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Understanding Adolescent Stress During GCSEs
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The weeks before GCSEs can feel like living with a smoke alarm that won’t switch off. We unpack what’s really happening inside a teenager’s brain when revision ramps up: the stress response floods the nervous system, pushes the mind into threat mode, and quietly robs working memory, focus, and sleep. Rather than labeling teens as lazy or unmotivated, we map fight, flight, freeze, and avoidance onto everyday behaviors—arguing at the table, scrolling instead of revising, a blank mind at the desk, or perfectionism that masks a fear of not being enough.
From there, we get…
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