Our counselors offer counseling for teens in Westborough, MA

My go-to approach for helping people in teen counseling is talk therapy using cognitive behavioral therapy-based strategies and interventions. I often find the best benefit in CBT because it is a simple way to encourage teens to learn how their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are interconnected, as well as how these things affect them and others in the teen's life.

I teach the following tools in teen counseling:

• Mindfulness tools: To learn effective ways to relax the mind and body and relieve stress/anxiety.
• Cognitive strategies such as reframing and/or restructuring: To manage rumination, anxious thoughts, hyperfixation, and/or intrusive thoughts.
• Emotional communication: Using “I” statements that allow the teen to appropriately and effectively express their feelings in a way that allows others to better understand what kind of support the teen may need at a given time.

I know a client is making meaningful progress in teen counseling by looking at a few different things:

• Nonverbal communication: Changes in intonation, eye contact, or other nonverbal communication between sessions.
• Self-report scales: Use of evidence-based assessments, self-harm assessments, and suicide rating scales during treatment reviews.
• Thinking: Changes in thinking, such as more positive, constructive thoughts, fewer negative thoughts, and more realistic thinking.
• Mood: A noticeable increase in mood or decrease in depressive symptoms.
• Reactions to stress: Improvements in how the teen reacts to stress.
• Problem-solving: Signs that the teen is able to independently problem solve.

Clients can supplement their time in teen counseling by completing tasks assigned outside of sessions for skills practice. Mood and behavior-tracking and/or journaling are also excellent supplements to therapy, as these activities encourage the teen to monitor their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and gain insight into their own self as an individual as well as as a member of a family/group.

To prepare for their first teen counseling session, a teen can think about what they want to gain from therapy and jot it down! They can also jot down any questions they may have about the therapeutic process.