A few months ago I sat in my weekly adolescent Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills (DBT) group about to teach on Emotion Regulation, when a 15-year-old girl sitting across from me told me “I don’t need to learn more about my emotions. I’ve been in therapy for years being told how and what to feel.”
I couldn’t help but validate her as I imagine that is exactly what has been her experience.
I wondered, was I about to be yet another person telling her this is what you are doing wrong and this is what you need to do.
A lightbulb went off
I immediately went home and started researching all the data I’d collected over the years working in the juvenile justice system, my private mental health practice and through my online DBT course.
That data reminded me, this wasn’t the first time I heard this from a young person I was working with. In fact, most of the teenagers I work with at some point have expressed a feeling that they are a problem, or that they are broken.
Is this really what counseling is conveying to these young folks?
My name is Richelle Futch and I’ve been working with behaviorally challenged teens for over 15 years. The teens I’ve worked with range anywhere from disrespecting their parents, skipping school, cutting themselves, sexual offenses, armed robbery, murder, and everywhere in between.
I’ve decided to start writing this blog to speak to the parents of the kids who exhibit behavior somewhere in the middle of what I just described. Parents who like you, are doing the best they can and yet are confused as to how their child can behave in such challenging and destructive ways.
Parents who have trusted traditional counseling and are still not getting the results they so desperately need.
Parents looking to bring peace, safety, and order back into their homes.
Parents who need to hear that they have been mislead by articles, parenting experts, and therapists for years. be it unintentionally, but with devastating results. The results being, kids who are further away emotionally, more depressed, and full of resentment.
Kids blaming you when you’ve spent the majority of your time focusing on them and their behavior at the expense of your other children, marriage, and yourself trying to help them feel and be better.
This blog is for you.
My goal with this blog is to help you understand how the system failed you and offer guidance into small shifts you can begin making that will result in a big change in your home and your relationships.
Each week you can follow along as I introduce you to strategies I’ve learned by working with teens just like yours. I want you to know what their therapist wants to tell you, but ethically can’t.
Sometimes you won’t like what I have to say, but I assure you, it will garner results.
Curious to understand what Solution Focused Parenting is? Read More Here.
If this feels like you, please join my private facebook group where I get the opportunity to support you more personally.
I look forward to our dialogue.
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