Life inherently presents us with challenges and often the only elements of life we can control are ourselves and our actions, which can be terrifying for adults let alone young people. We might not know how to deal with these challenges or the skills and coping strategies we have might fail us.
My approach to working with young people is to establish a warm, genuine and empathetic therapeutic environment where the client is free to express themselves and be accepted as they are. From there, we can gradually process and reflect back on their past, behaviours, thoughts and feelings to gain insight and assist the client to problem solve, make choices and implement change, knowing their inherent limitations and responsibilities, to meet the goals set for therapy.
Through different therapeutic approaches and both verbal and non-verbal mediums, problems interfering with the young person’s normal development and functioning are addressed.
Often how we handle the little things growing up can be a good indicator of how we are going to handle the big things as an adult, even if it’s as simple as a deck of cards annoyingly stacked against you or putting on an imaginary spacesuit and exploring things you’d rather avoid.
