Therapy With Youth
Starting Therapy
Getting started with therapy can bring up lots of questions — for youth and parents.
What will we talk about?
Will anything actually change?
How long will it take?
What’s my role as a parent in this process?
This page is here to give you a clear, honest sense of what therapy is (and isn’t), and how we can work together to make it as helpful as possible.
What Therapy Is
Therapy is a space for your child / teen to think, feel, and make sense of their experience — often in ways that are hard to do anywhere else.
It’s not about having the “right” answers or saying things perfectly. It’s about building a relationship where your child / teen can show up more honestly over time.
It’s also a place where they can get clinical support for understanding and regulating complex emotions, for understanding their neurodivergence, for processing internal fears, anxieties, and distress related to peer and family relationships, family and school disruptions, and trauma.
Therapy supports:
a relationship built on connection, safety, confidentiality, and, over time, trust — not performance
a gradual process, not a quick fix
the development of your child / teen as a complex human being navigating needs, desires, values, commitments, pressures, expectations, relationships, risks, future possibilities, and developmental changes
What Therapy Is Not
Therapy can be misunderstood, especially when the challenges that bring you in feel urgent, constant, or high stakes.
For many parents, it can seem helpful to be engaged in therapy in similar ways that you might engage youth about school — what did you do? what did you talk about? where’s your homework?
It may feel counterintuitive but this kind of engagement can actually add pressure, even though that’s often the furthest thing from a parent’s mind. You just want to support. And, particularly if you’ve been dealing with challenges for a while, you likely want to see change—and fast, now.
To protect therapy as a space where your child / teen can bring up what’s weighing on them, it’s important to keep in mind not only what therapy is but also what it is not.
Therapy is not:
a place where your child is “fixed” or “corrected”
a report-back system where everything is shared with parents
primarily about skills, tools, or behavior management (though those can be part of the work)
something that works well under pressure, monitoring, or frequent evaluation
When therapy becomes a place your child / teen feels managed and evaluated, it can actually make it harder for them to engage.
How to Support Your Child / Teen in Therapy
Reduce pressure to “perform” or improve quickly
Give space while staying available
Focus on connection over correction
Validate their feelings
Work out how you will handle stress together, ahead of time.
Regulate yourself first
If this approach feels like a good fit or if you have questions, you’re welcome to reach out for a free consultation or to schedule a first session.
A Note to Youth
You don’t have to come in with the “right” things to say.
You don’t have to be good at therapy.
Therapy is not about fixing you. There is nothing wrong with you.
Therapy is about taking you seriously—and helping you be your full self. From silly to serious — and everything in between. The best part? You get to decide. Therapy is not a place you have to perform or show up in a particular way.
It’s true, that your parents have their own reasons and goals related to therapy, and we will be in conversation with them and their aims from time to time.
But our time together in therapy will be guided by what you’re up to, what you feel is most important, what you’re making sense of, and how you want to make use of therapy.
My job is to help you navigate the challenges your facing — to help you explore and better understand who you are and who you want to be and to support you as you make your way through tough times, difficult situations, hard feelings, and the challenges of growing up.
We can start wherever you are—even if that’s not knowing where to start.