Therapeutic Conversations with Adolescents

Helping Teens in Therapy Thrive in an Ultra-Competitive, Screen-Saturated World

Janet Sasson Edgette

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781032189369
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000959611
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Therapeutic Conversations with Adolescents takes readers into the office of a seasoned therapist, where they can be a fly on the wall of live therapy sessions. Full of actual dialogue and the processing behind the choice of responses and interventions, this book stands in contrast to the dozens of books about adolescent therapy that discuss only theory, conjecture, and generic strategies.

Teenagers today need therapists who can offer robust and unpretentious therapeutic relationships, as well as conversations that matter enough to hold their clients' attention and make them want to come back for more.

Readers will come away from this book understanding how to tread the delicate balance between the support and confrontation, the forthrightness and discretion, and the humor and tenacity that therapists need to make a real and lasting impact with teenagers.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• About This Book
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Growing Up in a Culture of Social Media, Disconnection, and Unrelenting Pressure: Adolescent Mental Health in the 2020s
• 2. A Crisis in Confidence and Credibility Among American Parents
• 3. Playing the Long Game: Leading Teens Out of the Rabbit Hole
• 4. Therapy’s Blemished Reputation Among Teenagers
• 5. What Teenagers Need from Our Therapeutic Relationships
• 6. Better Engagement with Teens Through Credibility, Respect, and Accountability
• 7. Mistakes in Therapy with Teens That Stop the Conversation, and What to Do Instead
• 8. Helping Teenagers to Emerge: Strategies for Bringing Forward Conversations That Matter
• 9. Counter-Intuitive Strategies to Keep Teenagers in Therapy Talking
• 10. Diagnosis and Treatment in Adolescent Therapy: Figuring Out What to Actually Do in Session
• 11. Revisiting Process and Content in Assessing Teenagers and Their Families
• 12. The Macro: The Therapy is in the Conversation: Moving Therapy Forward One Step at a Time
• 13. The Micro: Timing
• 14. Avoiding Power Battles with Teenagers in Therapy
• 15. Three Contrarian Girls. Three Different Therapies
• 16. Being On Everyone’s Side at Once: Working with Teenagers and Their Parents Together and/or Separately
• 17. Bolstering the Resolve of Parents Who Struggle to Hold Their Teenagers Accountable
• 18. Enhancing Self-Awareness in Critical, Reactive, Defensive, and Controlling Parents
• 19. Failing with Grace: The Power and Limits of Helping Encounters
• Index