Just as a raging toothache would make you focus your attention on your teeth, so these waves of feeling further encourage the young person to become absorbed in them. A concentration on the self can have various unfortunate effects. The teenager may begin to see little oddities they haven't noticed previously and become convinced that something is wrong, or that they are unusual or deformed.
Their emotional instability can also be frightening to them. Some teenagers respond by becoming convinced that they are going mad. More, however, look for a concrete reason for their moods. If they are 'down', they assume that it must be because their bodies are freakish, their friends insincere or their parents unkind. If they are 'up', it must be because they are in love or about to solve the mysteries of the universe.
Unfocused grief, anger or happiness are hard to accept, so it is natural for us to look for an event or a situation to which to tie them. The unfortunate result is that the teenager often drives a bad mood further than it might otherwise have gone. He or she becomes trapped in a downward spiral, convinced that they have a good reason to go on being unhappy.
The extremes of emotional response they feel can also lead to a real phobia about being in public or in a social situation. Young people often respond to the physical changes in their bodies by becoming self-conscious and awkward. When under pressure, the body manufactures the hormone adrenalin, to hype up reactions and make us ready for fight or flight. We can flush a deep red or become pale as the blood that carries the hormone is shunted from our skin to our internal organs to prepare us to cope with an emergency. An enormous amount of energy is released, giving us that sudden, lurching feeling of having been kicked in the stomach, and we find ourselves trembling and feeling sick. Such a reaction is understandable if you stepped in front of a car or a building started to collapse on you. You would use that released energy to move yourself out of the way. With most of us, especially with teenagers in their heightened state of physical and emotional turmoil, the trigger to start a rush of adrenalin can be as simple as the sight of someone we like, or the realization that people may be looking at us. The situation can become a vicious circle - the young person may become convinced other people can see and are laughing at their blushes, and anticipation of being laughed at is enough to trigger off another 'attack'.
