Youth counselling and therapy for troubled teens
Youth counselling & therapy for troubled teens - our specialist troubled youth counsellors will give your teen the ability, confidence and language to fully express their concerns and fears. They’ll explore & understand their feelings & emotions, and the effect they have on their lives.
Our specialist troubled youth counsellors are here to help
As parents, we want our teenage children to reach their potential - whether for their own personal happiness, or for what they go on to achieve in their careers. We see what they are capable of in a way that no-one else does, and we want to help them tap into their potential to get the very best start in life. However a child’s teenage years can often be one of the most troubled periods of their lives as they learn to navigate and step into the world on their own.
Teenagers and young adults can suffer from a range of issues, anxieties and behaviours which can be detrimental to themselves and their wellbeing. Often young people do not yet have the emotional intelligence to articulate their wants, needs and fears. This can be frustrating for the teen and for their parents or carers.
Through therapy and counselling we can help your child to understand themselves better, explore their emotions and fear, and give them the language to express themselves as themselves. We can assess and treat any psychological disorders that might be holding them back and teach them emotional resilience. Our aim is to help your teenager fulfil their potential.
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Counselling for troubled teens
Counselling is a form of talking therapy that gives you the opportunity to talk and reflect without being judged. We don’t always connect with how we really feel: and we disconnect ourselves from the things we say. Counselling is a way to shine a light on that disconnect, and take a look at what is really going on.
What’s the difference between counselling and psychotherapy? There is no clear distinction between the two, both are talking therapies that allow people to explore their feelings and emotions and the effect they have on their lives. Our highly experienced teen psychologists offer tailored coaching, counselling and therapy for troubled teens.
How can youth counselling help?
As our children start growing up, parents often become part of the problem. We all have hopes, dreams and ambitions for our children, sometimes these clash with reality. As parents and carers we can have outdated pictures in our heads of who our children really are – fixing our view of someone at a certain point or age – and then tension arises when that picture no longer fits.
Naturally teenagers and young people want to find their own place in the world and often want to break free from the expectations they feel are holding them back. Having the ability and confidence to express how they feel and what they want is often problematic for teenagers and young adults. Many do not yet have the emotional intelligence or the language to fully express their concerns and fears.
Specialist counselling for a troubled youth can help fix this disconnect. It allows them to be fully seen, and express themselves in a way which feels true for them, without the risk of being closed down and told how that behaviour doesn’t measure up. Through youth counselling, your child will gain the ability to reflect on how they’re feeling and the confidence to articulate what they want.
Psychological assessments for teens and young people
We also offer psychological assessments for teenagers and young people. When parents are told that a psychological assessment is being recommended for their child, it can be a source of concern for some people – but it shouldn’t be.
There are plenty of valid reasons why your child might benefit from seeing a specialist teen psychologist. For example, they might be struggling at school, either in the classroom or in fitting in with their peers. They may be suffering with depression or anxiety, or battling a learning disorder.
An assessment will make sure the issue is correctly identified, and help us begin to understand the roots of it, as well as the strengths and challenges that a child is facing emotionally, behaviourally and cognitively. An assessment is often the first step on the road to helping your teenager or young person reach their full potential. At Pinnacle Wellbeing we are here to guide you through the process.
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What can you expect from a youth counselling session?
When we counsel teenagers and young people as individuals rather than as part of a family session, there are obviously some caveats that don’t apply with adults. We see youth counselling sessions as a three-way relationship, where we need to respect the confidentiality of the teenager, while ensuring open and honest communication with parents and carers.
Typically the first counselling session will be all together with the parents, before one-to-one counselling starts. Or the parents or carers might come in at the end. Either way you’ll get regular updates. We always work closely with the parents and carers to provide what feels like an appropriate level of involvement throughout the course of sessions.
Our approach to youth counselling
Our approach to youth counselling is based around building a rapport with your teen. Our troubled teen counsellors and therapists will work with your teen to really understand how they are feeling. We’ll give them the opportunity to express their emotions freely.
It is our goal to make sure that your teenager or young person receives the right approach to counselling. Our objective is that your child sees themselves as a person who has the power and ability to change their life.
We know that ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ and that everyone is different and has their own set of unique needs and circumstances. Typically, we will use a combination of therapies in our youth counselling sessions; these include Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR) and hypnotherapy alongside talking therapies such as counselling and psychotherapy.
What is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy?
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (or CBT) is about looking at the relationship between your thoughts and feelings, and how they make you ‘default’ to certain behaviours. It’s particularly useful for dealing with specific issues like teenage depression, exam stress, bullying and self-esteem issues.
We can help make you aware of what your own defaults are: sometimes they help us, sometimes they don’t, and CBT helps you recognise those different responses for what they are.
How does CBT help?
CBT teaches how we can break out of those default patterns to become more resilient in situations we may find uncomfortable or stressful by identifying where we respond negatively and then challenging those negative thoughts with alternative, positive ones.
Primarily good for tackling anxiety, stress and depression, it’s a way to rewire the software of your brain, rehearsing troubling situations in your mind in order to create alternative ways of thinking when that situation arises again. In effect you’re creating new mental circuitry by challenging and changing old responses that feel hardwired in, but aren’t.
It’s a very practical form of therapy, which is usually relatively short-term. In effect it helps you become your own therapist, where you use the skills you have learned.
CBT tends to lend itself better to slightly older children and is well suited to help teenagers and young people. By taking (what can feel like) insurmountable tasks and teaching you how to apply a pragmatic and objective viewpoint to these issues, CBT gradually changes the way you look at everyday challenges.
CBT will give your teen techniques which will transform them from feeling like a victim, into someone who can control the way they respond, giving them transferable skills to take into their adulthood.
What is EMDR?
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing) therapy was originally developed to treat post-traumatic stress disorders, including experiences of war. However, it’s since been found to have far reaching applications for many different types of disorders.
At Pinnacle our EMDR accredited therapists use this advanced therapy to help people with trauma, whether that’s in their personal or professional lives. EMDR therapy also helps young people to cope with trauma and crises.
How does EMDR help?
What is hypnotherapy?
Some people don’t want to talk about what is troubling them. Some people don’t fully know. That’s not a problem with EMDR because it enables us to work blind to the actual issue: sometimes we work with people and treat them without needing to discuss any of the specifics of the trauma.
Imagine watching a film back in your mind of a traumatic incident, and pausing at the worst moment: the part that really encapsulates the trauma. That’s what we get our patients to do, replaying it in their mind. We ask them to notice something in the past, and then notice something in the present. We call it bilateral stimulation.
We do this because the part of our brain that processes trauma, the reptilian part of our brain, doesn’t know how to handle the incident and can’t store it as a memory.
How does hypnotherapy help?
Hypnotherapy lends itself to tackling very specific scenarios,and can very much be tailored to work with your teen’s problems, fears and behavioural issues. It can also be used for stress and anxiety too.
As a treatment, hypnotherapy is often less demanding on children, teenagers and young adults, who might struggle with hour-long counselling sessions or trying to explain their inner feelings.
During a hypnotherapy session we first try to understand what is going on in your teen’s mind while they’re in a state of deep relaxation, and then we try to play back to them a different way of thinking, rooted in their own language, using certain words that they use. This might involve stories or metaphors that will help them reframe the issue.
Our youth counselling sessions in practice
Our psychologists specialise provide therapy and counselling for troubled teens, they work with your teen or young person to tailor the sessions to suit their needs. Our sessions usually last from 30 minutes to an hour; and our courses usually consist of around 6 to 12 sessions.
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