Adolescent Counseling

 

Mistakes are for Learning!

 

Adolescence is a critical time for young people as they search for their identities and discover their God-given destinies.  This season of their life can be confusing and full of challenges and mistakes.  Typically, negative behavior is an outcry for help. 

 

I am passionate about helping adolescents deal with their internal worlds, discover their worth and direction while teaching them to embrace their circumstances or mistakes, and use them as tools for learning, growth, and change. 

 

I pursue connection and seek to understand their internal world.  With open access to their heart, I help adolescents feel known and understood, process their grief and trauma, manage their emotions, take responsibility for their behavior, and much more.   

 

I have worked with adolescents in a variety of  roles, specifically as a therapist, teacher, mentor, foster mom, stepmom, biological mom, and homeschool mom.

 

Parental Involvement

 

Frequently, the problems that brought the adolescent into counseling are part of a larger parent-adolescent dynamic.  Therefore, I am a huge advocate of parental involvement in the therapeutic process. 

 

Parental involvement in the therapeutic process may involve joint sessions with adolescent and parent to address communication, boundaries, and conflict resolution, or it may involve sessions exclusive to the parent to address parenting challenges. 

 

It is essential that parent(s) trust the therapeutic process and give the therapist discretion on what to share and what not to share.  Typically, what is shared during sessions by the adolescent is not discussed with the parent(s) unless the therapist deems it a safety issue.  Adolescents need to feel  safe to be vulnerable by knowing that their parent(s) are not screening every word they share in therapy.