low-level fear can seem traumatic, because we don't know what high-level feels like
But a reality check (even something as mild as "hey it's not that bad") is callous and invalidating our feelings.
It's somewhat developmentally appropriate in adolescents as they only have so much context and as there's a lot of really big upheavals including emotional ones, they do tend to feel extremely hard done by and extremely sorry for themselves and know beyond any shade of doubt that they absolutely do have the worst possible outcome that could ever happen to anyone in situations that are nowhere adjacent to anything in the same universe as high level traumatic. My kids were the worst for that between 12 and 15, youngest is still kind of in and out of that but getting better. Unless there was some serious trauma involved I expect adults to have grown out of that.
They think they know how to act and react, but when reality hits, they are traumatised instead
The first part sounds like normal teenage things XD Youngest at the moment has no problems insisting that there is no possible way that we could do some of the things we say we could do or have done and we're just grossly overestimating his own abilities, but he will do the literal exact same thing and when we point out that he most likely would not be able to do those things he gets mad because we're "underestimating" him because somehow he's the only one who can possibly accurately guess anything.
He's probably also very up and down with moods because he's a teenager and also because reality destroying the expectations created by fantasy can be a devastating blow to the ego (but it is of course everyone else's fault).
Having said that I'm reasonably sure everyone has encountered at least one person who makes very confidently completely wrong assertions about things they know nothing at all about and they're not always children XD
For sure it is. At the same time, we have to get accustomed to some level of discomfort, otherwise we learn and do very little.
(by the way, sometimes when I type, a whole lot of random letters come out instead of the words I want. Like, not even close...)
Well off topic.
I know of kids around here who haven't grazed a knee, because they have barely been outside to play in a way they could. What happens when they are fifteen and going through a breakup with their "true love"?
Yes, in many ways. But even teenagers can have some sense of context, even though not fully developed. If they have no exposure to discomfort, I think they lose the ability to tell mountain from molehill quite quickly.
The "reality destroying expectations created by fantasy" is a massive problem. Moreso, because many will still believe that the fantasy is the ideal, undermining the experience and lessons provided by reality.
I have no idea what you are talking about ;)