Challenging Adolescents & Family Systems

The teenage years in any family can be difficult at best, but some youth appear to offer especially challenging attitudes and behaviors that parents and other caregivers can be unprepared for.  The therapist at Veritas Counseling Center has been working with adolescents and families since 1980 offering individual, family, and group therapy as well as parenting guidance for especially challenging teens. Clients have included dependent and delinquent youth who are involved with the Court systems as well as private pay clients from all backgrounds with teens from two-parent nuclear families, single-parent families, divorced or widowed couples, blended family systems, and extended family systems.  The therapist has worked with grandparents and other relatives raising teens as well as with fostered or adopted adolescents. Many adolescents have come from highly educated and successful family systems as adolescents can be challenging to parents and other adults regardless of the socioeconomic background or the educational status of the family. Parents and teens have included both heterosexual and gay/lesbian clients with a variety of presenting issues.  The therapist has had success at helping adolescents and families when other attempts at therapy had failed. And adolescents often return later in life  to report their successful transition into adulthood. It is not uncommon for the therapist to have worked with multi-generations of parents within the same family system over time as teens mature and seek help for relationship struggles or parenting issues of their own.

The therapist has worked with runaway youth, adolescents and families with problems of substance abuse and chemical dependency, physically/sexually/emotionally abused teens, juvenile gang involvement, oppositional-defiant, conduct disordered, and extremely incorrigible adolescents, pseudo-mature kids, youth and families with anger issues and ongoing parent-child conflicts, teenagers who suffer from depression and anxiety disorders, repetitive offenders of juvenile delinquent activities, issues surrounding adolescent sexuality including teen pregnancy and teen parenting, suicidal adolescents, teens who have engaged in self-harming behaviors, adolescents who struggle with grief and loss issues, and teens with eating disorders.  

The therapist is highly skilled at creating a therapeutic relationship conducive to change with adolescents and families who often would not otherwise benefit from therapy including those who have not had success in previous treatment attempts.  Whenever appropriate, the family system is involved in the treatment process and therapy techniques are respectful of individual and cultural differences.  For instance, extended family members and/or ex-spouses may be invited to join the family treatment sessions in order to provide the best possible chance for successful change within the adolescent and the family system.  When appropriate, adjunct Equine Assisted Psychotherapy is also available both for adolescents and for family systems. In severe cases, when warranted, Interventions are also offered.

The therapist at Veritas Counseling Center occasionally offers evening Seminars for parents of adolescents. She is also an author and offers free monthly parenting tips for parents of adolescents. For this month's tips, visit www.forparentsofadolescents.com