Therapy for Teens

Therapy For Teens

Psychotherapy can help adolescents in a variety of ways. I offer emotional support, teach ways to resolve conflicts with others, help identify feelings, and provide guidance as they try out new solutions to the many challenges of this time of life.  Goals for therapy may include learning ways to manage anxiety, identifying committed actions to take to reduce depression, improving relations with friends or family, or ceasing use of substances.

I help teens understand their complex emotions, including anxiety and depression. I also identify how avoidance of feared situations (such as tests, oral presentations, social situations) further increases these feelings.  Together, we create a plan to counter this avoidance and build success one experience at a time. Using mindfulness exercises and other experiential exercises, I help adolescents generate a toolkit of techniques to utilize outside my office to manage difficult situations and the thoughts and feelings that accompany them.

If indicated, I will help them identify triggers for substance use and learn alternative ways to manage the feelings, thoughts, people and situations that lead to the decision to drink or use other substances.  My office is a nonjudgmental, safe environment to explore all thoughts, emotions and behaviors.  I offer on-site drug testing.