Puberty isn’t this thing that happens to us, we make puberty happen as much as it happens to us1. BISH is aimed at everyone over 14, so there’s a good chance that you have been going through puberty for a bit. The main take-away is that puberty is really different for everyone and that we should try to make a world where going through it is as easy and joyful as possible. So this is a guide to help you to find your way through it.
What is puberty?
Puberty is a period where our bodies and selves go through a phase of rapid growth and development. This is due to changing hormones, bodies, brains, feelings, thoughts, and how we relate to them in our social environments. It can begin in childhood, continue through teenage years, and some aspects of it go through to our 20s. Many adults who go have hormonal treatments as part of gender transition might go through a second kind of puberty too.
As with a lot of things to do with sex, love, and you, puberty is complex because it’s biological, psychological, and sociological: biopsychosocial. Bodies change, our brains and thoughts change, and this all happens within different social contexts that affect us all differently. Even the word ‘puberty’ does this. The biological facts of puberty2 3are told to us through the social context of what bodies are meant to be for (reproduction). So according to this, from a young age we are told bodies are supposed to do what (boys have penises, testicles and produce sperm, girls have vaginas, ovaries and release eggs) and which bodies are given status (eg big strong boys).
When we are told these stories they fix us and tell us that puberty is this thing where a lot of things happen to you. I’m really trying not to do that in this article, so firstly I’m going to try to tell you the ‘what happens during puberty’ story in a more neutral way. But more importantly we’ll then get to how we go through puberty, and with some top advice at the end. There are at least two jokes.
What happens during puberty
At the beginning of puberty4 GnRH* (a growth hormone) is released from the brain which basically kicks the whole thing off. This sends the message to the ovaries or the testes to start producing more hormones, (oestrogen and progesterone from the ovaries, or testosterone from the testicles). Then DHEA which is another hormone similar to testosterone is released from the adrenal glands.
These hormones kicking in starts the process of rapid growth and development. Our breasts / chests start to get bigger under the nipple. Testicles get a bit bigger generally (balls don’t suddenly drop). If you have ovaries, you may start to get periods. As bodies get bigger their overall shape changes. We get more body hair (some more than others). Our skin changes and our smell changes. Voices can change, face shape changes, and some of us really get into The Cure.
Some people go through these physical changes without too much bother, but they can be difficult for some people. Particularly for people who start puberty before everyone else, or later than everyone else. Or for kids who start puberty and find that their body is moving in a different direction to their gender. Also for intersex people, whose bodies might be developing in ways which are different to most other people. This is also known as DSD (differences in sex development). Just how hard this can be for people often depends on the social context they are in.
Your brain is also your body
The 3 hormonal responses also work with the developing brain. So during puberty is a time when we learn new things very quickly (French, music, Mario). We also learn more about risks and rewards as we have more and more independence from our caregivers. Added to all this, a lot of people feel attractions, affections, or horniness, for people which results in an increased awareness of sexuality and gender. So we are primed to start to seek out status and admiration from other people.
*Sidenote: in the UK there is a ban on doctors prescribing drugs which delay the GnRH process at the moment. These drugs (GnRHa) are often very helpful for trans kids and their families because it delays the onset of puberty. This gives time to help them to get different kinds of support in place (from school, family, friends) or to just pause it in order to then get hormonal treatments5 which will go more in the direction of their gender. BISH stands with all trans kids and their families who want access to this, along with the BMA, the Lancet, the Good Law Project, Gendered Intelligence, Mermaids, and all other trans comrades.
Puberty tangled up
This is what the textbooks often say about ‘what happens to you’ when you go through puberty. However, that’s only one side of the picture. We have insides and outsides, and they both affect each other. So puberty is a process involving an entanglement of biological, psychological changes, in the social world. These things are all so tangled up it doesn’t really make any sense to disentangle them.
Here are just a few examples of this kind of entanglement.
Sleep
Your caregivers probably made you go to bed at bedtime for lots of reasons. They’ve got tired of you during the day and want some peace and quiet. They want to: zone out on their phones; drink; have a shag; watch TV; have a go on your Switch; and eat olives. Also they might be doing it because they know that you need sleep. A lot of the hormones I was talking about above get released when we are sleeping.
So if you don’t get some decent kip every night, you’re affecting how you go through puberty. Also if you’re tired it’s harder to learn, so your brain won’t develop*. See also eating properly, staying hydrated, and getting some exercise. This is a great example of insides and outsides and how entangled they are. Sleep, rituals, and self care both help to make puberty happen and also help us get through puberty.
*This is why all schools should start later, ban homework and not punish kids and their parents for oversleeping and being late. IMHO.
Status
The limbic system6 of our brain develops so that we become more affected by things generally. We feel things like risk, rewards, affection, and status. Status, getting clout for being or doing something, is something you might experience going through puberty. Seeking out status is going to be very different depending on what your social context is.
So for example, a school that is really into sport, physicality, and competition might prime your body to be good at these things. Or a school where the social context is about being academic might prime your body for knuckling down, doing the reading, and getting good grades.* These contexts are going to radically affect how you go through puberty, because your body (and brain) are growing and changing in relation to those contexts. If your social context is that you are a young bhante monk, in a Buddhist religious order, then your status will come from your kindness, acts of care, and selflessness7. So our insides, our brains, are constantly changing, ‘rewiring’, growing and developing, in relation to our outsides.
*My school was a combination of both of these things, and also a really unhealthy school with lots of very miserable kids which is still the same 30 or so years later.
Feelings for people
As we become more aware of our bodies and the people around us we start to understand that there can be different kinds of relationships with different intensities. You might get crushes, or you might start getting horny. You might feel nothing at all, or at least little to do with your genitals (whilst everyone else around you seems to lose their minds).
Clearly different social contexts make this different for different people. Many disabled people are disabled because of society’s view about sexuality and people with disabilities. If society’s beauty standard says that people with disabilities can’t be hot or experience love and affection, that’s disabling. Anti queer environments can make it more difficult for queer folk (anyone who isn’t straight) to express or become themselves. If a social context raises young men to be hard, tough, and unfeeling, it can make it more difficult for young men to have relationships too.
Find out more about your sexuality.
Mistakes
Scientists of the brain have tried to prove why it is that teenagers do stupid shit from time to time. Taking risks in order to seek rewards, and status, is something which teenagers are apparently primed to do. This is because of ‘I want this’ chemicals being released in the brain (such as dopamine). It’s also because the prefrontal cortex, which helps us to understand consequences, doesn’t fully develop until your early 20s.
But of course, this is also context dependent. If you care for disabled parents, you probably will want to be a bit careful about, for example, jumping over a fence when you are drunk.
In this book about the Teenage Brain8 (it’s not very good imho), there are examples of kids not calling ambulances when their friend has passed out drunk because they are worried about getting kicked out of uni. Or someone who was incredibly drunk walking home and nearly died of hypothermia because he was avoiding police cars (who may have helped him not die but also might also have arrested him for being pissed). The author was saying that it was their brains that made them behave this way. However, if those kids knew that they weren’t going to get in trouble, they would have acted differently and not made mistakes. So this is dependent on how we police and discipline young people too, we can’t separate that out from how we behave and how our brains work.
Growing
Bodies grow at different speeds from each other, getting heavier and longer. The speed at which we grow might be harder or easier because of the external world. Clothing a growing body can be tricky and expensive. So if you’re really conscious of fashion that can be difficult, particularly in environments that encourage bullying. Read this about how bullying happens.
We might feel really good about a growth spurt because it might feel good in relation to the rest of you. For example, a guy may welcome being taller because of the current beauty standard for men to be tall. But they might also not like getting stretch marks, which I answered a question about years ago. Or they might not wish to stand out, or be assumed to be tough, or sporty (which tall people often are).
Beauty
Bodies are susceptible to the broader context of what a beautiful body is. The beauty standard, which I’ve written about here in my article about how to feel better about your body, is the cultural norm of what is considered beautiful. Young people are often not really able to escape it (sadly). Let’s say your boobs grow quite quickly. For some people that will be great, others it will be awful. It all depends on the timing, how you’re feeling about your gender, the attention you may or may not be getting (from particular people), how you feel about your sexuality etc.
What girls do / what boys do
So a lot of the reading I’ve done in researching this article has been saying ‘well boys will go through this and girls will go through that’. A lot of scientific research is now pointing out how inaccurate9 and sexist10 this is. These stories about there being a clear distinction between sexes, and there being only two genders is inaccurate. Of course, these stories also have an impact on how we go through puberty. How our bodies grow and what we do with them is influenced by the incredibly powerful stories about what our bodies ‘should’ do. In social contexts that are more chill about these things puberty (and should) be easier to go through.
Young men who are told that they should be tough and strong, might have a difficult time if they go through puberty later than their peers for example. Young women who get tall and big early on, might find it tricky too. Non-binary young people may find this easier, or difficult, depending on their social contexts, whether they have supportive friends, and whether people use the correct pronouns and names for them.
How to get through puberty?
So I think it’s really useful to think about puberty in this way. Puberty involves our insides and outsides, biology, psychology and society all entangled up. It’s a right old mess. It’s also a lot. So everything is moving and emerging and it can feel both slow and very very fast. Even the smallest of changes can lead to bigger changes because everything is in relation to everything else. So you have the power to act, as well as to be acted upon.
Try this resource about how you feel about yourself. It helps you to understand the relationship between feelings, emotions, thoughts, and actions.
Drawing task
I tried this in writing this article so I hope it might help you. (The drawing below are the lines I drew, I took the words I wrote down out because you don’t need to know that.) 1. Draw a line of the things happening to you through puberty. All the stuff you are told will happen (getting bigger, learning things, etc). 2. Then, around those things, draw another line with all the things you have dealt with in going through puberty in the social context that you’re in. Notice the insides and the outsides, can you see how entangled they are?
3. Now look at those entangled lines and draw another one of all the things you are really pleased to notice about yourself. The times when you felt like you were doing pretty okay actually, even when things are hard. How have you got through it so far? As you loop this line around the others, write in the times when you’ve been pleased to notice how you got through it. What words or phrases come to mind?11
Best hopes for puberty
Let’s say your best hope of getting through puberty is that you grow and change, but kindly and with love. What might it be like meeting that person at the other end? They’ve really got their shit together. What would be the very first thing you would notice about them / yourself? How would your loved ones describe you in 5 words? What might you be able to do? What else?
Try this article about how to feel a bit better.
Self care really does actually help
This is why it’s really important to look after yourself as you go through. Get to know your little solid islands of security, where you can catch your breath and get comfy. Your self care rituals. That book you like. The TV show you know really well. Your loved ones. Wisdom from that website you like. As well as the basics, bed, water, food, breathing. Introduce some slowness when you need it. Here’s more about self care.
Slowing down your nervous system (see this article about dealing with stress) can give you the chance for the rest of your body to catch up. Once you can understand what might be happening you can make a plan, or get advice, or just wait for the next wave to come and see where you end up.
Politics of puberty
It would also be helpful if the people around you and the places that you are a part of (eg school) were able to help you get through puberty as best as you can. If schools were a bit more calm about the ‘boys are like this girls are like this’ thing that would be better. This is where the politics of the places around you are really important. The kind of school that can really help the most minoritised people get through puberty is also the kind of school that can help the least minoritised the most too. This is why solidarity and politics are important.
So perhaps getting more involved in school groups, activism, creating spaces where everyone feels like they can play a part is a way of making puberty easier for everyone. As I’ve pointed out in this article, there are lots of examples where puberty is harder for people that is only caused by the social context, which in many cases is school. Even just challenging bullying where you see it, or supporting people affected by it, can be huge. I explain in my bullying article about how you might be benefiting from bullying without even doing it.
Be with joy
I’ve written this article about how to feel joy, so read that. It’s important to remember that although puberty can be sometimes a bit hard, and a bit much, it can also be really fun and new and exciting. Some of the ‘firsts’ that your body is able to do during this age is really exciting. Go with it! First, crush, first orgasm, first time you go out without your parents, first time you learn trigonometry, can all be really joyful. Try to be with it, but also don’t beat yourself up if you can’t. See if you can notice the ‘pleased to notice’ line running through you and everyone around you.
References
- https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-0306-6_8 ↩︎
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1054139X02004858 ↩︎
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470280/ ↩︎
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK534827/ ↩︎
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07435584221100591 ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic_system ↩︎
- https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3313 ↩︎
- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Teenage-Brain-Neuroscientists-Survival-Adolescents/dp/0007448317 ↩︎
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11002534/ ↩︎
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ejn.15834 ↩︎
- I’ve got this idea from the philosophers/therapists Deleuze and Guattari in their book A Thousand Plateaus. It’s about the molar line, the molecular line, and the line of flight. It’s on page 198 of this edition you can see for free online https://files.libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf ↩︎
There’s a comment box below (scroll down) if you want to give me feedback or ask a question (don’t leave your full name and I pre-moderate all comments). Or ask me a question here.
© Justin Hancock, 2024 Find out more about me and BISH here.
See what else you can find out about today!
Or search by category
Or search by tags
A-Z of Porn About You Abuse Arousal Ask Bish Body Image Clitoris Communication Condoms Consent Contraception Coronavirus Dry Humping Ejaculation Erection Feelings Friendships Gender Kissing Law Love Masturbation Oral Sex Orgasm Parents Penis Pleasure Porn Positions Pregnancy Pressure Relationships Safer Sex Saying No Self Care Self Esteem Services Sex Education Sexting STIs Teach yourself Team Bish The Right Time Trust Vagina
If you have a question that I’ve not already answered you can contact me here
This is where I usually ask you to do a survey to give me feedback, but I’ve had to pause this for a few weeks because I’m doing a new one as part of my PhD. So, come back in a few weeks or leave your feedback in the comments or via the contact page, or via the socials.
Most of my readers like to stay updated via email. So sign up here and get an automatic email every time I post a new resource on here.
And you can also keep up with me via social medias (I’m not very active but I try to post when I’ve done a new thing). TikTok. Insta. Twitter. YouTube.
This website is funded by people like you who find it useful. I can’t run ads, so please help! Here are all of the ways you can support BISH and keep us going.
Find out more about who I am and read about my 25 years experience being a sex educator about me and BISH here. I also have resources, a podcast, and a coaching service for over 18s, as well as some of the best RSE teaching resources around. Find out out about my other work at justinhancock.co.uk
Support BISH on Patreon