Our counselors offer counseling for teens in Grand Prairie, TX

My go-to approach for helping people in teen counseling is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). I find the best benefit of CBT is helping bring awareness to one’s internal processes and automatic thought patterns and giving them tools to evaluate the efficacy and validity of these thoughts and the ways that they influence behaviors.

I teach clients how to conceptualize and address the connection between their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in teen counseling. Examples include:

• Thought: A situation triggers a thought, or an interpretation of the situation. For example, not hearing back from a text can trigger a teen to think, “My friend is mad at me.”
• Emotion: The thought then triggers an emotion. In the texting example, thinking that a friend is angry with them can lead a teen to feel sad, worried, lonely, or bad about themselves
• Behavior: Emotions influence behavior. Distressing teen emotions can manifest as anger and aggression toward parents or using self-harm or substances to numb the feelings.

• Cognitive reconstruction: An exercise in which the therapist supports the client to look for the negative thought patterns they tend to fall back on, such as overgeneralizing or always assuming the worst.
• Guided discovery: The therapist gets to know the client’s point of view. They ask questions that make the client think about how and why they think the way they do, which in turn broadens the client’s viewpoint.
• Cognitive journaling: Structured so that clients can set goals and record their progress.

I know a client is making meaningful progress in teen counseling when the teen self-reports progress or when their parent or social supports acknowledge a change. Therapists can identify some changes during sessions, but feedback is the best way to know if progress is being made and goals are being achieved.

Clients can supplement their time in teen counseling with journaling, completing homework, acknowledging and working towards measurable goals, and maintaining an overall healthy lifestyle.

To prepare for their first teen counseling session, a teen can identify their problem and potential goals, know they can ask questions to the therapist, prepare to be open-minded and engaged in the session, and be on time for the appointment.