Breaking The Boy Code

Stress wound its way into Michael’s life throughout his preteen years, growing in size until it overwhelmed him in his first year of high school. “It took over my life,” he told me. “I’d come home and do four hours of homework. This took a toll on my social life, and my physical health. I began to develop an eating disorder, which I still have to battle to this day. I lost a lot of weight. I became more of an unhappy person. I wasn’t fun to be around. I didn’t enjoy being around other people. I just felt like my life was a mess.”“It was painful, to see my life almost crumbling. Because of schoolwork, or my friends, or just something that was stressing me out so much I couldn’t be who I wanted to be. It was really just—it’s painful to think about now, it was painful to go through then. I’m still going through it.”Things came to a head when Michael broke his leg and missed several weeks of school. He did his best to keep up with schoolwork in his absence, but the pressure he felt when he returned to school star