Teens and Adolescents

Other than helping people uncover their intrinsic health through Contemplative Psychotherapy, my greatest passion is helping teens discover who they really are. While some might see teenage hood as a scary, tumultuous, confusing time, I see adolescence as an opportunity for great possibility and inspiration. I use a strengths-based approach to working with teens: most sessions are spent building teens up, helping them orient towards their resources both inner and outer and connecting with the unique qualities of teenage hood.

According to Dan Siegel, adolescence (ages 12-24) can be marked by four categories of growth and expansion: Emotional Spark, Social Engagement, Novelty, and Creative Explorations.

Emotional Spark

During adolescence, emotions and internal sensations are heightened. These changing emotions transform how we feel during teenage hood. We go from a more simplistic way of organizing our world to being able to hold and process complexity. Our ideas about ourselves and others shift and there is a greater opportunity to develop a stronger inner sense of who we are and who we can become. By honoring these emotional sparks and holding them as important parts of teenage hood, rather than a problem to be fixed, they can serve as a way to create meaning and vitality throughout the rest of our lives.

Social Engagement

As our emotions shift towards complexity during adolescence, so too does our awareness expand. Often during teenage hood, our understanding of who we are in relation to the larger world develops. Although family remains a vital resource, we discover we can learn to regulate our nervous systems in other ways with friends, peers, or even other adults. The important connections we make as teenagers have lasting effects. For instance, having just one supportive adult in our corner can make all the difference. Ultimately, finding meaningful, mutually rewarding relationships as teens can support our journeys through the rest of our lives.

Novelty

Unlike any other time in our life, brain development during teenage hood makes us drawn to seek out and create experiences that are thrilling and novel. From the outside, this predisposition can seem extreme and often it can lead us into dangerous behavior. That said, if we can learn to harness and use the impulses that draw us towards risk taking, we find there is a great opportunity to be fully present in our lives. For instance, new experiences create opportunities to embody our senses, feel our emotions, engage our thinking and inhabit our bodies. Ultimately, novelty encourages us to investigate how we seek and create new experiences in order to engage our whole selves.

Creative Explorations

Often periods of great change and transformation are ripe for creativity and innovation. Adolescence is just such a time. As our bodies and minds expand and grow, we often find we have access to powerfully creative forces. Combined with novelty, that creativity has the potential to find ways to change the world. By harnessing the conceptual thinking, abstract reasoning, and expanded consciousness that are hallmarks of adolescence, we have the power, as teens, to create a gateway to see the world through new lenses and frameworks.

Ultimately...

...working with teens means being willing to not know. I am not the authority on your teen-they are. I can’t tell you what, exactly, your child is going through, but I can help them find ways to express themself so they feel supported in communicating with you. I am in awe of the resiliency and creativity I see in today’s youth and I consider it to be an honor to walk with your teen as they become who they were meant to be.

I mostly work with queer and trans youth, helping them and their families navigate the fears, uncertainties, doubts, excitements, confidences, and ultimately joys (to name a few experiences) that come from growing up LGBTQIA+ in a cisgender/heterosexual world. I do this through one on one individual therapy and weekly mindfulness groups offered throughout the year. If you are the parent of a queer and/or trans teen, or if you're an LGBTQIA+ young adult yourself, please don’t hesitate to contact me for a free 30 min consultation!

“Our culture consistently idolizes youth, but disregards the young. Teenagers are a lot. At 15, 16, 17 most of us are shapeshifters, messy and half-baked, only sporadically ready to have the things we say or do count for or against us. I’d argue that our job as adults is to live with and accommodate that incongruity.

And what we owe to teenagers, ethically speaking, is to bear the brunt of their contradictions: to dignify and listen to them as adults, yet still forgive and protect them as children.”

- Suzannah Showler