Therapy for Teens and Children | Counseling For Joy

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As parents, most of us want our children’s journey to be sunny and carefree, yet childhood is not always perfect and happy. The teenage years are especially turbulent and uncertain. As adults, we often find our children need more support than we alone can give them. Children and teens suffer from depression and anxiety just as adults do. They set out to create an identity. They fight for autonomy. Some struggle in school or experience trauma in one form or another. Unfortunately, our children also suffer through painful family transitions and relationship conflict. Children and teens, however, do not have to grow up to be unhappy adults. Therapeutic work can alter the course of a young life.

My work with teens and children is respectful of their own personalities, their roles in the family, the family’s beliefs, and their emerging passions and skills. I work to identify areas where they struggle and support them in their quests for new levels of self-confidence, balance, and joy.

Our children are the heroes of their own stories. Dr Donald Winnicott, psychiatrist and psychoanalysis, reminded us that: “immaturity is a precious part of the adolescent scene. In this is contained the most exciting features of creative thought, new and fresh feelings, ideas for new living. Society needs to be shaken by the aspirations of those who are not responsible.”

Therapeutic work should never blame children or teens for deficits in biology or in society itself. Labels which society, medicine, or even families, frequently attach to children–such as ADHD, oppositional, defiant, autistic, to name just a few–do not begin to acknowledge the unique neurology, experiences, and societal deficits with which children struggle.
If you, like me, are interested in the exciting research and political advocacy in the field of children’s mental health, ask for my research package at your first appointment. Or, if you just want practical tips for behaviors and emotions, you can request those. At Counseling for Joy we are devoted to ensuring that children and teens have a good life aside from the labels and diagnosis that leave them feeling hurt, unempowered, and bewildered about how to behave and move forward.

Our young deserve the very best start to life that we can provide. As they work toward healing, integration, independence, stability, and happiness, we join and support them. We enjoy watching them journey along their chosen paths.

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Happy hearts and happy faces, Happy play in grassy places-- That was how in ancient ages, Children grew to knights and sages. - Robert Louis Stevenson — Happy hearts and happy faces,
Happy play in grassy places–
That was how in ancient ages,
Children grew to knights and sages.
– Robert Louis Stevenson

For we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heros of all time have gone before us. - Joseph Campbell — For we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heros of all time have gone before us.
– Joseph Campbell

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In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future. - Alex Haley — In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.
– Alex Haley

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The best substitute for experience, is being sixteen. - Raymond Duncan — The best substitute for experience, is being sixteen.
– Raymond Duncan

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I am captivated more by dreams of the future than history of the past. - Benjamin Franklin — I am captivated more by dreams of the future than history of the past.
– Benjamin Franklin

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