Sara Kuehler – LPC-MH

Teens and young adults can face struggles that some find it difficult to understand. Others want to help, but don’t even know where to start. Every day, teens are faced with a culture obsessed with competition and comparison. They can be prone to extreme ways of thinking:

• ‘Everything is the end of the world’
• ‘Everything is awful’,
• ‘I will never be good enough’,
• ‘Everyone hates me’,
• ‘I’m never happy’, etc.

For teens, these negative thinking habits typically result in feeling sad, worried, angry, and stressed. It often seems like they can’t stop worrying about one thing that happened and can’t seem to see the bigger picture. Then they often avoid these negative emotions with distractions like social media, video games and streaming services. As a parent, you’ve tried to help but you just can’t get through to them. They shut you out and won’t let you help, no matter how hard you try.

While living in the moment is the gift of our young selves, big picture foresight doesn’t come easily. Identifying and redirecting these thought patterns can be a challenge, but luckily I can help them to develop new skills for these struggles that can build their self-esteem and help them to better manage their depressed moods and anxiety. And more importantly, I’m here to help you as the parent to speak their language and to understand how to help, because I know that you just want the best for your teen.

I look forward to working together with you to help your teen learn to connect to their emotions, and find resilience as they set small, realistic and achievable goals to feel successful and become a good friend to themselves.