Counseling
We all suffer from our ability to stress about the future, think about the past, and get stuck in our minds, leading to judgments and criticisms.
Counseling is about change, and there are multiple ways of approaching that change. Your child or teen is the most important person in the room. Counseling is not about “fixing” your child/teen – it’s about helping them make the necessary changes to provide them with the opportunity to thrive. Therapy is a commitment. Change is inevitable, but a lot of that work has to come from them. You are helping them to take that first step.
Adolescent Counseling
Being an adolescent is not a diagnosis, disease or disability...it is a time when teens are not yet as mature as adults.When it comes to counseling and working with adolescents, it is about getting into their world and onto their level. You have to be able to adapt to resistance and motivate them to want to make a change by resolving ambivalence.
Although this isn’t always the case, I have found that many teenagers that come to see me are not the ones that initiated contact. This often means that their goals for therapy are not going to be the same as yours. This is ok. I am neutral, with the only goal of helping your teen explore and resolve current and past challenges, create better solutions, build a strong mindset, and achieve their goals.
“I strive to come from a place of curiosity and empathy to allow your teen to share their experiences of what their life is like during this transitional time.”
Youth Counseling
Counseling children often requires a collaborative approach to work through the challenges that caused you to seek help for your child in the first place.
Children want to learn and they want to work hard. When things do not go right, it is often because they do not have the necessary skills they need. They are doing the best they can with the tools that they have.
The first objective in my work with children is to identify and prioritize the skills that your child is lacking and then build upon those skills.
By collaboratively working with your child, we can come up with a plan.Working with children often requires a lot of work from the parent, including trying new techniques and different ways of thinking about the concerns.
Together, we will stick with it until we figure out the approach that works best for helping your child develop most successfully.