Welcome to my website about Modern Teen Therapy, an innovative approach to doing therapy with adolescent and their parents developed over the past thirty five years practicing as a child and adolescent psychologist. This approach came about after seeing (and experiencing) the many types of power battles and going-nowhere conversations between therapists and their teenage clients that too often plague therapy and lead to its derailment.
Modern Teen Therapy departs from conventional therapeutic techniques that continue to circulate through graduate and post-graduate education and advance techniques designed largely for adults. These techniques are a poor fit for an adolescent population and are missing the clinical sensibilities needed to navigate the subtle dynamics that show up in therapist ~ teen relationships as well as the subtext of young clients’ nonverbal and verbal communications.
Modern Teen Therapy instead incorporates more modern, developmentally-informed ideas and strategies that enhance therapists’ credibility in the eyes of teenagers, making it easier for them to capitalize on the help offered.Â
There’s a reason why my article, Why Teens Hate Therapy, is my most popular published piece.
For more about how we can provide relevant, useful mental health service to adolescents please refer to my LinkedIn post, Growing Up Screen-Saturated: Teen Mental Health in the 2020s.
For more information about my practice, background, books, articles, blogs and more, please visit my main website: www.JanetEdgette.com.
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My first job after graduate school was at a residential facility for teenagers. I watched these seasoned therapists work their craft on their teen clients, but it wasn't pretty and it wasn’t working. The kids weren't interested in talking about treatment goals for problems they didn't think they had, and when their therapists insisted, the conversation - and the relationship - evaporated.
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And I was struggling too. I knew a lot about developmental theory and schools of therapy and assessment, but when it came to helping teenagers, I had no idea what to actually say to them. I was that newbie therapist sitting there, growing more and more uncomfortable with each moment of silence that passed between me and my clients.
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So, I searched for a better approach, a more respectful way of expressing my interest in helping that didn’t involve muscling points across the divide or hammering my clients with a barrage of conversation-starter questions that were of no interest to either one of us.
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Expanded and refined over the next three decades, my therapeutic approach, Modern Teen Therapy, has proved to be very effective in treating all kinds of disorders with which teens present in therapy. It is relaxed and unaffected, void of jargon and the kinds of "therapy homework" that some therapists prescribe that no teen on this planet has ever completed. Most important is that the teens I see like coming to therapy. Conversations come easily to us, and so does an appetite for healthy change.
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For too long adolescent therapy has lumbered along wedded to old tenets and principles that don’t suit the 21st century, post-covid, screen-saturated teenager. Modern Teen Therapy is an approach that departs from conventional therapeutic dogma, incorporating a more active and engaging style on the therapist’s part with an eye toward building robust, unpretentious therapeutic relationships that are compelling to young clients and which allow for transformative conversations to take place. The best therapy, I’ve found, comes out of the conversations you generate with your clients that are informed by your understanding of their personal and interpersonal qualities - not in generic interventions that could apply as well to one kid as another nor in directives that invite resistance and power battles.
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My Expertise:
Having developed a fresh and unconventional approach to therapy called Modern Teen Therapy, I approach adolescent clients in ways they find appealing and offer them a therapeutic experience that differs from orthodox methods (stiff, standardized, boring) in favor of something more authentic, more compelling, more relevant and, ultimately, more helpful. For more information about my clinical background, books, articles and speaking history, please visit my main website: www.JanetEdgette.com.
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This includes:Â
- Psychologists
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Licensed professional counselors
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Social workers
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Psychiatrists
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School Counselors
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Guidance Counselors
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Intervention Specialists
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Masters-level therapists
- Graduate students in mental health intervention programs
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Find Out MoreI help therapists create thriving teen therapy practices by using a Modern Teen Therapy approach that works with today's adolescents.
I've made a free 30 minute video where you can learn about an approach called Modern Teen Therapy. This approach better aligns with the adolescent psyche through updated therapy principles and techniques and by using a platform which promotes a more nuanced, user-friendly, and tailored therapy that teens welcome.
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Call To ActionWatch the free 30-minute trainingÂ