Teen Counseling
Has Your Teenager Been Overwhelmed By Life Lately?
Being a teenager is typically full of ups and downs, and awkward moments, but sometimes the stress and challenges of young adulthood can become distressing and overwhelming.
For instance, does your teenager feel self-conscious or anxious at school or social gatherings? Have they been struggling academically, getting bullied, or having trouble relating to their peers? They may not get adequate rest and might feel spread thin by life’s demands.
Maybe you’re considering therapy for your teen because their difficulties have reached a point where they’re interfering with their life and holding them back from being the person they’d like to be.
Signs That Your Teen Is Struggling
Here are some indicators that your teen’s struggles impact their day-to-day life more severely than what you might commonly expect during the teenage years.
They may:
● Worry constantly or ruminate over things that make them anxious.
● Have a fear of social judgment and rejection that prevents them from expressing themselves or even speaking up at all.
● Have trouble with attention and concentration during the day, impacting their grades, friendships, and motivation.
● Deal with depression or anger, or find it easy to argue about anything and everything.
● Fight not only with their parents, but with their teachers, siblings, and peers.
Your teenager wants to feel good enough and competent enough to face life’s challenges. They hope to feel worthy of respect and love from those around them and to consider their struggles to be manageable. Therapy for teens with Cambridge Compassion and Mindfulness Psychology can help bring those positive changes into your child’s life.
Life Is Getting Harder For Teenagers Everyday
The life of a teenager involves simultaneously being asked to find yourself and explore your interests while feeling like you're under the microscope of parents, peers, teachers, and coaches. This pressure can really weigh a person down.
Mental health issues are common among teenagers. One in seven children aged 10 to 19 deal with depression and anxiety. These are two of the main causes of adolescent illness and disability. Furthermore, suicide is the 4th leading cause of death for teenagers and young adults aged 15-29. (1)
It's wise to address issues that arise during adolescence as early as possible. This may prevent them from becoming more severe as time goes on, and may also prevent problematic decisions from occurring that could impact their safety, their reputation, and their chances for success in adulthood.
How Social Media Is Contributing To These Struggles
Social media compounds the issues teens face, as it can place unneeded pressure and high expectations on their lives and outlook. For instance, they may feel they need to perform to a certain level of expertise or behave a certain way because they see perfected and popular examples online.
There are also plenty of posts that point out peoples’ flaws or embarrassing situations. These can lock young adults into fearful ways of thinking and may make them hesitant to share things about themselves to avoid harsh criticism or even worse, humiliation.
Just like adults, teenagers often rely on the internet to help them learn about the world and potential solutions to their problems. However, given the seemingly infinite amount of information available, they may end up too overwhelmed to help themselves.
Even if they are able to cobble something together, the success of this plan is often limited by a lack of real-life experience. This pattern can lead to learned helplessness, the symptoms of which can look like anxiety, sadness, frustration, or acting out.
With therapy, your teen can find a partner to listen to their worries and provide them with expert knowledge that will help them with the struggles they face.
Therapy Can Be A Place For Teenagers To Feel Seen And Heard
Many adolescents don’t feel seen or heard or even valued for who they are. However, working with a teen therapist gives them a space where they can be themselves and explore issues without pressure or fear of judgment.
This isn’t to say they’d feel judged by other trusted adults, but they may be more apt to open up in a therapeutic environment where none of the regular demands or reminders of their struggles are there.
In therapy, I will learn what makes your kid unique, and what interests they have. I’ll also dive into their headspace to understand where they are coming from. I call this learning a kid’s language. The best way to help both to motivate and empower a child is to set up a plan that honors their experience, worldview, and goals without discounting the challenges that lie ahead.
Our main goal is to assist your teen with figuring out a way to live their life with all the demands and pressures they face, while also holding space and making room for their self-identity.
Other Goals Of Teen Therapy Sessions
Our sessions will begin with either just your teenager or a joint session with you and your child. Then, we can proceed with just your teen in therapy sessions. We’ll look at triggers for the biggest issues they’re facing, using a variety of modalities. We’ll also take time to normalize their symptoms - explaining how common they usually are.
Other common areas teens benefit from focusing on in therapy include problem-solving skills, relationship development and management, as well as strategies for increasing focus and decreasing distraction.
Modalities For Unraveling And Tackling The Challenges Your Teen Faces
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT for teens, provides the opportunity to look at the driving forces of your teen’s fears and worries. This process helps us identify thought patterns that are keeping them locked into an anxious or depressed state, and to work on breaking free from them.
Mindfulness Practices for depression, anxiety, anger, and attention challenges are effective for controlling stress and counterproductive emotional reactions. Experiences like mindfulness meditation for teens can help your child learn to calm their nervous system while acknowledging that feelings and thoughts are not facts and that no feeling lasts forever.
Core Value Development involves figuring out who your teen is, and what's important to them, to make sure their choices are in line with their values. We will work together towards an objective that your teen cares about. This is vital for meaning-making in kids’ lives as so often they prioritize what other people care about and not what they’re truly interested in.
Figuring out who you are while managing school and family responsibilities is enough to stress anyone out, even without the added complication of mental health struggles. Counseling for teens with Cambridge Compassion and Mindfulness Psychology can help your child process their feelings and thoughts without judgment and find happiness in being uniquely themselves.
You Might Still Have Questions About Teen Therapy…
My teenager is afraid of embarrassing themselves in therapy.
Teenage therapy is a non-judgmental atmosphere, so it would be tough for them to embarrass themselves here, but if they did feel embarrassed, we would honor that moment by simply noticing that we all get embarrassed sometimes.
We would also think about if there was something helpful we could do with that feeling, such as thinking about how this vulnerability might tell your child what is important to them in life. One of the secrets to a good and successful life is permitting yourself to fail while permitting yourself to learn from failure.
How do I know I can trust you?
Trust is earned. It is smart to be a little skeptical of people when you meet them, especially when seeking a teen counselor for your child’s needs. Trust develops naturally if that person is a good fit for your counseling needs. You want to find someone who consistently aims to help your teenager with their unique struggles, who shares relevant and empowering information, and who holds therapy sessions in a way that is tailored to them.
How can therapy help my kid more than me?
A lot of people are anxious about letting go of a part of parenting when seeking therapy for their child. Your teen will ultimately be in a safe place even though they barely know me. Working with me provides your teen with an opportunity to speak their mind without worrying about how their family members or friends will react.
You get to choose a therapist that fits your teen’s personality to help them, and this can be the impetus for them to truly open up, no matter what kind of relationship you both have.
Counseling Can Help Your Teen Find Their Inner Strength
The teenage years can feel like a huge hurdle to get past instead of a time to discover who you are and how wonderful life can be. Reach out to my practice, Cambridge Compassion and Mindfulness Psychology using my contact form for a free, 15-minute consultation to learn more about how teen therapy can help your child navigate these challenging times while building a stronger sense of self.
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