Our counselors offer counseling for teens in Austin, TX

When working with teens, I incorporate a focus on providing skills to increase positive communication between the client and their parents, in addition to the other strategies I commonly use in therapy. Increasing skills in positive communication assists in facilitating peaceful, collaborative problem-solving.

In addition to the focus on the parent-child relationship, I often teach the following tools when working with teens:

• Mindfulness meditation, or mindful activity, involves learning to notice when the mind drifts, how to let go of thinking, and how to return focus to a predetermined word, phrase, image action, or sensory experience.
• Cognitive reframing is used to explore alternative perspectives.
• Cognitive challenging helps clients question their thoughts and beliefs in order to uncover patterns of thinking that are no longer helpful.
• Cognitive distraction gives clients the ability to move away from intrusive and unwanted thoughts.
• Sensation labeling is a mindfulness technique that assists with disrupting unwanted thinking by focusing on sensory input.
• Strategies for grief processing are used to observe, accept, experience, and release the chaos of emotions that accompany an experience of loss.
• Mental shield imagery develops skills in managing mirror neurons to reduce emotional reactivity to other people's emotions.
• Thinking strategies to address catastrophic thinking and increase confidence in dealing with undesired outcomes, should they arise.
• Positive communication skills such as reflective listening, “I” statements, nonviolent communication, and positive behavior support can decrease conflict and increase skills in collaboration.
• Motivation skills reduce procrastination and avoidance.
• Strategies for gaining acceptance of mistakes and letting go of shame and guilt.
• Task partialization to reduce overwhelm and procrastination.
• Imagery and relaxation strategies for pain management and reduction of medical anxiety.

I check in with clients and the parent(s) about teens' progress with their goals and the improvements they are seeing in their symptoms at the beginning of every session before focusing on individual time with the client. Meaningful progress is evident as the list of progress and successes gets longer and the list of challenges gets shorter.

Clients' efforts to implement the skills they are learning and the goals that they set between sessions are essential to making progress in therapy. Parental efforts to support the client and learn new positive strategies for interaction further facilitate the client's progress.

I reserve the first session for fully exploring the parent’s concerns. They can prepare for therapy by thinking about what they want their child to achieve, in addition to what it is they want to move away from.