Hey everyone, it's K-Sunga here. I just want to let you know that we've launched a brand

new call and advice podcast called Dear Headspace. Each week the headspace teachers, along

with some amazing new friends, are answering your questions about relationships, work,

life, mindfulness, and just about everything else. It's so different from anything we've

ever created and we're so excited for you to hear it. Dear Headspace comes out every

Tuesday on the Headspace app and anywhere that you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Hi there, it's Sam and welcome to Friday into Radio Headspace. You've made it to the end of

a week focused on self-care. When I was a teenager I craved silence. I had three younger siblings

at the time, all of them between the ages of three and seven, and there was a lot of stimulation.

Being a teenager is tough for many reasons. One of them being that the teen brain, namely the

prefrontal cortex, is under construction. And this makes it harder to manage difficult thoughts

and control impulses. And the added stress of sensory overload can elicit anger and frustration

more easily in adolescence. When I talk about the adolescent brain, I mean the brain we have until

we're 26. So from birth to 26, your brain is undergoing major construction. The prefrontal cortex

or PFC is the brain's decision maker, integrator, and controller of impulses, giving us the capacity

to sift through experience and make sense of it. And in adolescence, our brain takes longer to

formulate thoughtful responses. Since I couldn't escape from my noisy house as a teenager,

I had to find ways to get the quiet I needed without becoming a tyrant with my family.

I ended up inventing a game I called the Quiet Game, which I would initiate by saying,

one, two, three, Quiet, and then whoever spoke or made a sound would lose. My middle sister

was a fierce player and actually won most of the time. The need for stimulation varies a lot.

I learned this from working with very sensitive children in my practice and just from living my

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