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Teen Counseling

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Teen Counseling

Teen counseling is a therapeutic approach specifically for teens. With counseling, teens participate in talk therapy in a safe environment with a clinician with the aim of better understanding and expressing their feelings, identifying and resolving situations, and developing healthy coping mechanisms.
Counseling typically takes place in one-on-one talk therapy sessions but may also be available in a group therapy setting. Having your teen talk to a skilled clinician can support and help them through this crucial period of their life.

 

When Does a Teen Need Counseling? Counseling can support your teen through a variety of things, such as self-discovery, stress, life events, or mental health concerns. Counseling can also be used to prevent minor issues from turning into problems later on.

Benefits

Even just a few counseling sessions can make a big difference to your teen’s overall well-being. Common reasons for which teens attend counseling include:

  • Anxiety – Feelings of worry and fear that manifest without any real trigger and can be overwhelming, often going on many hours of the day. There may be worrying thoughts, physical symptoms of worry such as a fast heart beat or breathing, sweating, stomach butterflies, a knot in one’s chest or just feeling muscular tension and on edge.
  • Depression – Typical depression symptoms are low mood and loss of interest in activities. In addition to those, people may also experience changes in appetite, trouble sleeping, tiredness, feelings of guilt, trouble concentrating, or thoughts of death.
  • Attention Concerns – Teens who are inattentive have difficulty staying focused and attending to tasks that they perceive as mundane. Because of this, they may procrastinate doing work that requires a great deal of mental energy.
  • Stress Management – This can include lowering acute stress, but it is often aimed at lowering chronic stress to improve health, happiness, and overall well-being. Clinicians and clients work together to identify a range of techniques, strategies, and therapies designed to help control stress.
  • Relationship Concerns – During teenage years relationships change frequently and include many new experiences, some of which teens may struggle to understand or know how to address. These changes may cause emotional stress or even trauma.

Methods

There are many different types of counseling for teens. Depending on the concern, a clinician may employ a combination of methods. Among the common counseling methods used for teens are:

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – Help teens identify beliefs about self, those close to them, and their world that generate thought patterns that create distress. Clinicians work with teens to challenge inaccurate beliefs and thoughts using evidence and reframe with accurate and less distressing ones.
  • Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) – Help teens take responsibility for and find healthier ways of coping with conflict and intense emotions. DBT is often used for teens who engage in self-harm, who are suicidal, and/or teens with more significant distress.
  • Interpersonal Therapy (IPT) – Typically beneficial for teens experiencing symptoms of depression, IPT focuses on a teen’s relationships, addressing relationship problems and how interpersonal events affect emotions.
  • Family Therapy: – Typically includes one or more members of the family, including parents, grandparents, and siblings. The goal of this type of family therapy is to improve communication and support among family members.
  • Supportive Therapy – Help teens address and cope with problems in a healthy way as well as improve their self-esteem..

Choosing a Counselor

There are a variety of counselors who work with teens so it’s helpful to know what to look for in finding the best fit. Here are important considerations when choosing a therapist.:

  • Experience – Teens are unique; the problems they have and the way they deal with them are specific to their age group.
  • Therapeutic Approach – Consider the therapeutic approach and training of the counselor. There are many different ways to counsel teens..
  • Personality & Rapport – Experience, credentials and therapeutic approach are important, but it’s usually the personality of the counselor and the rapport that develops between the teen and counselor that is the most important factor of all.