Notes on validation, adolescence, and the work of becoming for everyone

Apr 4, 2023- Your student is being blatantly disrespectful to you in full view of other students and staff. Your teenager has been caught stealing money from your wallet and then lies about it. Your adolescent client sits across from you and tells you that she’s been catfishing someone online. Your teen employee has been caught shoplifting from one of your stores. Think about all the “worsts” kids do—drug use, manipulating, illegal activities, unkind or harmful acts to others

Mar 21, 2023- Internal Family Systems (IFS), a therapeutic protocol that’s been around for over 30 years but exploded onto the scene during the pandemic and is now being used globally, is especially well-suited for adolescent therapy. What is IFS? I offer here a brief and basic introduction to the model. If you type Internal Family Systems into your browser, you will find a plethora of videos, books, blogs, and resources. Parts IFS assumes that our identity, that which we sel

Mar 6, 2023- Client confidentiality is one of the most important ethical boundaries in psychotherapy and other provisions of medical, behavioral, and academic services. Maintaining a gold standard of confidentiality with adolescent clients can be especially challenging as most teenagers are still under the care and supervision of their parents. It makes sense that providers may struggle with this dilemma. However, probably the number one complaint I hear from my adolescent cl

Feb 20, 2023- Being with teenagers in the human services industry is challenging. We hear stories that wrench our guts and hearts. Compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma are often the fallout from this work. We hear and confront some of the darkest shadows of our humanity—how adults harm children, knowingly and unknowingly, with ill intentions and well intention. I believe, however, that those of us called to the work know it is sacred and that there is much wisdom to be min

Feb 6, 2023- I often tell my clients, “It’s all about perspective.” How narrow, expansive, flexible, or rigid our perspectives are will absolutely determine how we respond or react to a situation or a person. Our perspectives of young people inform all aspects of our relationships with them: what we allow and don’t allow; where we are flexible with rules and guidelines and where we are rigid; how we hold boundaries with them—or don’t; why we express affection and why we withh

Jan 24, 2023- I continue to argue and proclaim that there is a vital reason (for our species and the planet) for the stage of life we call “adolescence.” It’s inconceivable that we would go directly from childhood to adulthood. Why does the caterpillar not overnight become the butterfly? Something essential happens during the transformative process of adolescence and the Lepidoptera during its pupal or chrysalis stage in the cocoon. Here are some initial musings and sweeping

Jan 9, 2023- We know there is a mental health crises (and a soul crises) happening in our youth populations. We also know that finding skilled and available mental health therapists who work with adolescents is so difficult right now that this, in itself, is an emergent crisis. To that end, I share with you here what I’ve learned over the last few decades on how to be an effective adolescent therapist. Counseling adolescents is very different from counseling children and adul

Dec 27, 2022- When I worked as a school-based mental health counselor in a small middle/high school alternative program, one of the students, let’s call him Jordan, was referred to me for ongoing disruption in one of his classes. When I met with Jordan individually, he had just been suspended after swearing at the teacher in the middle of class. In my office, Jordan expressed deep anger and resentment towards the teacher and was angry at the principal for the suspension. Afte

Dec 12, 2022- David is a high school teacher in a rural area just outside of a major US metropolis. He has over 150 students on his daily roster, an endless number of papers to grade, emails to answer, and meetings to attend. Since the pandemic, he has at least 2-3 students in most of his classes who are so shut down that David despairs of ever penetrating their stone walls. He is alternately despairing and frustrated and doesn’t know how to motivate or help them be engaged i