I can’t believe this is my first post of 2023. I guess my break from blogging was longer than I had anticipated, but I’m excited to begin with some very important information. I am part of an organization of former independent school college counselors turned consultants (more on this in a future post) and we meet monthly to exchange ideas and best practices and hear from occasional guest speakers. We recently had the wonderful opportunity to hear from Alice Huang, LCSW, MA, who shared some thoughts about anxiety and resilience in the college application process.

Alice is a practicing psychotherapist and clinical social worker. Prior to this career, she was a Senior Associate Director of Admissions at Columbia University in New York City, Co-Director of College Counseling at The Bush School in Seattle, WA, and a psychotherapist during her field placement at New York University’s Center for Counseling and Wellness. While she provides therapy for a range of adults, Alice has worked with high school and college-aged students and their families for over 20 years. In particular, she has witnessed the mental and emotional process of preparing for and attending college from multiple angles. She is inspired by the resilience of her students, families and clients, and values making connections between psychotherapy and the college admissions experience.

Alice is uniquely qualified to address how mental health issues affect our field and she was kind enough to answer a few questions for this post.

You have a very unique background having worked in college admissions and now in your therapeutic work. This may seem obvious, but from your perspective, why is the college process so stressful?

In my experience, the confluence of so many factors makes college admissions process particularly stressful. This is often the first major transition point from childhood to adulthood. For many students, this is also the first time one is making a big decision (one that we are made to believe is bigger than it actually is). For many highly academically-focused students, maximizing one’s college admission options is often the single greatest motivator for one’s decisions over the last several years. The pressure for all these decisions (and sacrifices) to have been “worth it” by getting into a top choice college is overwhelming. Indeed, for many students, this is one of the first times one cannot control the outcome simply by exerting more effort. One cannot study and get into any college one wishes, and this lack of control can feel chaotic, unjust, terrifying. And in addition, adolescence is the prime time in our developmental process to seek belonging and a sense of social identity and value. In our teen years, we experience the jolt of public judgment and comparison even more intensely than other times of our lives. Add all this together and one can see how critical it is for students and families to have reality-based information rather than hype about the true relative value of one college vs another and to maintain perspective about what one truly wants in life to feel a sense of inner purpose and value. 

How does anxiety manifest itself among parents in particular?

In my experience, many loving, well-intentioned parents don’t realize the impact their stress has on their children. And I speak from experience as both child and parent! Human children are uniquely dependent on our caregivers and therefore we are wired to read their emotions, even if only unconsciously. Parents have their own version of all of the above—especially the terrifying lack of control, watching a child shift to adulthood and, for some, a high value placed on external admiration and validation. But parents have an extra responsibility as caregiving adults to attempt to model healthy attitudes and behaviors and to keep perspective on behalf of both themselves and their children. This can’t be done without parents examining their own anxiety and answering the questions: what are their own values, what makes a life feel purposeful and meaningful to them? Otherwise parents’ own unmanaged anxiety creates anxiety in students, to which I’ve witnessed students respond with avoidance and procrastination, paralyzing perfectionism, and even depression. 

For example, a parent may say, I just want my child to have as many opportunities as possible, so that means going to the “most reputable” college she can be admitted to. Even if we ignore the fact “reputation” is a complicated and subjective metric, we need to interrogate how to quantify “opportunities.” Is an opportunity a world expert professor with 250 students in a class? Is an opportunity a robust fellowship office that spends more resources on landing Fulbright’s and Rhodes scholarships for students than hiring famous faculty? And beyond even this, can we articulate why “opportunity” is important? When I’ve asked this question of parents, it often leads to a series of concerns (e.g. reaching one’s potential, exploration of self, not being at a disadvantage, etc.) that ultimately peels back to the core concern: they want their child to be happy and fulfilled. So then my question is, what if a focus on external achievement, maximizing “opportunity” and letting others’ values define our own are precisely what prevent happiness and fulfillment? 

The part of our brains responsible for judgment and perspective continue massive development through our late-20s. High school and college students need help from adults they trust to maintain a healthy and realistic perspective about what is truly a threat to a child’s surviving and thriving, and what is one’s own unexamined and socialized emotional baggage. 

As a therapist, one of the most common mental health complaints I witness is the inability to feel satisfied, or that any accomplishment is “enough.” Regardless of one’s success, there is someone who is or has more…something. What this translates to is that a person never feels they themselves are enough. I have found the solution to this starts by discovering, and often naming for the first time, what makes this person feel alive, understood in all their weird glory, to name and admit something they love that maybe other people don’t get. The secret is to find out what is truly, unabashedly, undeniably them, and what they genuinely and deeply value most, independent of their family, friends, peers, etc. In my work, this discovery helps release clients from the “shoulds” of other people’s expectations (in essence, other people’s baggage) and gets people motivated to fight for themselves on their own terms. I’ve noticed not depending on external motivation scares some people, especially people who were raised this way themselves. But we are all wired to thrive, to find purpose and to feel proud of our genuine positive impact on others and the world. My most self-aware and self-accepting clients do not lose motivation, they simply redirect it towards something they authentically care about, are therefore more likely to persist despite inevitable setbacks, and are thus more likely to live by their values and achieve their goals.

In the college process, there is so much out of our control. What are some things students can control? Or in other words, even if they're just starting high school,  how can students manage their stress and anxiety?

1. Try something new, positive and just for fun that makes you a little nervous simply because it makes you nervous. Facing fear is the achievement all by itself, not the outcome of the task. 

2. Notice the simple themes in your life (what you do purely for fun, what friends you enjoy the most and why, what you’ve loved since you were in elementary school, what makes you laugh, what makes you feel curious and lose track of time, what feels like work to other people but not to you?)

3. Read something, (anything!) not assigned in school.

4. Try to get to know at least one teacher at least a little bit.

5. Most of all, have fun with friends and your family. Social support is the most protective factor for mental and emotional health. 

And, finally, what have been some of your favorite takeaways from your therapeutic work?

1. All life is wired for thriving—if we feel seen, accepted, belonging, and not alone, we have a natural instinct toward healing and being true to oneself.

2. Fun, play, non-achievement oriented, “off-task” conversations are foundation of building safety, trusting and resilience.

3. Battling with thoughts and anxiety creates more anxiety. The goal is to have a more flexible relationship with our thoughts and “float on the waves” of anxiety rather than swim against them.

4. Core emotions (joy, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, excitement) give us information from the survival system and if acknowledged, accepted, and experienced to completion results in decrease in anxiety, shame, depression, etc.

5. We can help regulate the nervous system through the body and senses, so physical movement, sleep and balanced meals have a huge impact on mental health. 

6. The observing part of the brain (in the prefrontal cortex) is the only part that toggles with the amygdala (the seat of anxiety)— when it’s on, the amygdala quiets. This is one reason meditation is so effective.

7. Attachment is part of the survival system in primates—we need attentive, non-intrusive, mostly predictable and regulated caregivers to help us process emotion and feel safe in our own bodies—and be resilient.

8. Neuroplasticity, put simplistically, is the ability of the brain to generate new neural connections throughout life. Even into old age, we are able not only to learn new facts and skills but to make new associations between experiences, thoughts, emotions and behaviors so we can change even years-long habits. This means our resilience and a growth mindset can all be created through experience. If we have support so we do not feel alone in our failures, disappointments and suffering, these very failures and disappointments are the key to building new neural networks and our capacity to survive, thrive and feel fulfilled. 

(Ben’s) Final Thoughts

I do not have the scientific or professional knowledge of Alice, but I have witnessed and personally experienced so much of what she said. What particularly resonated was the idea of being “wired to thrive,” which I think teenagers don’t always realize when their high school experience feels like a lot of box-checking and prestige-seeking leading up to the college application process. And even, or especially, when students are admitted and matriculate to their first-choice college, I still worry about their mental health. The anxiety may not disappear. It may just take a different form.

I really hope this information was helpful and that you will find the joy and purpose in your life that is uniquely yours.