Under Pressure

Have you noticed that even the most capable, well-adjusted girls today seem to carry a quiet panic just beneath the surface? Whether it’s a student worried about upcoming exams, a daughter spiraling over friendship drama, or a teen paralyzed by college admissions stress, today’s girls appear to live under unprecedented psychological pressure. In Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls, psychologist Lisa Damour, Ph.D. investigates why anxiety among girls is rising and offers parents a refreshing framework for helping their daughters not only survive stress but grow stronger because of it.

Damour’s central claim is both counterintuitive and liberating: stress and anxiety are not inherently bad. In fact, they are fundamental to growth, resilience, and learning—just as straining a muscle builds strength. The real issue is that girls—and often their parents—misunderstand stress as a sign of weakness rather than as an opportunity for development. When girls avoid what makes them anxious, they reinforce helplessness; when they face challenges with support and reflection, they build endurance and confidence. Damour calls this process the psychological equivalent of “progressive overload”—the same principle used in strength training.

The Modern Landscape of Girlhood

Damour opens by acknowledging the seismic transformation of adolescence in the 21st century. Where teenage years were once seen as carefree, surveys now show that girls feel more stressed than their parents most of the year. They report higher rates of depression, chronic fatigue, and worry than boys do. And these symptoms are not isolated: they emerge from overlapping pressures—academic achievement, social media presence, early physical development, peer relationships, sexist double standards, and a competitive college admissions culture. The modern girl, Damour argues, is a product of a society that both celebrates and overburdens her success.

She combines this cultural critique with stories from her clinical practice, school counseling work at Laurel School, and decades of research. Through vivid portraits—like a high-achieving student up until 1 a.m. every night redoing notes, or a ninth-grader crumbling under group-project stress—Damour translates complex psychology into compassionate, practical guidance for parents. Instead of shielding girls from stress, she advocates helping them decode it: discerning between healthy stress that stretches them and toxic stress that overwhelms them.

Reframing Stress and Anxiety

One of the most powerful ideas in the book is Damour’s redefinition of anxiety as a protective warning system rather than a flaw to be eradicated. Just like pain alerts us to bodily danger, anxiety signals internal or external imbalance: a toxic friendship, overcommitment, or a mismatch between goals and resources. Healthy anxiety pushes growth; unhealthy anxiety—left unchecked—can become paralyzing fear. Parents, she insists, should teach their daughters to listen to anxiety’s message rather than silence it. When a teen fears a math test, that discomfort may be her mind’s way of saying, “You’re not ready—start studying.”

This focus on meaning rather than elimination of stress distinguishes Damour’s approach. Much like Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset or Brené Brown’s insights on vulnerability, Damour argues that reframing discomfort as a teacher transforms a girl’s relationship with herself. It empowers her to function under pressure rather than crumble because of it.

A Blueprint for Raising Emotionally Sound Girls

The book unfolds across six domains that mirror the major arenas of girls’ lives: home, friendships, boys, school, and culture, all culminating in how they internalize societal expectations of perfection and likability. Each chapter explores a distinct kind of pressure—emotional, relational, academic, or cultural—and reveals how well-intentioned adults can either intensify or ease it. The pattern Damour identifies is striking: despite unprecedented academic success, today’s girls are training themselves to equate perfection with worthiness, to overachieve out of fear, and to ignore their own needs to please others.

But Damour’s voice is reassuring rather than alarmist. Like a calm counselor, she guides parents toward small, practical corrections: model composure during a daughter’s “glitter storm” of emotion; teach her to use stress as training rather than trauma; and most importantly, build downtime into her life so that effort and recovery stay in balance. The ultimate goal is for girls to step into adulthood not as burned-out overachievers but as resilient, self-aware women capable of thriving under pressure.

Why It Matters

The stakes of Damour’s message go far beyond anxiety management. By redefining stress and emotion as useful signals rather than enemies to suppress, she is advocating a cultural shift in how we raise girls. She challenges both parents and educators to stop treating girls as fragile success stories-in-progress and start supporting them as adaptable human beings developing strength through challenge. As Anna Freud once observed—and Damour quotes at the book’s start—mental health depends not on the absence of anxiety but on one’s ability to deal with it.

In doing so, Under Pressure becomes more than a parenting manual—it’s a manifesto. It asks adults to take responsibility for the invisible climates we create in homes, classrooms, and digital spaces. It argues that the epidemic of stress among girls is not a sign of their fragility but of our misunderstanding. And most powerfully, it offers a hopeful vision: that through empathy, realism, and a little less panic, we can raise daughters who are not crushed by pressure but strengthened by it.

Lisa Damour begins where most parents least expect: by telling them that stress is necessary, even healthy. She compares it to lifting weights—growth happens only when we push muscles beyond their comfort zone. Likewise, every challenge girls face, from a hard class to a social setback, is an opportunity to build mental and emotional endurance.

The Progressive Overload of Learning

In classrooms, Damour likens the escalation of academic demand to “progressive overload.” Just as lifting incrementally heavier dumbbells strengthens the body, intellectual growth requires gradual difficulty. Freshman year may be the warm-up; sophomore year, the first big challenge; junior year, the marathon. What feels like unbearable pressure is actually how girls’ minds and coping systems toughen.

The danger, however, arises when girls internalize the wrong message—that any stress means something is wrong. When they feel pressure, they assume they’re failing, not growing. This “stress-is-harmful” mindset doubles the load by adding guilt about being stressed in the first place. Damour draws on experiments showing that when people learn that stress can boost focus, energy, and performance, their actual physical reaction to it improves—they perform better and recover faster.

Healthy Stress vs. Harmful Stress

Healthy stress challenges a girl but still allows recovery; harmful stress overwhelms the system without enough support or rest. Parents often blur these categories, rushing in to fix every discomfort. Damour gently reminds them: discomfort is not danger. Letting girls wrestle with hard teachers, annoying classmates, or lost soccer games helps develop the frontal lobe circuitry that regulates resilience. Shielding them—from coaches, grades, or social conflict—robs them of practice in coping.

Recovery as Part of Growth

Damour also underscores that rest and recovery are not luxuries but requirements, much like muscle repair after exercise. She often asks students how they recover from a bad day. Answers range from running with the dog to singing in the shower to binge-watching a favorite show. The specifics matter less than the awareness that recovery is active, not passive. Parents can reinforce this by helping girls identify which activities truly restore them rather than distract them.

This simple but revolutionary distinction reframes the entire stress conversation. The goal isn’t to eliminate pressure—it’s to balance exertion with replenishment. When girls understand this rhythm, school transforms from a minefield into a training ground for strength and self-knowledge. Stress stops being the enemy; it becomes the workout that builds their psychological muscle.

Despite outperforming boys academically from elementary school through graduate degrees, girls consistently report higher levels of anxiety about school. Damour calls this the “achievement paradox”: girls excel outwardly while doubting themselves inwardly. Boys may shrug off a bad grade as lack of effort; girls often absorb it as proof they’re not smart enough.

The Trap of Pleasing Adults

From an early age, girls learn to seek adult approval. Subtle signals—a teacher’s disappointed pause, a parent’s furrowed brow—carry disproportionate weight. Damour admits her own daughters call this the “disappointed face” that propels them to overperform. Because girls are highly attuned to emotional cues (a trait supported by research in adolescent empathy), even benign disapproval feels like rejection. This emotional sensitivity, when combined with high standards, often leads to chronic perfectionism.

Some girls cope with this fear by over-functioning. Damour tells the story of Natalie, a top student who studied until 1:30 a.m. each night—often for classes that didn’t even assign homework—because she couldn’t rest until every subject felt mastered. The result wasn’t empowerment but exhaustion and tears. Like many diligent girls, Natalie’s overpreparation worked, yielding better grades and adult praise, which reinforced her inefficiency. Damour helped her replace grinding study habits with a “tactical” approach—calculating the minimum effective effort needed to achieve her goals, much like her relaxed but equally successful brother.

Tactical vs. Grind Mindset

The word “tactical,” Damour discovered, changed everything. It let ambitious girls keep their pride in discipline while embracing efficiency. Tactical students allocate energy strategically: they give maximum effort to crucial assignments, moderate attention to lesser ones, and allow themselves to “coast” when appropriate. This isn’t laziness—it’s energy management. She encourages parents to teach this skill early, before girls burn out under the illusion that good students must excel at everything, all the time.

The ultimate goal, Damour writes, is to help girls build both competence and confidence. When they test their limits and sometimes fail, they stop fearing imperfection. Unlike overprepared girls who attribute success solely to effort, boys’ more relaxed approach lets them see their own capabilities. Damour wants girls to experience that same confidence—that they can succeed not just because they try hard, but because they’re capable. Confidence built through calibrated effort, not constant struggle, is what sustains them in the adult world.

One of the most powerful sections in Under Pressure dissects how the race toward elite college admissions has turned adolescence into an endurance sport. Take Adrienne, the overextended junior juggling five AP classes, lab internships, debate team, and track—all to keep her Stanford dreams alive. By February, panic attacks sent her from the classroom to the counselor’s office. Damour uses Adrienne’s story to reveal how structural expectations—not personal weakness—are breaking girls down.

The Impossible Marathon

Damour shows how girls like Adrienne operate within what she calls “a 30-hour day”—schedules so crowded that anxiety becomes inevitable. These students are not failing; they’re responding logically to irrational adult systems. Parents, teachers, and universities signal that rest equals risk, and excellence requires self-sacrifice. The result: brilliant, sleep-deprived girls who excel publicly but crumble privately.

Damour doesn’t suggest lowering ambition but redefining success. She encourages families to have honest conversations about why college names matter and whether they truly align with a girl's goals. Research she cites shows that adult well-being correlates more strongly with relationships, meaning, and autonomy than with wealth or prestige—a sharp contrast to the “projectile model” of teenage success in which high school achievements are seen as propelling girls toward fixed coordinates. Instead, she proposes a “pathway model,” emphasizing adaptability and course correction over perfect trajectories.

Redefining Parental Expectations

Through examples like Adrienne’s single mother adjusting chores during peak stress or families relaxing expectations around chores and attendance, Damour shows that small compassionate choices can reduce tremendous burden. More importantly, she urges parents to decouple their daughters’ worth from external markers of achievement. Studies confirm that teens whose parents value empathy and personal growth alongside academics perform just as well and experience lower anxiety.

Ultimately, Damour champions redefining success as well-being, not performance. The healthiest graduates aren’t those who sprinted hardest toward elite colleges—they’re the ones who learned how to restore balance under pressure. By recalibrating family expectations now, parents can help their daughters sustain ambition without burning out before adulthood.

Beyond late nights and heavy workloads, girls face another source of school stress: tests. Damour explains that test anxiety is not a disorder so much as a conditioned stress response amplified by ineffective study methods and hidden biases. Many girls prepare by rereading and highlighting material—strategies proven to be the least effective. The better approach? Spaced practice and self-testing—methods that mirror the brain’s memory consolidation processes.

From Cramming to Mastery

Damour urges parents to teach girls that memory strengthens when knowledge is rehearsed after brief forgetting. Instead of marathon cram sessions, encourage study in shorter bursts over several days and with retrieval practice—quizzing oneself rather than rereading. This strategy creates the “dress rehearsal effect,” easing anxiety because students have already faced similar mental conditions before test day.

Fighting Stereotype Threat

Even more insidious, Damour notes, is bias in math and science classrooms. Despite equal or superior performance, girls still face low expectations from some teachers and peers. Research cited in the book shows that identical resumes receive higher competence ratings when labeled “John” rather than “Jennifer.” The result? A subtle but chronic anxiety—a sense that they must prove their intelligence twice over.

Damour recommends defanging this bias by naming it outright. When girls understand that anxiety during math tests may stem from awareness of stereotypes—not capability—they perform better. Reframing nerves as a normal response to unfair cultural assumptions helps preserve confidence. It teaches girls that the problem isn’t inside them—it’s in the system surrounding them. Awareness becomes armor, transforming stereotype threat into self-possession.

Damour emphasizes that the first line of defense against stress is not therapy or medication but the emotional climate at home. She urges parents to resist rescuing daughters from every uncomfortable feeling. Instead, offer steady presence and curiosity. When teens melt down, their “rational brain” is offline; logic won’t reach them until emotion settles. Her beloved metaphor—the glitter jar—captures this beautifully.

Settling the Glitter

Imagine shaking a jar full of purple glitter. When emotions swirl, logic disappears in the chaos. The goal isn’t to fix the storm but to wait for the glitter to settle. Parents can help by offering calm presence—a walk, tea, or deep breathing—rather than arguments or advice. This signals to girls that intense emotions are tolerable and temporary, not emergencies. Over time, they internalize this steadiness and learn to regulate themselves.

Empathy Over Reassurance

When girls panic—“I’ll fail chemistry!”—parents’ instinct is to reassure: “You’ll do fine.” Damour cautions against this reflex. Reassurance bypasses emotion; empathy engages it. Instead, respond with “That sounds awful” or “I can see why that scares you.” This simple validation lowers defenses and invites problem-solving later. The message is: “You can handle this, and I’ll be here while you figure out how.”

This philosophy, backed by decades of family psychology, reframes parental success not as preventing breakdowns but guiding recovery. Just as girls must learn to balance effort and rest at school, they must learn to balance emotional storms and calm resets at home. Parents who model composure teach an unspoken lesson: peace is contagious.

In the book’s final chapters, Damour disrupts the cultural obsession with performance metrics—grades, athletic trophies, résumés—and replaces it with a richer definition of success: a life of fulfillment and well-being. Citing research by psychologist Carol Ryff, she explains that adult happiness stems from relationships, meaning, personal growth, and self-acceptance—not GPA or income level.

The Pathway Model of Growth

Damour critiques what she calls the “ballistics model” of parenting—the belief that daughters’ grades, test scores, and extracurriculars determine a fixed life trajectory, like setting rocket coordinates. In reality, most lives unfold as meandering pathways shaped by chance, values, and adaptability. Encouraging girls to view their life as a path with many course corrections reduces anxiety dramatically. Failure becomes feedback, not catastrophe.

She shares the story of two sisters—one academically exceptional, the other a creative metalworker—whose parents valued both paths equally. Their emphasis on character, curiosity, and relational joy allowed each daughter to flourish authentically. This shift from performance to fulfillment doesn’t dampen ambition; it liberates it. When girls stop fearing missed milestones, they rediscover curiosity and courage.

Damour’s closing reminder is both philosophical and pragmatic: what parents prize most becomes what children chase. When love feels conditional on achievement, anxiety blooms. When it’s tied to character and connection, resilience thrives. The antidote to pressure, she concludes, isn’t indifference—it’s a better definition of success.