Adolescent Therapy

The period of adolescence is known to be one of the two most critical phases of brain development in a person’s life span. The brain is exploding with new experiences, unfamiliar emotions, life transformations/transitions, etc. which means it’s working overtime trying to incorporate (‘hard wire’ into their brain if you will) these new learnings/experiences. Being an adolescent in today’s social world comes with so many unique challenges. And how the teenage brain hardwires these experiences can have long term effects (dependent on many factors). The good news is many more youth are very open to the idea of working with a therapist to address and improve their mental well-being.

Working with youth has been a very enlightening and long area of my professional practice.

Some more common themes I see and support in individual adolescent therapy include:

• working with conflict with peers/friends
• changes in academic performance (and how to get oneself back on track) low self-esteem
• processing family separations/divorce (and the integration into blended families)
• screen-time (e.g. social media)/gaming related issues
• curiousities over one’s sexuality
• anxiety and depression (screening and treatment)
• self-harming behaviours (e.g. cutting, burning)
• suicidal ideations (*NOT actively making attempts. Parents are strongly urged to take their youth to the closest emergency department if actively suicidal).