Too Stressed to Think?: A Teen Guide to Staying Sane When Life Makes You Crazy

by Annie Fox M.Ed., Ruth Kirschner

When stress has the “survival brain” on overdrive, what happens to the “thinking brain”? How can teens learn to use the mind-body connection to stay cool and make smart choices when the pressure’s on? This book is packed with practical information and stress-lessening tools teens can use every day. Dozens of realistic scenarios describe stressful situations teen readers can relate to. Each scenario is followed by a clear, understandable process for reducing or stopping the stress and making decisions that won’t leave a teen lamenting, “What was I thinking?” Throughout, quotes from real teens remind readers that they’re not alone—that stress affects everyone, but it doesn’t have to ruin your life. Includes resources.

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

[Zara · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book, Too Stressed To Think? A Teen Guide to Staying Sane When Life Makes You Crazy by Annie Fox and Ruth Kirschner was made to inform people about stress and the effect it has on the brain. This book talks about what everyone has, stress. Everybody has it and has to deal with it. This book tells you ways to deal with stress effectively and not be unproductive. Also in this book it will show you the effect stress has on your brain. For instance when you are undergoing stress and try and make decisions, you normally choose wrong. This is because when you are stressed you aren't thinking clearly and stress is clouding your judgement. It also explains how the environments you are in everyday can become stressful. For example, home can become stressful or unbearable when there is a problem between you or your family or if someone is in the hospital. Another key point the book touches upon is how to deal with all this stress and how to relieve it. A method that they describe in the book is to close your eyes and take deep breathes. You can’t really prevent stress, you just have to deal with it and this book is full of ways that you can cope with stress even on the worst days.
Now I am not telling you that all of the methods described in the book work one hundred percent of the time and for every person, but the book a lot of methods that may be helpful to you. Also in the book they state that doing what you love is a great stress reliever, whether that is painting, playing soccer or just sitting own and writing about random things, it doesn't matter. Do what makes you feel better and relaxed. In my opinion this book is very useful. In my house you can literally see the stress in the air. I have five brothers, my mum and dad living in the same house with me and there is always something going on. Whether it is finials time, getting to sports or just trying to cram all the responsibilities and homework into one night. My house is not the most calming place to be. While reading this book, I used some of these tips and they helped me manage my time much better. My overall opinion of the book is that it is a little boring but extremely helpful.
While reading this book I learned about what stress does to your brain. I learned that it clouds your judgement and can make you make the wrong decisions. It can also make you feel different emotions depending on the person, for example someone could feel mad while another could feel confused. To me it was interesting learning about the many different ways people can react to stress. Everyone has a different brain and it is interesting to learn about how different people calibrate stress, some get so stressed that they cannot function while others don’t get affected by stress in the slightest.
In the book I disliked that they were really repetitive, I felt like they were saying the same thing over and over again. I also did not like that they did not include any images in the book. What I mean by this is instead of telling us the percent of people get stress from home, school, relationships and other things, I think it would have been much more effective if they graphed on a bar graph or a line graph and displayed it as a visual. I am a very visual person and I think it would have been better displayed as an image and easier to comprehend. I liked that the book had big and easy to read font. I also like that when they talked or re-talked about something in the book, they gave the page that you can find more information on that topic. This would be very helpful if you wanted to learn one thing from the book for example what situations can be stressful. Another thing I liked about this book is that it had actual quotes from other teens embedded in the book. It showed that you are not alone in this and there are a lot more teenagers out there dealing with stress like you and it also gave new examples of when people got stressed and how people deal with it. The authors styles was good for this book. They used a lot of descriptive details that were very useful to the book.
Overall, I think the book was a bit boring but an okay read. It helped me understand more about stress and what happens when it kicks in and what to do about it. I recommend this to anyone who is a teen or twelve. When you are a teen, it is your first real wave of stress and no one can prepare you for it. This book was designed to help teens through this difficult time in their life and help succeed throughout. This book helps teens know different methods to deal with stress and ways to overcome it and not snap. I think that this book is a great read for teens so they know what they are up against.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is called, "Too Stressed to Think?" By Annie Fox. My Reading goal in 8th grade is to read more non- fiction. I chose this goal because it will help me in years to come in school, and so I feel "safe" while writing in that genre. Annie Fox wrote this book because she got a degree in human development and became a writer; writing about humans and the mind. Through out the whole book it tells you how to deal with stress, and tells the reader other individual's opinions and experiences around my age. Something that I like about this book is that it gives you little facts, and asks you questions that you automatically answer in your brain, that will also help you discover something about yourself. The audience she wanted to write for where teenagers- young adults because she talks about relationships and the load of homework. What I realized by reading this book is that there are simple ways to get rid of stress. I used to think stress is easy to have but hard to get rid of, and that is partly true. The book affected how I think, I asked myself questions the book asked me, I realized what I had and what I didn't have. That means either with stress or with friends, and if I cared a lot about a certain subject or I wasn't really feeling it. I would recommend this book to people that are interested how the human mind thinks, receives information, makes decisions, and deals with stress.

I recommend this book to every teenager. This is a well organized guide-book that I believe is essential to the teenage mind. It is informative and accurate yet surprisingly entertaining. I think that everyone could benefit from reading this book!

[Alex]

This book is called, "Too Stressed to Think?" By Annie Fox. My RLA goal in 8th grade is to read more non- fiction. I chose this goal because it will help me in years to come in school, and so I feel "safe" while writing in that genre. Annie Fox wrote this book because she got a degree in human development and became a writer; writing about humans and the mind. Through out the whole book it tells you how to deal with stress, and tells the reader other individual's opinions and experiences around my age. A thing that I like about this book is that it gives you little facts, and asks you questions that you automatically answer in your brain, that will also help you discover something about yourself. The audience she wanted to write for where teenagers- young adults because she talks about relationships and the load of homework. What I realized by reading this book is that there are simple ways to get rid of stress. I used to think stress is easy to have but hard to get rid of, and that is partly true. The book affected how I think, I asked myself questions the book asked me, I realized what I had and what I didn't have. That means either with stress or with friends, and if I cared a lot about a certain subject or I wasn't really feeling it. I would recommend this book to people that are interested how the human mind thinks, receives information, makes decisions, and deals with stress.

[Sydney · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really like this book. I thought I would find answers on how to get rid of stress and relieve it. Nope. It went through lots of different types of stress and all the stress relievers they suggested are the things that I'm stressed out about. For example, some of the suggestions for relieving stress were playing an instrument and performing; two things that stress me out the most (besides school). I have no time to do any of the things they suggested to try and they also suggested talking to friends when your stressed. That doesn't work for me that much. This book didn't help me at all.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fine book for my mini-term class...