll probably only maintain a few good friendships at a time throughout your life. Mass education in a middle or high school setting is actually a relatively new thing. It’s not even been around for a hundred years. In a modern world where we are not all farmers, it’s just how we educate the masses to a minimum standard so that they can function in our world. It’s also creates a uniquely competitive environment, one you’ll likely never be in again. You compete for attention, opportunity, and even romance. If you want more on this idea, there’s a note on the lessons of high school toward the end of this book. I’m particularly proud of that note, so I encourage you to read it. There’s no required order to any of the notes in this book, so feel free to jump around whenever you like. You can even cross out things and write in your own thoughts if you like. It’s your book. Take ownership of it and make it whatever you need it to be.

Another issue with moodiness is that as your body grows, there are a lot of chemical changes as you go from being a boy to a man, or a girl to a woman, and those can be just plain embarrassing and weird. Have you ever surprised yourself by accidentally walking into a doorjamb? We seem to grow in fits and starts, and that’s why they have phrases like “growth spurt”. You’ll have these moments where you grow so rapidly and the changes happen so quickly that you literally misjudge where your body ends and the world begins. The same thing can happen with our feelings – it seems like they can just turn on and off from one day to the next, and the feelings we create can be very disconnected from what’s actually happening. That can be pretty confusing. I wish I could tell you that this period is only a few years long, but truth be told, you’ve probably got a decade or longer ahead of you of this phase. I promise you that it can get easier, but it will take a little work. I think we can become used to recognizing our moods as they come and go, choosing to simply observe them without unhealthy self-judgement. In time, we can become more confident that our moods will pass, and that means that when we are in the middle of a mood, we can just view ourselves objectively, not as good or bad or write or wrong, and just wait it out. These are evolutionary fight or flight chemicals coursing through our bodies…it’s often physical, and my experience has been that we can’t just “think” those chemicals away…but we can thoughtfully pause and let them dissipate. There’s real power in that process. The human brain continues to grow into the twenties, so even if your body appears to be fully grown, there may be some mental growth still left to go, and so you can give yourself a little leeway to experiment and learn. I’m still find myself quite moody from time to time, but I just have enough life experience to know and expect it to pass. You are not alone in all of this. You’re just a human being. It’s part of the deal.

There are certainly a few things you can do to manage the moodiness, and since a lot of it is literally caused by the design of the human physiology, these things are going to be physical things, not necessarily mental things. You may not want to do them, and yet they are what your body needs to even out all the chemicals that come and go. First of all, you need to be sure to get enough sleep. I know that teenagers like to stay up late. Mom says that this is because as we were evolving, the typical teenager was too young to go fight off the wild animals, but they were well suited to staying up late and guarding the camp. I think she got that from a child psychology class in college. It’s as good an explanation as any, and yet in our modern world with mass education, school starts early. If you habitually stay up late, that early morning obligation is going to directly conflict with getting a good night’s rest. I’m not sure I’ve got much for you here…it’s an issue. They really should just start school a couple of hours later in the day. Do your best and listen to your body.

Another thing you can do is to start being more mindful of the fuel you put in your body. That’s a big contributor to the whole package. A balanced diet will help your body manage its chemical processes. It’ll also help you develop well. This is kind of your final growth spurt, so give your body everything it needs to become the best version of you it can. This will help in the romance department as well. If you eat a lot of crap, it’ll show up in moods, acne, and body odor…not things that will make you confident as you try to get noticed by someone …they might notice you, but not in the way you want them to…give yourself a break in this department and put good food in your body. Keep the salty, sweet, fatty, french-fry-potato chip-soft-drink addition under control. We all seem to have it, and it’s not our fault. The makers of those “food substitutes” know just what to put in them to keep us hooked. They are interested in profit, not your health or your love life.

Yet another thing you can do is to get plenty of exercise. This is my go-to, and you’ve seen me do it. I do it in front of you all the time so that you will see it, and I hope that you’ll follow my example. At my age of 50, I’m in better shape than a lot of teenagers. When you take some kind of science or anatomy class in high school or college, you’ll see these amazingly detailed pictures of our skeletal and muscular structure…we evolved like that, and we did so because we needed to move to survive…we are movement machines. Our bodies are designed for motion and work. If we ignore this and eat all the processed food substitutes for the duration of our lives, we end up looking like…well, just look around…there’s a real cost here that you and I are not destined to pay. Your body was made for exercise and movement, so use it that way. Every day, be physical somehow, whether that’s a specific exercise or weightlifting routine, a sport you like, biking, hiking, chasing chickens around the yard, frolicking through the forest naked like a two year old…whatever…just be athletic and you’ll be amazed how much this helps all those moody chemicals settle and turn into happy endorphins in your brain. This is true at any age.

Finally, learn to value your alone time. You are my children, so I expect that won’t be hard, but stay balanced here…you also need good companionship in your life. Learn to hear your breathing and listen to the message it’s telling you. There’s a mediation thing involved here. Your breathing can influence your mood and your mood can influence your breathing. It’s a circular thing. If you can’t figure out where to jump on this merry-go-round, just set a timer and breathe in and out slowly for 2 minutes…or five minutes…or fifteen…whatever feels right. I promise you that your quiet, inside self will see what you are doing and take over. It’ll help you to think clearly.

We are not our moods. Feelings, both happy and sad, come and go in our lives. If there was a big ah-ha about this subject, it is that the moodiness of the teenage years doesn’t ever go away…we just learn to manage it constructively. That’s the secret I alluded to at the beginning of this note. The feelings that appear in the teenage years are powerful and new, and young people need time to experience them, observing them coming and going in their lives. Adults are just teenagers with more life experience. We have all the same moods, all the same powerful feelings, and we also have seen those moods come and go enough in our lives that we expect that process to continue. I can’t even begin to count the times I’ve been in a bad mood, fully aware that it’s all my own doing, and also aware that the mood will pass in time if I can just keep my mouth shut. Maturity is just another way of describing the thoughtful reflection of our personal experiences.

A word of caution…your self-talk is important…you know that crazy roommate in your head who runs an inner monologue constantly? Yeah…he or she is nuts sometimes. You are so not the only one with a crazy roommate blabbing a bizarre narrative all day long…we all have that. At the same time, you don’t have to just sit idly and put up with that. If you had a best friend with you always, doing that everywhere you went, eventually you’d confront them. Well, if you find your inner roommate starts criticizing you (and others) all the time, it’s time to confront yourself and put some boundaries up. Try to avoid falling into the trap of thinking that you’re not smart enough, that no one likes you, that nothing you do is right. That is simply not true… and it’s really common to think that way, even for adults. If you hear yourself saying, “I’m so stupid”, or “nobody likes me”, and things like that - be aware of it and make a real effort try to change that inner dialogue. Even if you think that from time to time, just don’t let your mouth say the words. If you say those kinds of words to yourself over and over, you might eventually start to really believe them, even though no one else sees you that way. Your subconscious will adapt to whatever it repeatedly experiences, and it’s not partial to good and bad habits. Don’t create a habit of self-doubt, and if you have, then work hard to repeat a different story to your subconscious…do it over and over until you believe it, even if it seems mechanical. Most everyone at your age is plenty smart and well liked, and you are no different.

Managing our moods is challenging, but I know you can learn how to do it. Expect it to take years of effort. It takes years of practice to learn a musical instrument and learning to understand yourself is no different. When experiencing a mood, either good or bad, take a moment or two and just observe yourself. What might help you is to remember that feelings come and go in our lives. If you’re happy today, you’ll probably be a little sad another day. If your sad today, you’ll feel happy later. Don’t be afraid to just observe what your feeling, accept it, experience it, and then move on to the next thing. A lot of the things that you will worry about will have a funny habit of just resolving themselves with the passage of time. Love yourself, even with all of your moods. It’s just part of growing up, and you’re doing a great job at that!