How to Prepare Your Resistant Child or Teen for Therapy at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis

Image Credit: Unsplash, Melissa Askew @melissaaskew (accessed 6.18.24)

So, you’ve thought about it for days, weeks, maybe even months. Your child’s problems are not going away. Your teen remains anxious. Your pre-schooler continues to refuse school. You’re at the end of your rope, and exhausted, and defeated - and you know that you need help.

After researching specialists, calling around, and completing a few phone consults, you’ve signed up your child and teen for their first session! Now you have a big question: how do you let them know?

Telling your child or teen that you’ve signed them up for anxiety therapy can feel overwhelming.

You don’t want them to have a big, negative reaction; and you don’t want to make them feel like they’re a bad kid. So how do you talk to your child or teen about attending a therapy session at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis?

Part 1: Understanding Your Child's Resistance

Kids and teens - and adults! - can feel really resistant to starting anxiety therapy, and there are a few common reasons for this. Counseling resistance can be due to:

• Fear of the unknown: What is my therapist like? What is counseling like? Will they make me talk about things I’m not ready to talk about? People with anxiety (our favorite people to work with at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis!) fear a lot of things. Opening up is scary, especially when you’re used to keeping everything buried. If your child or teen says they feel too nervous to go, present this as “just trying out therapy, for a couple of sessions.” You can also share with them a picture of their anxiety therapist and click around the website so that we’re not total strangers.

• Stigma around seeking mental health support: While we find our anxious pre-schoolers and elementary schoolers are less aware of any mental health stigma, middle, high school, and college-aged students can feel profoundly aware of any perceived weakness when it comes to being in therapy. We find it’s helpful to present therapy as a skills-building opportunity. You can also normalize this issue, by letting them know that around 25% of kids and teens have an anxiety disorder - so they’re not weird for needing some help with it.

  Read more: What is CBT for Teens and CBT Strategies for Kids

• Concerns about privacy: “Do you have to tell my mom about this?” Kids and teens can feel worried about what information we as therapists have to share with their parents. While we structure therapy here at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis to include weekly parent check-ins, the info that our clients share with us is strictly confidential. Of course, if your child or teen talks with us about hurting themselves, hurting someone else, or someone hurting them, we’re mandated reporters and our biggest job is keeping everyone safe. But if your child needs to tell us they think you’re being stupid - that’s cool (and common!) and not something that they’ll get in trouble for in here.

• Misconceptions about therapy: “Will I just have a lie on a couch? Are they going to ask me a million questions? Is it super boring?” While every therapeutic approach is different, at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, we work really closely to tailor our approach to each and every client. We’re not just following a manual or doing the same thing every single week. We love to incorporate games, art, play, etc. so that sessions are fun and enjoyable - and we’re so focused on making sure kids and teens enjoy sessions, we have them fill out a session score each and every week so they get to tell us how we did as their therapist. If it’s super boring, let us know! We’ll make it more fun. (Read more about the Outcomes and Session Rating Score here: Why You Might Need More Than Weekly Therapy)

The Crucial Role of Empathy and Validation:

Whatever reason for their resistance, it’s super important to acknowledge and validating your child's feelings about therapy.

“Yes, I hear you that you’re worried about having to go talk to someone about what’s going on. I want you to know you’re not in trouble, and you’re not doing anything bad - I just want to have you meet with someone to talk more about what’s going on, and learn how to handle these problems better. So let’s have a conversation about it.”

Part 2: How to Helpfully Explain Why They Have to Go to Therapy

When it comes to part two, WHY you signed them up for therapy, it’s important to focus on the benefits.

Use Simple Language: Describe what therapy is in straightforward, non-threatening terms.

Open Communication: Encourage an open and honest conversation about their feelings and concerns.

Use Analogies: Compare therapy to other helpful activities, like seeing a tutor or coach. And let them know they’re

Involve Them in the Process: Let them know they have a say in their treatment and can ask questions or voice preferences. Our therapists integrate outcomes scores and session ratings scores, so we make sure that your child or teen is enjoying therapy; that it’s a good fit, that it’s tailored to them, and that it’s actually useful and helpful.

Positive Reinforcement: Emphasize that trying therapy is a brave and positive step.

Set Expectations: Explain what the first session might look like, including meeting the therapist and discussing their feelings.

Part 3: Handling Resistance

With the nature of our anxiety-driven anger work, our therapists are super used to working with resistant kids and teens. We know how to help people feel comfortable in our office, and we always integrate games and play and art so that therapy feels fun. It's not just sitting and talking about problems, we make sure we're building our rapport, too.

Molly, Susie, Kelsey and Samantha all have experience in residential care with high needs kids and teens who have severe mental health concerns - they're all well equipped to handle the natural discomfort of the first few sessions!

Commit to at least a few sessions:

We have a 12 session minimum for kids and teens for a reason - because the resarch shows that this is a good starting point for making lasting progress on goals. That being said, if your child or teen is resistant, telling them they have to commit to three months is really challenging. Instead, you may have more luck by encouraging them to try therapy for a set number of sessions before making a decision.

Explain that it can take a few sessions to feel comfortable and see benefits:

If this problem has been going on for a few years, it’s not fair to expect things to be totally better by session 3 or 4, right? But, we do expect our clients to start to notice improvements within a month of weekly therapy. And because we’re so focused on the data, we know that 91% of our clients see improvements, with 82% achieving their goals within 12 sessions.

Part 4: Your Concerns As the Parent

Image Credit: Unsplash, Guillaume de Germain @guillaumedegermain accessed 6.18.24

You’ve committed to therapy, you’ve signed up your child, but you’re still experiencing some lingering anxiety and stress about this big decision. This is totally natural and expected. Your child or teen feels nervous about starting counseling - it’s 100% okay if you feel nervous, too.

Child counseling and teen therapy, while individual therapy, can benefit the whole family. By reducing overall stress and teaching your child or teen strategies for managing their overwhelming anxiety or anger, the family dynamic can really improve.

We also make sure that you’re kept in the loop. You’re involved and supported throughout the process - whether through our weekly 10 minute parent check in time, parent sessions, or our therapeutic parent coaching program.

Part 5: Your Next Steps

If you’ve just signed up for your first session of therapy at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis, we’re excited to meet with you! You can review our helpful info from that initial administrative email and come to our office, session 1, feeling prepared instead of just stressed and nervous.

If you’re on the fence about counseling services, or if your fears about your child or teens resistance have held you back, let’s schedule a phone consultation first. We’ll talk about what’s going on, our best next steps, and help you with this important decision.

We can’t wait to hear from you!

Kelsey Torgerson Dunn, MSW, LCSW is the owner and founder of Compassionate Counseling St. Louis and author of When Anxiety Makes you Angry.

Curious to hear more, or are you a little reluctant about counseling? Compassionate Counseling St. Louis provides specialized anxiety and anger management therapy for kids, teens, and college students. We work in Clayton, MO and provide anxiety counseling for kids, teens, and college students throughout St. Louis City, St. Louis County, Ladue, University City, Town and Country, Webster Groves, Creve Couer, Kirkwood, Richmond Heights, and Brentwood. You can set up your free phone consult right on our website.