How to Choose a Therapist for your Adolescent
Selecting a provider for our adolescent can feel overwhelming, as we are often needing to balance availability, personality fit, affordability, and a myriad of other factors.
For an adolescent, a sense of agency is very important. However, very few can initiate to select their own practitioner, and thus, we are left with setting up first appointments with clinicians that we can only guess will be a good fit. Here are my top suggestions for matching your teen with the right clinician:
Make sure the therapist has significant experience working with adolescents
Experience is incredibly important and actually not as common as it seems. Many clinicians will only occasionally take adolescents, to fill slots, but have not done the work to develop an expertise in this generation. Most young clients can tell immediately if a clinician has not spent much time talking to people their age, including an inability to follow slang, understand non-verbals, and appreciate worldview.
Try to find a male clinician for a male-identifying adolescent.
While this is often tricky, every reputable mental health clinic should have at minimum one male provider. Especially when dealing with anxiety disorders and relationships, young males may not feel comfortable broaching certain topics with a female counselor.
Ensure that the therapist has a strong understanding and appreciation for your child’s individuality, including gender expression, neurodiversity, and interests.
If your child identifies as LGBTQIA+, please ensure that your clinician utilizes the correct terminology in their promotional materials, and speaks with openness and understanding. If your child is neurodiverse, ensure that the therapist does not have preconceived notions about what this signifies which do not capture your child’s unique experience. Often when a clinician makes one offensive or problematic statement early on, it can lead to an adolescent writing off an adult and never fully opening up.
Allow your adolescent to change their mind.
If your teen does not feel like a therapist is not a good fit, do not push them to do further sessions. Simply move on to the next clinician to try. Ultimately, selecting the right therapist is a very intuitive process and it is important to honor the sense of connection or disconnection as soon as it is felt.
In summary, finding the right therapist for your adolescent can be an arduous process—but it is worth every ounce of effort to ensure that you are providing them with a safe space and support system. As parents, we want what is best for our children, and making sure that they have a therapist that is supportive, experienced, and well-versed in helping adolescents will help ensure they can get the most out of their therapy sessions. At Kairos Wellness Collective, many of our clinicians specialize in adolescent treatment. Please contact us. We would be happy to help you find the best fit for your adolescent today!
