Something happened that finally made you pick up the phone. Now you run the questions at night.
“Is this a phase, or am I overreacting?”
“Did I cause this? Was it something I said?”
“Will we ever be close again, or is this how it is now?”
“Are they thinking about hurting themselves, and would I even know?”
Your worry is love with nowhere to go.
Most therapy for teenagers is talk therapy. Your teenager sits in a chair and gets asked how they feel. They don’t have much to say.
The hour ends with a breathing exercise they won’t do. You rearranged your whole schedule to get them there. Almost nothing moved.
That’s nobody’s fault. Talk therapy works on the thinking brain.
The anxiety, the refusing to get out of bed, the blowup at dinner – those live deeper down, in the part of the brain that stores emotion.
Language doesn’t reach that part.
Understanding the anxiety can help, but it doesn’t always make your teenager less anxious. The part of the brain generating the anxiety isn’t listening to the conversation.
I work with Emotional Transformation Therapy and Brainspotting.
Both go straight to where the emotional charge is held and give the brain a chance to process it through. Teenagers have more neuroplasticity than adults. Their brains can change and reorganize faster. So they often feel a real shift inside the first few sessions.
That speed matters more for a teenager than it does for anybody else. Seeing something change is what keeps them coming back.
The teenagers I take are the ones who know something’s wrong and want to work on it.
A kid who’s here only because you insisted will wait out the hour and give me nothing. A kid who wants something different will make the most of the time.
If you’re not sure which one you’ve got, say so on the phone, and we’ll sort it out together.
Parents tell me what it looks like six months in.
Their teenager comes through the door and tells them about the day. Dinner is calm. There’s laughter at the table again.
Mornings stop being a fight.
They’re texting friends again.
They signed up for something they used to love.
The mental calculation stops, because quiet from down the hall goes back to meaning quiet.
They tell me they feel like they did all right by their kid.
Your teenager has real decisions coming faster than you can imagine. Where they go, what work they do, who they marry, and what kind of adult they turn into.
Those answers differ for a young person free from the weight of heavy, unprocessed emotions.
That love you have for them is the most powerful thing they’ve got going for them. Now it needs a direction.
Start with a free 15-minute phone consultation. Tell me what’s going on and ask me whatever you want to ask.
Sessions are available in person in Raleigh and by telehealth anywhere in North Carolina.
Call me today at (910) 502-3339.
You’ve waited long enough for your feelings to catch up to your understanding.
Email me and we’ll find a time to connect by phone for a free 15-minute consultation. You’ll get to know me a little, and we can both tell whether we’re a good fit for this work.
Emotional Transformation Therapy for adults and teens 14+ in Raleigh, North Carolina, and online across the state.
A sentence or two is plenty.
