Adolescent & Teen Counseling
Help Your Child Better Understand Themselves and Others, and Create Healthy Relationships and a Life They Truly Love
The adolescent and teen years can be especially challenging for both the child and their parents.
Teens and adolescents often face a variety of new experiences, responsibilities, and pressures, and they don’t always react to them in the healthiest manner possible.
Some of the situations teens find themselves in are normal parts of growing up, such as changing identities and interests, experimenting with new ideas, and dealing with social and academic pressures.
As parents, we can usually help our teens with these issues by being patient, communicating openly, and providing a structured and supportive environment.
However, teens often encounter problems that are beyond parents’ abilities to handle effectively, including:
- Bullying or abuse;
- The grief and loss caused by a long-distance move, a relationship breakup, divorce, or the death of a family member or close friend;
- A learning disorder, or developing a severe illness or disability;
- Eating disorders or body-image issues;
- Sexual orientation and gender identity concerns;
- Teen pregnancy; and
- Substance use or any kind of addictive behavior.
But how do you know if your teen needs help?!?
Our teens can often seem “irresponsible,” “argumentative,” and “moody” for seemingly no apparent reason.
And given teenagers’ need to express themselves, protect their ever-changing social scenes, and assert their independence, they’re often less and less inclined to open up to parents, let alone accept parental opinions and advice.
If your teen has ever told you that you “don’t know what they’re talking about” or that you “just don’t understand,” you know exactly what I mean.
Of course, none of this makes it easy to know whether or not your teen is facing any difficulties, or how serious the problems may be.
Does Your Adolescent or Teen Need Professional Counseling?
While some adolescents and teens seem more capable of coping with issues than others, almost all adolescents and teens can benefit from some form of professional counseling or therapy at some point, and there are some telltale signs that your child needs help, including:
- Drastic changes in school attendance or academic performance;
- Noticeable changes in eating patterns or a sudden gain or loss of weight;
- Extreme changes in personality or mood;
- An increased tendency towards violence (including harming or threatening to harm others or themselves);
- Running away from home;
- Signs of depression, such as a lack of appetite, insomnia or sleeping more than nine hours a night, becoming withdrawn, apathy about the things they once enjoyed, neglecting personal hygiene, or crying for no apparent reason;
- Talking, joking, writing, or drawing about death or suicide or expressing feelings of worthlessness or that things would be better without them;
- Using alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs;
- Sexual promiscuity or risky sexual behavior; or
- Any other risky, dangerous, or illegal behavior.
All of this being said, the first reason to seek adolescent counseling or a teen therapist is simply to have some professional help objectively assessing the seriousness of the issues your teen and family is facing.
But more than this, an adolescent counselor or teen therapist is someone your child can talk with openly … someone who is unbiased and interested solely in their well-being.
Adolescents and teens are hyper-conscious of how others see them – especially friends and family members – and they’re often comfortable sharing things with a counselor or teen therapist that they’re uncomfortable sharing with anyone else.
In other words, your child may well benefit from counseling just by having someone they can talk with about their problems in a truly confidential and nonjudgmental setting.
However, counseling for teens and adolescents is about much more than providing your teen a place to share their thoughts and feelings and vent their frustrations …
Can a Teen Therapist Help Your Child and You?
It’s quite common, even natural, for teens and adolescents to have conflicting thoughts and feelings, and even struggle with some anxiety and depression, during an often-confusing time in life. Professional counseling can help your child cope with and resolve these types of issues.
But the real problems occur when our children hold unhelpful beliefs about themselves or the world around them – beliefs that leave them feeling unworthy or alone and lead them to maladaptive behaviors in order to soothe themselves when they feel uncomfortable.
Accordingly, a large part of our work as adolescent counselors and teen therapists is helping adolescents and teens understand their thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and beliefs, and develop better coping tools to deal with the numerous challenges of social, family, and academic life.
As an inclusive group of teen and adolescent counselors and therapists, Mindful Practices’ clinicians have helped countless teens and adolescents using an integrative approach that’s tailored to each child’s needs.
For example, we may use:
- Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) to help your teen change the way they think about and react to anxiety-provoking challenges and stressful situations;
- Mindfulness Therapy to help your child self-soothe, relax, stay centered, and focus on whatever task is at hand;
- Psychodynamic Psychotherapy to explore who your teen is and who they want to be, as well as work through and resolve any subconscious thoughts, feelings, and beliefs underlying their anxiety or depression; and
- Motivational Interviewing to help your teen or adolescent practice better self-care, love who they are, and feel empowered to create the changes and life they desire.
And that’s just to name a few.
Of course, all of this is about helping your teen or adolescent. If you’re looking for parent counseling or coaching that’s specifically designed to help you understand and improve your relationship with your teen, we provide that as well!
All of this is to say that we treat each client as a unique individual and work with teens and adolescents to help them understand the reasons they think, feel, and behave the way they do, as well as consciously choose how they want to think, feel, and behave going forward.
Perhaps even better …
Since the trusting, healing relationship your child creates with their therapist can be one of the most important ingredients in therapy’s success, the fact that Mindful Practices is a group practice means that one of our specialists is likely a great fit for your teen’s unique personality and needs.
With a little time, patience, understanding, and a willingness to do the work necessary, teen and adolescent counseling can help your child better understand, respect, and love themselves and others, as well as help them lay the foundation to enter adulthood with confidence and optimism, flourish, and create healthier relationships and a life they truly love!
For more information about how the adolescent and teen counseling services we provide can help both your teen and you, contact us today to schedule a free, 15-minute, initial phone consultation, ask any questions you have, and get matched with the best teen therapist for you.