Teen Anxiety: Mind Going Blank in Stressful Situations

November 26, 2025

Authored by: Meagan Burkhart,

Edited by: Emma Loker, BSc, PgDip

Adolescence is a time associated with increased stress in a variety of areas. Some of the common stressors teens experience include academic pressure, peer relationships, and family.¹

In addition, recent events related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of social media created additional stressors for teens today.¹ As a result, we’ve seen an increase in the rates of adolescent anxiety.^1,2 Anxiety can cause a range of symptoms, including thought blocking, which can feel like the mind going blank, and an inability to express oneself.

You might have noticed that your child is dealing with high stress levels, leading to more obvious anxiety symptoms such as cognitive shutdown. If this is the case, a mental health professional can provide insight and guidance on the best steps to take.

This article will focus on teen anxiety, specifically highlighting the thought blocking teens can experience, by covering:

Causes of stress overload in teens
What mind blanking is
The impact of test anxiety and emotional distress in school
Signs of focus and anxiety problems in teens
Treatment for stress overload in teens
Where to find professional support

Causes of Stress Overload in Teens

As mentioned, stress levels tend to increase during adolescence in a wide range of environments. While some teens can handle stress in a healthy, adaptive way, others face stress overload that interferes with their daily living.¹

To understand why certain teens have a harder time coping with stress, we’ll consider some of the factors related to stress overload and anxiety. These include: biological factors, digital technology and social media, academic pressure, and politics.^2-5

Biological Factors

In terms of biological factors, there are certain areas of the brain that function differently in teens with anxiety disorders.³ We know that having parents with an anxiety disorder increases the risk of children having anxiety, suggesting that there is a genetic basis for the disorder.³ Therefore, teens who are biologically predisposed to developing anxiety may face an increased risk of issues with stress overload.

Digital Technology and Social Media

The increase in teens’ reliance on digital technology and social media is also associated with increased stress and anxiety symptoms.⁴ Specifically, adolescents who excessively use social media show higher rates of poor mental health outcomes such as depression, anxiety, decreased well-being, and lower self-esteem.⁴

Academic Pressure

Academic pressure is a growing concern for teens today. Recent studies show that about two-thirds of students feel stressed about poor grades, and more than half worry that a test will be more difficult than they can cope with.² In addition, adolescents with anxiety and depressive symptoms have been shown to experience more academic difficulties, creating a vicious cycle of anxiety, stress, and underachievement.²

Politics

Finally, politics is more frequently affecting adolescents’ levels of anxiety today.^⁵ Some concerns that children have focus on gun violence, climate change, elections, and violent news.^1,5 Adolescents with anxiety disorders also show greater signs of stress and worry resulting from political issues.⁵

Now that we’ve seen how much stress teens are under today, it seems only natural that some will face stress overload and other troubling symptoms like mind blanking, shutting down, dissociation, and panic. The rest of this article will dive deeper into how teens experience these symptoms and how to help.

What Is Mind Blanking?

A common complaint in adolescents with anxious tendencies is that their mind goes blank. When this happens at school, it can cause problems with academic performance and interfere with relationships with peers.^1,2,6. To help your child overcome these challenges, you may need to better understand mind blanking in teens. There are a few definitions of mind blanking in the current research, but the overall concept involves an absence of thought.⁶

In the DSM-5 (the diagnostic manual mental health professionals use), mind blanking is one of the clinical characteristics of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). So, if a teen says their mind is going blank and this is accompanied by constant worry, this may be a sign of an underlying anxiety disorder.⁶

There are different theories about how a teen’s mind goes blank during anxiety. Studies explain the process as lapses of attention, failure of memory retrieval, stopping inner speech, lack of content meta-awareness, low arousal, and complete absence of conscious experience.⁶

For instance, your child might explain this experience as having mental blocks during tests. Plus, when the anxiety and mind blanking are specifically tied to test-taking, you might be specifically dealing with test anxiety, which we will cover in the next section.^6,7

Test Anxiety and Emotional Distress in School

While the most common definition of test anxiety is the fear of completing tests and exams, many studies measure levels of test anxiety in a broader sense.⁷ So high levels of test anxiety in teens are often linked to generalized anxiety disorder and social anxiety disorder, as well as trait anxiety and a general tendency to be more anxious.⁷ Because of this broad association, while teens with test anxiety mainly fear taking an exam, they can also experience other emotional distress in school related to academic pressure.^2,7

There have been many research studies conducted on students to understand how test anxiety impacts their overall well-being. Some of the findings show that those with higher levels of test anxiety perceive their health to be poorer than others without test anxiety.⁷ Additionally, negative affect was shown to contribute to higher levels of test anxiety.

Another important finding was that test anxiety was tied to perceived pressure from family expectations and the idea of absolute success or failure.⁷ Finally, it may be important to note that adolescents scoring high on measures of test anxiety also showed high self-criticism and social anxiety. They also demonstrated low self-reassurance, acceptance, and mindfulness skills.⁷

If we combine this understanding of mind blanking and test anxiety in teens, we can see that there are multiple ways for focus and anxiety problems to emerge in adolescence.

Signs of Focus and Anxiety Problems in Teens

There are other signs of focus and anxiety problems in teens outside of their mind going blank. For instance, some adolescents experience a panic response in a high-stress situation.⁸ This is typically associated with another anxiety disorder: panic disorder (PD).

If your child is having frequent panic attacks, they may be experiencing many distressing physical and cognitive symptoms.⁸

Some of the symptoms reported for panic responses in teens include the following:⁸

Catastrophic thinking
Safety-seeking behaviors
Avoidance
Blushing
Sweating

Severe anxiety can also lead to dissociation symptoms in youth.⁹ Oftentimes, dissociative episodes occur in response to traumatic events, so they are tied to PTSD; however, they can occur in other anxiety disorders.⁹ In the DSM, dissociation is defined as derealization or depersonalization, and it is a criterion for panic disorder. The dissociation symptoms youth experience can be thought of as a defense mechanism to protect their psychological well-being against trauma.¹⁰

If you notice any of these signs of focus and anxiety problems in your child, it might be time to seek mental health treatment.

Crucially, combining CBT with medication treatment for ADHD is typically more effective than using medication alone.^7,8

One aspect of therapy that is particularly beneficial in treating ADHD is incorporating strategies that reward positive behaviors. This often includes modifying the environment, which ties directly to identifying appropriate school accommodations for teens. Common accommodations for teens with ADHD include extended time on tests and assignments or individualized instructions. These supports should be carefully considered to ensure they help struggling students with ADHD and other learning difficulties.^7,9

Treatment for Stress in Teens

There are a variety of mental health treatment options available to help with managing stress and anxiety. In this section, we will focus on three forms of therapy for the treatment of stress and anxiety in teens. These are: cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT).^11-13

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

One of the most common and effective forms of therapy for treating anxiety in teens is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).11 In studies that focused on generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in adolescents, researchers found that CBT allowed teens to change their negative beliefs, thoughts, and emotions to become more optimistic.¹¹

There are three core components of CBT for anxiety: (1) cognitive restructuring, (2) exposure to anxiety-inducing situations, and (3) skills training.¹¹ More recently, there has been a push to include internet-based CBT therapy for anxious teens, also known as “iCBT.”¹¹ This type of therapy allows teens to work with a therapist over the computer, making it more accessible and cost-effective for some situations.¹¹ Overall, CBT is widely used for treating anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems in adolescents and is a good first-line treatment option.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is another form of therapy that has been effective for treating anxiety in adolescents.¹² What makes ACT unique is that it targets psychological flexibility, rather than looking at a specific mental health disorder. Psychological flexibility is the ability to act in accordance with your core values, even when negative and stressful situations arise.¹² By targeting psychological flexibility, ACT can be adapted for all sorts of stressful situations in teens.¹²

There are six processes used in ACT to target psychological flexibility: acceptance, cognitive defusion, present moment awareness, self-as-context, values, and committed action.¹² Because ACT was originally designed for adults, there have been some changes to the protocol to adapt it to adolescents. Traditional ACT, as well as the adolescent adaptations, have both been effective in reducing anxiety symptoms and improving coping skills for stress in teens.

One adaptation of ACT is the DNAV model. This groups the processes we mentioned earlier into…

The Discoverer (acceptance, values, committed action)
The Noticer (present moment awareness)
The Advisor (cognitive defusion, acceptance, self-as-context)

Each of these groups ties into acting according to values.¹²

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

The third therapeutic intervention that we’ll cover is mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). This form of therapy focuses on mindfulness because it has been shown to be positively associated with resilience.¹³ In addition, mindfulness-based techniques can be implemented in the classroom for adolescents and be used proactively to build on a teen’s strengths, rather than focusing on problem behaviors.¹³

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in teens involves understanding different perspectives, paying attention to others’ experiences, identifying past, present, and future thinking patterns, and making causal inferences based on what they observe.¹³

When delivering MBCT for adolescents, there are certain exercises that they can do at home to reinforce the skills they learn. The list below includes the recommended home-based practices:¹³

Mindful breathing
Awareness of the body
Mindful listening
Observing without judgment
Mindfulness of the senses
Writing compassionate letters to the self
Daily practice calendar

By being more aware of their emotions, teens can better accept them without judgment, and can then make more effective decisions¹³.

MissionPrep: Offering Teen Mental Health Resources

At Mission Prep, we have seen firsthand the impact of stress and the thought blocking teens experience can have. If this is something your child is going through, we’re here to offer them the support and mental health resources they need.

Our trained team offers a variety of mental health services, which are always individually tailored to each teen’s needs. If it’s issues with exams, overwhelm, anxiety, or the cognitive shutdown teens often go through, we can help.

Contact us today to speak to one of our mental health professionals. We’re readily available to discuss your child’s experience and provide any clinical recommendations based on their needs.

References

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Pascoe, M. C., Hetrick, S. E., & Parker, A. G. (2019). The impact of stress on students in secondary school and higher education. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 25(1), 104–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2019.1596823
Teed, A. R., J. S. Feinstein, M. Puhl, et al. 2022. “Association of Generalized Anxiety Disorder With Autonomic Hypersensitivity and Blunted Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Activity During Peripheral Adrenergic Stimulation.” JAMA Psychiatry 79, (4), 323. https://doi. org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.4225.
Shannon, H., Bush, K., Villeneuve, P. J., Hellemans, K. G., & Guimond, S. (2022). Problematic social media use in adolescents and young adults: systematic review and meta-analysis. JMIR mental health, 9(4), e33450. https://doi.org/10.2196/33450
Caporino, N. E., S. Exley, and R. D. Latzman. 2020. “Youth Anxiety About Political News.” Child Psychiatry & Human Development 51, 5, 683–698. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-020-00972-z.
Andrillon, T., Lutz, A., Windt, J., & Demertzi, A. (2025). Where is my mind? A neurocognitive investigation of mind blanking. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2025.02.002
Wuthrich, V.M., Jagiello, T. & Azzi, V. Academic Stress in the Final Years of School: A Systematic Literature Review. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 51, 986–1015 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-020-00981-y
McCall, A., Waite, F., Percy, R., Turpin, L., Robinson, K., McMahon, J., & Waite, P. (2024). Cognitive and behavioural processes in adolescent panic disorder. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1352465825000049
D’Angelo, M., Valenza, M., Iazzolino, A. M., Longobardi, G., Di Stefano, V., Lanzara, E., Visalli, G.,Steardo, L., Scuderi, C., & Steardo Jr, L. (2024). Unraveling the Complexity: Exploring the Intersection of Panic Disorder, Dissociation, and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Behavioral Sciences, 14(3), 166. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14030166
Wagner-Skacel, J., Riedl, D., Kampling, H., & Lampe, A. (2022). Mentalization and dissociation after adverse childhood experiences. Scientific reports, 12(1), 6809. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-10787-8
Suryanto, R. D., Gaharani, P. E., Salsabila, S., Aziz, C. S. F., Khaerani, F. A., Athaya, S., Setyowati, L., Kartadikaria, E., Djamaluddin, M., Soewahju, R.B.A., & Pitaloka, D. A. E. (2025). Effectiveness of Cognitive-behavioral Therapy for Generalized-Anxiety Disorders in Adolescents: A Systematic Review Using PICO Framework. Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacy Research, 10(2). doi: 10.15416/pcpr.v10i2.53373
Petersen, J. M., & Pimentel, S. S. (2024). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Adolescent Anxiety. Current Treatment Options in Psychiatry, 11(4), 366-372. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40501-024-00335-8
Peter, A., Srivastava, R., Agarwal, A., & Singh, A. P. (2022). The effect of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy on anxiety and resilience of the school going early adolescents with anxiety. Journal of Indian Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 18(2), 176-185. https://doi.org/10.1177/09731342221127959

Tagged Authored By Meagan Burkhart, Edited By Emma Loker