Zen Teen: 40 Ways to Stay Calm When Life Gets Stressful

by Tanya Carroll Richardson

A warm and relatable teen guide to reducing anxiety, depression, and panic while developing resilience and confidence with 40 tips and tricks that guide, support, and inspire teens to keep calm and stay mindful

In the last decade, studies have reported a drastic rise in teens who experience anxiety, panic, and an inability to cope with the pressures of daily life. As mental health challenges become less stigmatized, young people are more likely than ever before to know how to identify their feelings and ask for help. Even celebrity teen icons like Selena Gomez are "coming out" as anxiety sufferers.

Zen Teen addresses this epidemic with powerful coping mechanisms and creative tools-including two fun quizzes, tons of engaging exercises and a cool playlist-designed for the teenage mind. With topics like "The Unique Genius of You" and "Rock-Star Rituals," Tanya Carroll Richardson prompts teens to get calm by engaging in mindful tasks like identifying gurus, tapping into warrior energy, mastering meditation, practicing realistic optimism, becoming a self-awareness samurai, learning to surrender, finding a spirit animal, expressing challenging emotions, living with loving-kindness, protecting the planet, and making vision boards that embrace "the Tao of Cool."

Smart and fresh, Zen Teen helps teens thrive while navigating and managing the pressures of everyday life.

Genres: Young Adult, Self Help, Parenting

240 pages, Paperback

Published September 11, 2018

Reviews

[Erica S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teens always have a reason to be stressed out, whether it be from school, work, family, the future, or just balancing all the obligations at once. Often teens feel the need to choose between sleep, school, and a social life. For these reasons everyone needs a little stress relief to get them through the week, it's not good to keep all these negative emotions inside. Author Tanya Carrol Richardson proposes new methods that any teen can easily incorporate into their lives despite their busy schedules. While describing these techniques she includes what can go wrong and realistic goals for each of the stress relieving methods which is essential due to the lack of motivation and procrastination that teens face. This book encourages teens to reach out for help when they need it, but also learn how to control what they can when their stress is minimal. The interactive quizzes keep the audience engaged. Tanya preaches that all teens "need extra love, gentle support, and an optimistic attitude," (xi). She inspires the reader and gives them advice so that anyone is "ready for whatever comes," (xi). I gave this book four stars because it listed helpful strategies that can be put to use anytime and anywhere. I loved the quizzes that made the book seem more like a magazine article than a boring nonfiction book. While the title heavily hints that this book is written for teens, most of the strategies can be carried into adulthood and used by adults. For this reason, the audience for this book is anyone who is in need of a little stress relief.

[Jehnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up for my youngest who is suffering from the existential angst of teenagerdom. I like the approach which uses mindfulness and chakras but also writes very concretely about how to accomplish change. There are 40 suggested ideas, each of which has the same format - positives, negatives, ways to accomplish the goal. I really like that the author suggests you read the whole book and then pick and choose the 5-10 methods that makes sense to you. It is very logical.

I'll update if/when the teen gets into this.

[Ziv · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was just a book where every chapter there was another method to use for dealing with your own brain. This was good but it talked a lot about spirituality a lot of the stuff seemed like something that would not help and just make you seem odd. Some of the ideas at the beginning of the book were good but I just didn't vibe as much with this book but it was a really easy read and really fast.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an inviting, friendly guide for teens to help them build more resilience, confidence and mindfulness. Written within quick tips, quizzes and even calming playlists, I may be recommending this to some of my students this year as an easily digestible navigator through the normal pressures of teen life.

[Anna Ginelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought it was pretty entertaining and appealed well to a teen audience. It not only included physical ways to practice mindfulness (ie crystals and aromatherapy), but strategies to cope with stress in everyday life. However, it was not much of a challenge, and I would have liked to challenge myself more. Overall, I give it an 8/10, or 4 stars.

[Paulette Sherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tanya is a lovely person and as a therapist, I think this book will be great for teenagers, especially now.

[Lucy Gould · Rating 5 out of 5]

Am I now working on myself? Yes
Have I now realized it’s going to me harder than I though? Also yes
Was this book incredibly helpful? Omg yes again

[Miciah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had some really good tips in it, and some of it I was already practicing. The book is very clearly organized and easy to follow, definitely very geared towards the teen audience (which is what they were going for, but sometimes I felt like the author was treating me as a small child).

The book clearly got a lot of influence from like buddhism and meditation and stuff like that, which eventually became kind of repetitive.

Overall, I think it could be very helpful in general, and it would be easy to pick and choose which parts you want to listen to.