Anxiety in your teen can leave you, as a parent, feeling unsure of how to help, and can leave your teenager feeling inadequate and lonely. Legacy Counseling Service provides therapy for teens in the Broken Arrow and Tulsa metro area to feel happy and confident again!
Others’ expectations combined with trying to figure out who they are and how they fit into this world can leave your adolescent with a pit in his stomach, her mind racing, and a desire to stay home instead of doing the things he or she used to enjoy. As a parent, you might feel stuck and worried that your teenager won’t be able to get back to who you know them to be. Anxiety and depression in teens can look similar, so it’s important to have a trained mental health counselor meet with your teen to determine what’s going on. A therapist can develop a treatment plan with you and your teen so that he or she can regain their confidence, start smiling again, and enjoy school, church, friends, and family again.
Signs That Your Teenage May Need Therapy for Anxiety:
- concentration problems
- not wanting to go to school or church
- complaining of a stomach ache or nauseous feeling
- feeling dizzy, panicky, dread, or just nervous about upcoming events
- crying or tearing up for seemingly no reason
- feeling inadequate
- difficulty connecting with friends
- having trouble sleeping or sleeping to avoid activities
- feeling overwhelmed with seemingly minor things
- avoidance or isolating from family or friends
- change in grades
- restless or being on edge
An upcoming test, a first school dance, or the divorce of his/her parents can leave a teenager reeling with anxiety. Or maybe your teen is being bullied in school or experiencing cyberbullying online. Many teens have the skills to work past these anxious times, but sometimes the feelings are just too overwhelming and counseling is necessary.
Using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), mental health counseling for teens can help your child identify the source of his/her anxiety and help them learn coping skills so they can move forward in their lives. Therapy can help your teen understand how their feelings and thoughts can sometimes lead to behaviors that aren’t very helpful in decreasing anxiety and prevent them from using coping skills to decrease anxious feelings or thoughts. For instance, your teenager may naturally be timid but you notice that over time she has started to withdraw from her friends. Or perhaps you notice that she seems to be faking sickness because the thought of attending a school event has her feeling panicky and nervous. Thoughts of inadequacy and self-loathing fill her mind. Understanding what thoughts she is having, using counseling skills to evaluate and develop different, more accurate thoughts about the situation and her ability to cope in the moment, can be immensely helpful in decreasing anxiety and increasing her self-confidence.
Mental health counselors at Legacy Counseling Service provides therapy for teens in the Broken Arrow and Tulsa metro area to help them correct those anxious thoughts and teach skills to overcome the anxiety so that your teen can enjoy her friends and school events again. Therapy for overcoming anxiety in teenagers takes a bit of time. It can be hard and scary for your teen to open up and be vulnerable; it may time a bit more time than you, as a parent, would like because it’s hard to see your child struggle. And if you, as a parent, find that you are struggling with depression, anxiety, substance use, stress, or insomnia due to your child struggling, we have excellent, compassionate mental health counselors and a psychologist who can counsel you back to joy and peace. Or perhaps you’ve noticed that your entire family seems to be affected by trying their best to love on, and help, your teen; in this case, family therapy might be an additional means of counseling to consider in addition to individual therapy for your teenager.
However long your teen has been struggling, Legacy Counseling Service in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma can help your teen and get that smile on their face again and feeling confident. Call 918-505-4367 to speak with our scheduling/billing coordinator, Christi, and ask to schedule an appointment with one of our therapists for your teen.
