Our counselors offer counseling for teens in Paramus, NJ

My go-to approach for helping clients in teen counseling is first to help them understand their mental health better and teach them ways to cope with their feelings. Since mental health is not often taught about in schools, teens do not always have a lot of understanding about what's happening with their mental health and what to do to feel better.

I often teach the following topics in counseling with teens:

• Understanding triggers: This involves helping teens to recognize what exactly is affecting their mental health and know what their triggers are and how to manage them.
• Learning coping strategies: This can involve a lot of different tools, including grounding techniques and mindfulness strategies (which help with staying out of one's mind and staying in the present moment), practicing self-care, or using hobbies and interests as a way to build upon their strengths and have healthy outlets for their emotions.
• CBT skills: Recognizing cognitive distortions, which are different types of thought patterns that we may have, and looking at core beliefs, which are beliefs that we have about ourselves, others, or the world around us, often deeper rooted in our past experiences. Overall, CBT helps provide tools to learn how to manage our thoughts more effectively when they feel unmanageable!

I know a teen client is making meaningful progress in counseling when they are sharing about improvements in their overall mood, understanding their thoughts and feelings better, and sharing about coping strategies they've learned that have been effective for them!

Teen clients can supplement their time in counseling by practicing more self-care and giving their minds time to rest and feel content with being in the moment. This can include a variety of activities, such as engaging in hobbies, practicing journaling exercises, or exercising.

To prepare for your first teen counseling session, you can identify some of the main reasons that they want to come to therapy at this time. This can include a variety of reasons, but it would help the therapist to know what your motivation is for coming to therapy and what you'd like to see change. Any insight from the teen's caregivers is also appreciated, to have context behind what the caregiver has observed and their concerns for their child.