December 2024

Single-session therapy is a brief, focused approach that addresses your specific concerns or issues within one session. It is intentionally designed to give impactful, practical support in one session rather than needing a longer-term commitment. It gives you the support you need, helping you work out your next step with an issue. A single therapy session can feel slightly different if you’re used to ongoing counselling sessions; it takes a collaborative approach, where you work with your counsellor to find practical strategies to help you manage your situation. You’ll gain clarity over the issue or problem, helping you get moving again when you’re feeling stuck.

How Single Session Therapy Helps Parents of Tweens and Teens

By providing timely, practical support, single-session therapy works really well for parents of tweens and teens when you are facing an immediate challenge like a sudden change in their behaviour that you’re concerned about, a specific and pressing issue at school or more conflict than usual between you.

What to expect in your single session

As with any counselling, this time is focused on you and what you need. Before beginning, your therapist will encourage you to work out the session’s focus and think about and identify your desired outcome for the session. When you’re in the session, you focus on gaining your perspective by listening carefully to your concerns and ensuring you’re understood. One of the key differences you might notice in your session is the focus on a particular goal or aim of the session. You and your counsellor work together to find practical strategies and a plan of action focused on helping you clarify your options and next steps.

Single-session therapy is particularly effective in helping you navigate a specific conflict, handle immediate school concerns, or manage an unexpected change. This makes it a great fit for when you’re looking for quick, practical strategies you can put in place without a longer commitment to counselling. Perhaps you’ve found out your teen is vaping, the school have contacted you regarding their attendance, or they’ve had a spectacular falling out with a friend, and you’re not quite sure how best to handle the situation or to support them through it. Other examples might be managing stress during exam season or handling a sudden drop in motivation.

Examples of Practical Strategies

Ways to communicate with your teen, particularly when navigating difficult conversations.
Conflict management and how to de-escalate conflict, whether between you and your teen or conflict they are experiencing elsewhere.
Understanding adolescent emotions and behaviour helps you respond effectively and build a stronger relationship.
Practical tools for managing your teen’s screen time or navigating friendship challenges.

Most importantly, it will give you specific ways to look after yourself and balance your needs with your teen’s. You’ll find ways to manage your overwhelm and keep your cool (as much as possible when dealing with teens!). Because working out strategies for your teen is easier when you feel your emotional well-being is supported.

While a single session provides brief and targeted support, it also gives you the tools to handle the challenges that will invariably arise when parenting adolescent children. You can build on this experience to start feeling more confident and resilient in managing the ups and downs of parenting teens.

While single-session therapy is designed to be a standalone intervention, it is not the end of the support. After your session, there’s the option of a brief follow-up to see how you’re doing and if further support would be helpful. You can be reassured that you are not alone and that ongoing help is available, providing a safety net.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, conflicted or unsure about a specific issue that’s come to light around parenting your adolescent child, a single session could be just what you need to gain clarity and confidence. There’s no need to wait until you’re feeling stuck; you can book a single session whenever you need clarity and support.

Ready to tackle parenting challenges with clarity and confidence? Book your single-session therapy today.

We all experience fear and anxiety at times; it’s part of being human. While some of us enjoy the thrill of a good fright when watching a scary film, for example, for others, those feelings of fear and anxiety are anything but fun and don’t disappear once the film has finished. Anxiety is a common experience for our teenagers, too, as they’re working hard to manage all the pressures and challenges that come with adolescence. And unlike most adults’ experience of anxiety, it doesn’t always fade so quickly. It’s also common for you, their parent, to feel like your child’s anxiety has come seemingly out of nowhere and it can feel hard to work out how to support your teen through this. However, there are practical strategies you can use to help your teen build courage and develop the confidence to face their fears and better manage the ups and downs of life.

Understanding Teen Anxiety

Plenty is going on in your teen’s life: keeping up with school work, friends, extra-curricular activities, and managing family life – no wonder they can feel anxious! Some level of fear and anxiety is a natural reaction to the challenges of adolescence, and anxiety is a very common experience for tweens and teens. This anxiety can feel similar to but is different from stress. Stress is a response to an external situation or challenge that triggers the fight or flight response. While anxiety can also be in response to external factors, the difference is that it continues after the situation has passed and is not necessarily linked or associated with external factors. While stress is a response to a specific event (like an upcoming test), anxiety is more like a background hum, often unrelated to any particular trigger and more persistent.

Although anxiety is a very common experience for our teenagers, it is not all bad and can even be useful. It helps motivate them to try something new or challenging, like getting involved in the school play, and it can also help them stay safe by getting them to think about a situation they’ve gotten themselves into.

Recognising Signs of Anxiety

First, help them recognise when they are feeling anxious by talking through some common signs of anxiety. These include physical symptoms such as tummy churning, faster breathing, grinding or clenching teeth, emotional symptoms such as struggling to relax, and a sense of dread or rumination (thinking about a situation or experience over and over). Get them to think about how their anxiety feels.

Practical Techniques to Support Your Teen

Once they can recognise that they’re feeling anxious, they can use techniques such as:

Breathing: It’s good to breathe! Focus your attention on a slow breath in and a slow breath out.
Grounding: Put your feet flat on the floor, wriggle your toes and feel the ground beneath you.
Pick out three things in front of you and name them (out loud or just in your head). Do these a few times to help you feel ‘back in the room’.
Reframing thoughts (or rewriting the script): Take a step back and look at the situation more objectively; think about what you would say to a friend who was feeling anxious in this situation.

Talk these strategies with your teens when they feel more relaxed, and get them to practice them so they can easily access them when needed. Think of these as a first aid kit or a Fear Action Plan. By practising these regularly, your teen will find it easier to respond to their anxious feelings before they get too overwhelming.

Be a Role Model of Calm

Use these techniques yourself to model healthy ways of managing anxiety. Your teen or nearly teenage child can learn practical lessons from observing how you handle anxious situations.

Building Confidence by Facing Fears

Let Them Be Brave

Give them the chance to be courageous and face their fears themselves. You can give them a little nudge towards something that might feel daunting, like talking to someone new or trying a challenging activity. There’s nothing quite like thinking something will be tricky and then doing it anyway to help boost confidence and trust in themselves. And don’t jump in to help or fix issues for them; give them the chance to work it out for themselves first. If they’re still struggling, they can come to you, and you can work out a solution or alternative together.

One of the best ways to manage feelings of anxiety is to talk about it. Counselling can help your teenager’s anxiety if you feel it’s becoming too pervasive for them. And counselling for parents can help you recognise what is typical adolescent anxiety and when they might need some extra support while also giving you the tools to help you keep your anxiety in check.

You might also like more personalised support; check out my 4-week course on Raising Confident Teens!