Online Counseling in Oakland and Throughout California
Online Therapy for Teens
Helping teens build essential life skills, improve their relationships and communicate their needs effectively.
Do minor disagreements turn into shouting matches?
Does your teen show signs of distress and anxiety thinking about transitioning to college or out of the home?
Is your child shut down, showing signs of insecurity, and you are struggling to figure out how to help?
Your child wants someone to talk to about their life stressors but they don’t feel ready to share with you.
Doors are slamming, eyes are rolling, and you are lucky if you can have a good conversation over dinner…
It can feel confusing and disheartening when your child goes from excited to tell you every detail about their day to becoming defiant, angry, or completely shut down. The arguing, disrespect, and disconnected relationships can leave families feeling hopeless and exhausted. Your teen debates with you over the simplest requests, refuses to follow the rules or seems determined to do the opposite of what you ask. Instead of telling you what they need, your teen responds to you with one word answers, gets easily agitated and feels like you don’t understand what they are going through.
Your teen is clearly not feeling good about themselves, is lacking motivation and is closing you out…
Maybe your teen isn’t defiant but is struggling with self-esteem issues, organizing and prioritizing routine tasks, and motivation to set goals. They are shut down because they don’t know how to feel good about themselves and that makes it challenging for them to find friend groups, achieve at school and work or know what they are capable of doing in the next phase of their life. They are reaching that transition age when they have to make decisions about the next chapter and that creates stress and anxiety for both you and your teen.
Whatever your child may be going through, you see the impact of it on their relationships, in their school work, with tension in the home and their overall day-to-day demeanor.
You’re Ready To…
Experience your child communicating with you more effectively.
Have your child learn to manage their emotions and develop coping skills.
Observe your child build essential life skills that improve their motivation and sense of self.
Watch your child become more confident and clearly express their needs.
Create a more peaceful home environment with a happier child.
Therapy helps teens make sense of what they're experiencing, understand their own patterns of thinking and behavior, and develop greater self-awareness.
Therapy for teens can help give your child the space to explore their thoughts and behaviors while developing the skills necessary to improve their communication, relationships and to feel good about themselves.
With the right professional connection, your child can feel safe to share their needs and address the struggles they identify. In our work together, your child and I will explore their thoughts, emotions, and experiences that result in their feeling misunderstood, disconnected, defeated and/or angry. The therapeutic process helps teens learn practical tools for managing difficult emotions, stress, anxiety, and challenging situations. These coping skills might include mindfulness techniques, problem-solving strategies, or healthy ways to process anger and frustration.
Our sessions will provide a collaborative and structured way to work through difficult experiences that might otherwise feel overwhelming for a teen to process on their own. This can lead to your child learning how to advocate for their needs, resulting in better communication, stronger relationships, and your child’s deeper sense of self.
Frequently Asked Questions
-
During the first few sessions, we will discuss the challenges that brought your child to therapy, critical background information, and determine goals that your child identifies to achieve with therapeutic support. Sessions will be virtual, 50 minutes long, and offered either weekly or every 2 weeks depending on what works best for your child’s goals.
-
Clients come to me to address numerous challenges including anger management, school-related stress and pressure, insufficient organizational skills, family conflict, low self-esteem, poor peer relationships, life transitions such as family changes/divorce or moving to a new town/school, and how to set goals for life’s next chapter (ex. transitioning out of high school).
-
Therapy is different for everyone. The goals we identify when your child first starts therapy will help us determine what timeframe will be needed to achieve success. The pace for reaching these goals is set by your child. Some clients find they have met their goals in a few months while others choose to integrate therapy as regular, ongoing support. My therapeutic approach starts with meeting your child where they are at in the process and I will keep them on the path to accomplish their goals.
-
Whether this is your child’s first time in therapy or they have tried it before, therapy works best when your child is invested in achieving their goals. It is important for the success of the therapeutic process that we are a good fit and the free 20-minute consultation will allow you to determine if I am the right therapist for your child. To see if therapy is working, we can assess as we go to determine if your child is making progress towards their goals and noticing improvements in their daily life.
-
To get started, CONTACT ME to set up your free 20-minute consultation to see if I am the right fit for you. Next, we will set a dedicated appointment time for you, either weekly or every 2 weeks. Then the work begins- we will start discussing your challenges and barriers in order to set goals that will put you on a path to success.