How Your Teen’s Therapist Keeps Them on Task
Therapy for teens can be a space for a variety of things. Some teens want a neutral space to talk freely about any and anything that may be stressing them. Other teens may want direct guidance and skills to help them navigate obstacles. Regardless of either intention, therapists use time in sessions to identify, highlight, and treat any thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that could be limiting the teen in their success or overall happiness.
The easiest part of therapy is bringing goals to your therapist and expressing intention to work on them. If you do not know goals you can work alongside your therapist on identifying them. Once goals have been created, a therapeutic alliance is formed. In this your therapist will bring forward patterns, behaviors, etc that may be limiting your teen in achieving their goals. The hardest part is then working towards change. It can be difficult to face habits that are limiting your potential or even traumas that have been controlling your emotions. When teens begin to veer off track therapists will use different tools to guide teens back on track.
How Do We Keep Teens on Task in Therapy?
Address it head on: If a therapist recognizes that a certain subject or conversation usually leads to the teen switching topics or distracting the therapist can highlight this observation and explore why the teen may have hesitations in working on it.
Change goals: If in the midst of working on a certain objective the therapist notices another sub topic, or even something completely different, keeps coming up and finds that to be a priority at the time they can redirect to work on that first.
Assess obstacles: In working on a task there can be a variety of things hindering progress. With the teen the therapist will discuss other obstacles that might be limiting their growth and work towards addressing those first, so the underlying issue at hand can be worked through.
Discuss intention: Sometimes a teen may feel the “have” to work on something as identified by a parent, teacher, coach etc. but they don't find that to be an obstacle personally. This can help the therapist both recognize areas of insecurity or even the need to please others and work closer on what the teen feels they really need from the session.