Therapy for Teens

Maybe your teenager has been unusually withdrawn lately and refusing to spend time with their friends. Perhaps their grades have slipped, their mood has become unpredictable, and they don’t find any joy in the activities they used to love. To cope with their challenges, they might be skipping meals, isolating themselves or engaging in other unhealthy behaviors.

Your teen’s mental health issues could impact their day-to-day life and functioning, making you worried that they won’t become a successful adult. As a result, you might be considering talking to a teen therapist.

It’s hard to help a struggling teen, no matter how caring of a parent you are.

You’ve probably done all you can to help your teenager, only for them to keep dealing with the same issues again and again. Over time, this can lead to self-blame and self-criticism. You might worry that you’re not a good parent or that you’ve done something wrong in raising them.

Additionally, you may have a tough time figuring out the best way to support your teen. Now that they’re older, they want their independence from you, so you don’t want to be a helicopter parent and get too involved in their life. At the same time, however, you don’t want to let them go on struggling.

The good news is that you don’t have to do it all alone. At Therapy for Women in Philadelphia, we’ve helped thousands of teens work through anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD, disordered eating, LGBTQ+ challenges, and many other teenage issues. We’re confident that we can help your teenager, too!

Life in the social media age is full of unprecedented stress for teens.

According to a study done by the CDC in 2023, roughly 57 percent of high school-age girls struggle with “persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness,” which is noticeably higher than the 36 percent reported in 2011.* Between the rise of social media, online bullying, sky-high academic expectations, and a global pandemic, teens nowadays face a world full of unprecedented stressors.

Social media in particular has added so many new problems to the lives of teens. It’s created a toxic “compare-and-despair” culture where kids are always comparing themselves to unrealistic standards. After all, social media isn’t designed for teens—most of the models and influencers that they see are adults. This is especially a problem for teen girls, since many of them are buying all the anti-aging products that they see women twice their age using. Gone are the days of teen magazines, when the standard of comparison was other teens. Now, teen girls face pressure to look, act, and dress like adult women.

Many parents struggle to understand the challenges of today’s teens.

The world has changed a lot in the past few decades. Most parents had a wildly different adolescence than teenagers today. While some things—peer pressure, school stress, and hormonal issues—remain the same, social media has created many challenges that didn’t exist when most of us were young.

For instance, it’s easy enough to make sure teens are protected in the real world, but what about online? Many parents establish rules about no sleepovers, walking home from school alone, or staying out past a certain hour. But how can you ensure that your teen is staying safe on social media? How can you ensure that they’re not engaging in an unhealthy comparison culture?

These are questions that many of us didn’t have to worry about when we were kids. As a result, we may not have all the answers to our teenager’s issues—and that’s okay. Sometimes we all need extra support in our parenting, and that’s what our practice is here to provide.