Does your child struggle with anxiety, depression, anger or painful peer relationships? Is your son, or daughter, who a short time ago was a happy youngster, now moody and withdrawn? Have you begun to frequently worry about your child’s well-being?
Many other families experience the same struggles. The challenges you face are not unusual, nor is it a sign of failure when your teen experiences these upsets. It is, however, a clue that it is time to reach out for support.
We help teens get over these rough spots in life.
In person, online, or over the phone, we can work together to find solutions to the challenges that your child is facing.
When teenagers are able to deal with the storms in life, they free up energy to focus on getting ready for adulthood. And that, after all, is the main goal of adolescence. To be ready to enter young adulthood as a competent, confident, and happy individual capable of making good decisions while moving forward in life.
We’ve heard from many parents over the years, that when things begin to turn around for the better, their child pretty quickly becomes calmer, happier, and more confident. This is not only terrific for the teen, but it makes for a much happier home life as well.
Overwhelming Pressure
Today’s teens are confronted with unusual burdens and anxieties. Their world is saturated with constant social media, often conveying destructive messages and unrealistic expectations.
Peer pressure is ever present, bullying is on the rise, and their desire to fit in with peers at all costs often takes a devastating toll. Many teens end up feeling that they do not measure up. Secretly they judge themselves by focusing on their most embarrassing failures. They then use these disappointments to compare their life with the highlight reels their peers post on Instagram, Tic Tok, and elsewhere.
Many of the youngsters who come to us confide that these comparisons make them feel like imposters who will never be successful adults.
How Teens Often Respond To These Pressures
Many youngsters attempt to overcome such insecurities by trying even harder to win the approval of their peers. Frequently this means giving in to peer pressure and engaging in activities that would have been unthinkable a short time before.
Another common response to the insecurities of adolescence is for youngsters to try and ‘prove’ that they are not imposters, but in fact already capable of taking on the role of an adult. This most often is seen when teens strenuously rebel against parental rules (“I’m my own boss”), withdraw from their family (“I don’t need them”), or engage in high risk behaviors including drug/alcohol use, reckless driving, and more.
Other teens respond to these same pressures with anxiety. They seek refuge from their insecurities by isolating themselves from friends, refusing to engage in school activities such as sports, theater, and other healthy high school extracurriculars. These are, however, the very activities that would otherwise help them become stronger, more capable and confident.
Still other teens fall into a depressive state, feeling that they are hopelessly lost. These youngsters view the future as bleak. Possibilities that would otherwise excite them (entering the trades, going to college, joining the military) are viewed with foreboding. The longer they remain depressed the more hopeless they view their situation. At a time when the future is bursting with possibilities, these youngsters feel instead that life has passed them by.
There Are Solutions
Our counselors can help. Your teen can regain his or her confidence and once again feel excited about life. It takes some work, persistence, and tenacity. There are seldom any easy fixes. But the prognosis is bright. Most teens and their parents are more than able to turn things around if given the right type of assistance.
We provide this help by teaching new skills, sharing critical insights, unwavering support, and a push in the right direction.
Because every teen and parent are unique, we specifically tailor our counseling around your goals and your situation. Then, using approaches that have been proven through research and clinical experience, we work to make change happen as quickly as possible.
Is This Family Therapy Or Individual Therapy?
Most teens in our practice work best with an individual therapy format. Even so, parents are always involved in the therapy in some form. How that occurs is up to the parents and the teen.
It might be that a parent and teen agree to spend ten minutes together with the therapist at the start of each meeting to discuss the successes, or conflicts, that occurred since the last meeting.
It might also be that the entire course of therapy is best served by meeting with the parents and teen together (basically a form of family therapy).
But most of the time counseling involves something between these two extremes. One that reassures the teen that he, or she, is able to talk freely about anything at all. At the same time, we strive to make certain that parents feel comfortable that they are ‘in the loop’, and not simply a blind bystander.
What next?
If your teen has been struggling then we know you have been as well. It can be a difficult time for the entire family. Don’t wait, give us a call today. The consultation is free, and we would be happy to hear from you.
