UNDER PRESSURE

Though anxiety has risen among young people overall, studies confirm that it has skyrocketed in girls. Research finds that the number of girls who said that they often felt nervous, worried, or fearful jumped 55% from 2009 to 2014. In her talk, Lisa Damour will discuss psychological pressure and explain the surprising and underappreciated value of stress and anxiety: that stress can helpfully stretch us beyond our comfort zones, and anxiety can play a key role in keeping girls safe. When we emphasize the benefits of stress and anxiety, we can help our daughters take them in stride. But no parent wants their daughter to suffer from emotional overload, so Damour will also discuss the many facets of girls’ lives where tension takes hold: their interactions at home, pressures at school, their lives online and social anxiety among their peers. Join us for a journey through the layers of girls’ lives, and learn about the critical steps that adults can take to shield their daughters from the toxic pressures to which our culture—including we, as parents—subjects girls.

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Lisa Damour, PhD, writes the monthly “Adolescence” column for the New York Times, serves as a regular contributor to CBS News, maintains a private psychotherapy practice, consults and speaks internationally, is a Senior Advisor to the Schubert Center for Child Studies at Case Western Reserve University, and serves as the Executive Director of Laurel School’s Center for Research on Girls. She is also the author of two New York Times best-selling books, Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls and Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood. Damour graduated with honors from Yale University and worked for the Yale Child Study Center before earning her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the University of Michigan. She has been a fellow at Yale’s Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy and the University of Michigan’s Power Foundation. She and her husband are the proud parents of two daughters.