How to Choose a Therapist for Your Teenage Daughter

When it comes to choosing a therapist for your teenage daughter, the most important part is finding the right fit.

Teen therapist and author Kelsey Torgerson Dunn. Learn more about working with Kelsey.

Research even shows that finding the right fit therapist is more important than the type of therapy you or your teen is receiving. You need a therapist who understands what’s going on, who is empathetic, who listens, and who is effective. Your therapist should be tailoring their approach to you and your teen, and checking in with you regularly to make tweaks. And specifically, your therapist should be soliciting feedback about progress and the quality of the therapeutic relationship.

We want to track our outcomes. Using Feedback Informed Treatment (FIT) helps increase your teen’s likeliness to actually get better through therapy.

Using FIT, we track your teen’s outcomes, getting scores on how they’ve been doing individually, with family stuff, with school and social issues, and overall. At the end of every single session, we ask your teen how we did as the therapist on a 1-10 scale. How was our listening during session? How was our clinical approach? How much did they like or dislike what we did in session? And overall, how did the session go?

By getting these two scores each and every single session, we can really quickly see if things are actually getting better - because if they’re not, we want to change whatever we can right away.

We also really quickly get to know what we’re doing right as the therapist, and where we can improve.

And by empowering your teen to give us feedback as the clinician, we help them feel heard, understood, and respected - and we make it more likely that they’ll actually participate in therapy and make the changes they need to make.

So how do you decide on an adolescent therapist?

Let’s use that Session Rating Scale as a framework for finding the best therapist for your teen. As I mentioned above, at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis we get this SRS at the end of every session. The questions are:

- On a 1 to 10, how was my listening to you today?

Kelsey's book for teens includes a free parent's guide! (Click here)

- How important was what we did today?

- How much did you like what we did today?

- Overall, how was today's session?

Look for an adolescent therapist who listens to you and your teen

Sometimes, we therapists can get a little focused on all of our training and background and skills. But the best therapists make sure that they’re not just treating a problem they’ve treated before - they’re focused on you and your teen.

You want your teen daughter to feel like their therapist is on their side (even if it means that, sometimes, you feel like the therapist is on your teen’s side and not yours!)

One way to help your teen find a best fit therapist is to have them on the intake calls with you, looking at therapist websites, and deciding who seems like a good fit to them. You’re welcome to try initial sessions with a few therapists! You need someone that you and your teen can vibe with. That’s crucial.

(and hey, you can read more about our St. Louis adolescent therapists over on our team page!)

Make sure your counselor knows what’s important to your teenager

As a therapist, I have my own perspective of what’s going on with your teen, but that’s different than actually living the experience. It’s like your teen is climbing up a mountain, and I’m the guide down on the ground below. I can see their journey, and the rocks ahead, and I’ve given them a map - but they’re the ones scrambling up and dealing with the ice, and snow, and the surprise rabbits that startle them that I didn’t know about.

I may have an idea of what’s important, and you and I will have regular check ins to talk about what’s going on, but your teen is living their experience. If I want to talk about anxiety, and they need to talk about a homework assignment, I shouldn’t ignore that. I should incorporate it.

Some therapists can get stuck on following their treatment outline. You want to find a therapist for your teen who can roll with what’s going on, without losing track of the overall plan.

Therapy for your teen should be enjoyable, or at least fulfilling

If you’re in therapy, you’re not going to love ever single session. That’s just a fact. We’ll talk about uncomfortable things! We’ll acknowledge past hurts and shameful experiences and embarrassing memories. If we’re treating your anxiety-driven anger, we’re going to talk about all the times you lost control and exploded. It may not be fun, but it should be fulfilling.

As therapist, I also want to make sure that we end session with your teen ready to go back and enter the world. I don’t want your teen to leave feeling like they’re going to cry - I want to save time for them to relax, ground, and calm down before they have to go back to school for the rest of the day.

I also want to make sure that I’m doing things that feel important to your teen. If they don’t love worksheets, I don’t want to make them do worksheets! If they feel uncomfortable using breathing activities, we’ll probably still do them because they’re CRUCIAL, but we’ll do just one at a time and space it out. I want them to like therapy overall. And some therapists your daughter just isn’t going to like!

Find a teen therapist who can handle the feedback

This is the most important part of finding a therapist for your teen daughter. If their counselor isn’t a good fit, they should be able to handle feedback about it. You want them to make the changes they’re able to make. And if it’s still not a good fit for your teen, your therapist should be willing to refer them out, instead of making them feel disheartened about therapy as a whole.

St. Louis adolescent counseling that’s tailored to your teen

Not to toot our own horn too much, but at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, we make sure that we’re providing the best possible therapy for your teen because we use outcomes, we get feedback, and we’re super comfortable referring you out when we need to.

We use evidence-based therapy interventions to make sure we’re as effective as possible.

And we’re trained in identifying anxiety and anger management issues across the board.

To schedule a call, please visit our contact page.

And we hope we can help!

Kelsey Torgerson Dunn is the author of When Anxiety Makes You Angry: CBT Anger Management Skills for Teens With Anxiety-Driven Anger.

Compassionate Counseling St. Louis provides therapy for kids, adolescents, and college students with anxiety and anger management issues. You can book a free consultation on our website to learn more.