Child and Adolescent Therapy

Understanding Children's Emotions, Their Behaviors and Needs

As you may imagine, children and adolescents process their thoughts and feelings differently than adults. One of the major differences is that children will often show you how they feel rather than tell you what is going on. Some of the ways that children show their feelings are through behaviors such as isolation, hitting, yelling, defiance, distracted behaviors, excessive video game usage, self-harm, and so on. 

Therapy can help children, adolescents and their families learn to manage their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in order to attain more self-control, empathy, and compassion. 

Therapy is shown to help for conditions such as the following: 

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Trauma
• Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Anxiety

Anxiety includes behavioral and physiological responses that typically involve the anticipation of a future threat. Common symptoms include excessive worrying, restlessness, irritability, difficulty concentrating, and sleep difficulty. Physical sensations such as heart racing, excessive sweating, and gastrointestinal issues are also common. For children, anxiety can also manifest as difficulties separating from a caregiver or worries that his or her caregiver will become gravely injured. 

Depression

Depression is characterized by the presence of sad, empty, or irritable mood, often accompanied by bodily and psychological changes that affect one’s day-to-day life. A child is likely suffering from depression when he or she is frequently tearful or sad, even in situations that do not warrant such a reaction. Additionally, children may isolate from others or have extreme difficulty making or keeping friends when they are depressed. In adolescence, depression can manifest as acting out behaviors such as substance use, fighting, risky sexual behaviors, emotional outbursts, or unlawful acts. 

Trauma

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the most well-known trauma disorders resulting from exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence. However, one may still possess a trauma/stress disorder from exposure to a singular event or multiple, cumulative events that are not life threatening, such as emotional or verbal abuse. Trauma typically affects children’s sense of self and identity, their beliefs about the world, their mood, as well as their social engagement. However, psychological distress following exposure to a traumatic event is highly variable between person-to-person depending on one's biological predisposition as well as environmental conditions in one's upbringing. This is especially true in children. For example, two children who experienced the same traumatic event could have completely different reactions. One child may experience heightened physical arousal, have panic attacks, or dissociate, while the other may feel shame, believe they are “bad,”  and/or avoid social interaction.

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Neurodevelopmental disorders are conditions with onset during childhood, typically before a child enters grade school. These disorders are characterized by developmental deficits that result in impairments in personal, social, academic, and/or occupational functioning. In therapy, children with developmental disorders can learn social skills, strategies for reducing big emotions, as well as enhancing understanding for relationships and social awareness. Therapy is shown to be of benefit for some of the following:

• Learning disabilities (i.e., reading, math, writing)
• Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
• Attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
• Behavior problems 
• Difficulties with language and expression
• Difficulties with understanding social cues 
• Difficulties making friends and/or keeping friends 
  

Are you ready to make a change?