Psychotherapy for Adolescents
Navigating the turbulence of adolescence can be a stormy process for the young adolescent and their parents and carers who support them. Adolescence is a time of change and discovery as the young person negotiates the many challenges linked to puberty, separation and the need for greater independence from family, the growing importance of friendships and being part of a group, the search for identity, exploring sexuality, the pressures of school and exams combined with developing plans for the future.
Many of these changes can feel overwhelming for adolescents, who sometimes manage by turning to ways to rid themselves of the turmoil, such as engaging in unsafe and risk-taking behaviour such as substance misuse, sexualised behaviour, violence, and aggression, or self-harm, while others may become silent and withdrawn. Many parents find this age group especially hard to understand and be a parent during these challenging years and struggle to relate to or know how to help their child.
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy can help with a range of difficulties and conditions.
With adolescents this includes (but not limited to):
- Low mood and depression
- Anxiety
- Stress
- Worry, fears and phobias, obsessive-compulsive behaviours
- Sleeping difficulties
- Suicidal thoughts
- Self-harm and destructive behaviour
- Addiction and substance misuse
- Low-confidence, low self-esteem
- Difficulties at school (including refusal and truancy and attending boarding school)
- Problems with peer and family relationships
- Psychosomatic symptoms
- Eating disorders, disordered eating
- Adverse childhood experiences, e.g., the impact of trauma, abuse, neglect
- Issues relating to sexuality
- Gender confusion/gender-related distress
- Excessive reliance on/use of technology, gadgets, gaming, internet, social media
- Coping with life events (e.g., parental separation, death in the family/friend, chronic illness)
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy provides a regular and safe space where adolescents can talk about whatever is on their mind, be quiet, or use creative materials. It is a space where thoughts and feelings are slowed down and explored together with the therapist. It is a space for reflection where unrecognised patterns of behaviours and ways of relating can be observed and thought about, creating the opportunity to know and connect with oneself in a different way. In doing so, repetitive patterns of thinking and behaviour established earlier in childhood can be broken, relieving a young person from their troubling symptoms and creating the conditions of possibility to experience their relationships and live life differently.
"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards” ~ Soren Kierkegaard.