Therapy for Teens and Adolescents

One of the most difficult times in our lives is when we enter our teenage and adolescent years. We often see increased issues around social groups, peers, pressure from exams and even a bigger impact from the media on things like body image and self-expectations. In more rural areas like Cowra, Young or even Orange, teens also face increased risk due to the isolation and lack of resources these areas have to fall back on for support. This is also often a time when adolescents are finding out ‘their place in the world," as they develop a deeper sense of self-identity, as well as trying to work out who they are and where they fit in.

This also means they are at increased risk, as adolescents and teens can often struggle with thoughts of self-harm and suicide around these concerns. This risk is further increased if there is bullying or peer difficulties that might cause a sense of rejection from a group. Due to this, getting early and quick support is key to be able to ensure that risks do not go unaddressed nor continue to escalate. Riverina Counselling can even offer this ongoing therapy for teens and adolescents that are more regional and remote, often with less services to fall on.

We also aim to work with the parent briefly as a part of treatment. This isn’t so much your own therapy (though it may identify this as useful) but to also have a place to express concerns and develop ways and strategies to better connect and communicate with your child. This space also aims to let parents better develop their capacity to connect to their child and attempt to better understand what is going on inside, especially around emotions and emotional states.

Riverina Counselling believes that we need to engage the whole family to make change, though we acknowledge there may be other incidents such as sudden loss that may not need a parent to attend the reflective parenting component. We note that by attending, it tends to enhance treatment with your child, as this role modelling displays that it is healthy to have help seeking behaviours and to get support when things might become too difficult to manage.

From here, we aim to spend time developing a focus and how we got to the problem in the first place so we can develop a therapy to begin better understanding what causes us to get into trouble. This also helps develop increased self-awareness and early intervention skills should the issue arise again, as we can better see the early warning signs.

At times, we may even use our animals to support teens with more complex issues and trauma, as we also partner with Terapiya Cattery (www.therapycats.com.au) for animal supported therapies. We should note that some of these therapies may be long term with more complex cases and we recommend calling to discuss this prior to making a booking.