 Hey Psych2Goers, welcome back to another video! Every child has an innate need to be loved and accepted by their parents. Sometimes the pressure to make your parents proud of who you are and accept you can leave you feeling overwhelmed. Such stress can be detrimental to your physical as well as emotional health. Have you been feeling stressed out lately? Do you wonder if your parents might be the ones triggering it? It's important to recognize the signs of stress early on and learn to cope with them. So here are 8 signs that your parents are making you stressed. 1. You avoid them as much as you can. Do you dread going home after school? Do you spend as much time as you can with your friends and keep yourself busy with work or studies to avoid your parents? Avoidant behavior usually indicates that a certain stimulus is too stressful or too distressing for you to bear. And in this case, it's your parents. You'll take any excuse you can get to get away from your parents and avoid them as much as you can. 2. You feel anxious when you see them. Do your parents constantly compare you to your siblings or do they always set their expectations for you unrealistically high? If so, it's normal to feel uneasy and anxious whenever you see them. Every moment you're with them, you're just waiting for another shoe to drop for something to go wrong. You worry they'll criticize your choices, pressure you into doing something you don't want to do, give you unsolicited advice or tell you how you've disappointed them again. 3. You can't concentrate around them. Do your parents only nag you about what you're doing wrong? Do you always get an earful and feel down on yourself whenever they do? Maybe that's why whenever they tell you they're planning to visit soon, it suddenly becomes the only thing you can think about. You can't focus on doing your homework, planning events, or turning in the last project anymore because you're already stressing about what to do. The fact that you're having difficulty concentrating shows that your parents take such an emotional toll on you that it doesn't leave you with much time, energy, or attention for anything else. 4. You get emotional when they're around. Do you notice yourself getting more angry or upset when your parents are around? Are you quicker to lose your temper or cry when they're there? If your relationship with your parents takes you through a constant emotional roller coaster, then that should already be your first clue that something is very wrong here. Moon swings are one of the most common signs of serious stress. You feel a lot of emotional distress because of them and it makes you more defensive. 5. You worry about what they'll say all the time. When you spend a lot of time and energy worrying about what your parents will think, it's a definite sign that they're causing you a lot of stress. You're consumed by thoughts like, will my parents approve of this? Or what will they say when they find out? And you always consider their feelings. Sometimes, even more than your own when it comes to making a decision. Even when you're no longer living under their roof, they're still influencing the things you do, the way you dress, the way you act, the people you spend time with, and so on. 6. They disrupt your eating and sleeping pattern. Is it harder for you to eat right and sleep well at night whenever your parents are around? This is because you lose a lot of your appetite when you're stressed or anxious, and it can lead to restlessness or difficulty sleeping as well. So if having your parents around disrupts your eating or sleeping patterns, it's most likely because of all the stress they're putting you through. 7. You start to have physical symptoms. Do frequent encounters with your parents trigger headaches, chest pain, fatigue, even hives in you? Stress is closely associated with low energy, chronic pain, and a weakened immune system that often results in frequent sickness. Other symptoms of severe stress include shaky hands, muscle tension, palpitations, and increased blood pressure. So if you start to notice physical symptoms arise as a result of something that happened with your parents, then they might be the reason why you're feeling so under the weather lately. 8. You usually feel better when they leave. Finally, but perhaps most importantly, you know when your parents are making you stressed if you immediately have a sigh of relief when they leave. Every moment with them is tense and painful for you. But once they're gone, you feel like you can breathe again. As if a weight has suddenly been lifted off your chest. All your cognitive, emotional, and physical symptoms disappear, and you feel a hundred times better now that they're not around. Why? Because they were the ones causing you so much stress in the first place. While your mother and father might have the best interest at heart, parents sometimes overstep their boundaries and fail to see when they're doing more harm than good to their children. Also, if you know someone who may benefit from online counseling, we actually partnered up with BetterHelp, an affordable online counseling platform that you could utilize. They're constantly striving to improve their services and terms and conditions, and the link will be in the description box. Do you feel like your parents might be making you stressed? How many signs did you relate to? If you relate to this video, what do you plan to do next? Do let us know in the comments below. Also remember to share this video with those you think might benefit from it. Thanks for watching and stay tuned for more.