Do you ever have unexplainable emotional outbursts? Maybe you woke up with a breakout? Or perhaps you’re experiencing the worst period of your life.

Collectively, we’re all going through the grossest phase in our lives: puberty, and it’s all thanks to hormones. Sure, you may have already learned about the ways hormones affect your body in health class, but do you remember any of it? As someone who’s somewhat versed on the inner workings of the human body and incredibly shameless when it comes to embarrassing topics like puberty, I’m here to be the bearer of hormonal news. 

What are hormones?

Hormones are really tiny chemical signals secreted from different glands in your body. Those tiny chemicals are picked up by different types of cells, and those cells decide what to do with the signals. There’s so many different types of hormones that do different things; testosterone makes your voice deeper and increases muscle mass, while estrogen regulates the female reproductive system. 

In more understandable terms for my generation: hormones are like social media. Let’s say you post a really cute picture on Instagram and all your friends and followers likes, comments, or interacts with the post in some way. In this scenario, you would be the gland, the instagram post would be the hormone, and your followers’ interactions would be the body’s response. 

Why are hormones making you crazy?

Okay you’re not crazy, your body is just adjusting to the influx of hormones. Around your tweenage years, glands in your body start to amp up hormone production and secretion. These hormones come busting down doors (a.k.a. attaching to receptors on/in cells) all over your body and say “let’s mess with this poor kid’s self esteem for the next few years and make a lot of internal and external changes!” 

Because your bodies are processing hormones unlike ever before, everythings going to be thrown out of whack. Since everything comes back to the brain, the ‘crazy’ is just the emotional manifestation of trying to adjust to these literal chemical changes inside of your body. Your body is getting used to all these hormones regulating change and development, and unfortunately that takes a while. 

So that’s why you’re hormonal, it’s just chemicals. Yeah, it totally sucks being a teenager and having to go through all these emotional and physical changes, but you know what? Who cares! We’re all going through this together and besides, it’ll all be over in a few years.