Counseling That Works – Engaging That Resilient Teen
“Forty-four?” the teenager asks. Yes, that’s my age. At least it is for a few more months. 26 years old”. While adolescence is a time most of us remember as stressful, uncomfortable, and confusing, it is also a period of life that we often wish we could recapture because it was a time of adventure, discovery, and exhilaration. of feelings that we experience in adolescence is usually present in the treatment of adolescents.
Providing therapy to angry or suspicious teens who don’t even want to be in our offices, let alone talk, is one of the most challenging scenarios we face as Christian counselors. However, it is not one that we encounter infrequently. Many teens come into our offices reporting that the school thinks I should be here, or my parents say I have to come, or the court says I have to go. How do we engage these young people? Where do we start?
An angry young man: Johnny was one of those young men that I met very early in my career. I had just started my first farm job, and Johnny was a high school student who had been referred to services from his school. He was described as a very troubled, angry and uncommunicative young man who tended to be lonely and given to strange acting. Reportedly, he used to make all sorts of noises during class and he would often get up from his seat and move around the classroom floor like an eel. My supervisor explained to me that Johnny had already been through three other therapists and that I did not have to accept him as a client. However, since he needed to increase my caseload, he was free to do so. Johnny arrived at our first shoot dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, a black t-shirt, and a partially open black leather jacket. Dropping into a chair, he pushed himself into the corner as he stretched out his legs. He dropped his chin to his chest and turned up the collar of his jacket, which he then yanked furiously shut. Any small movement of my head to catch a glimpse of his face was met with a change in the client’s posture. This child did not allow any contact.
All my attempts to establish a relationship bounced off Johnny like a brick wall. Listen, I told him, I know you don’t want to be here. I’m sure the last thing you wanted to do was run here as soon as school was over. He raised his head but dropped it again, shaking it from side to side. We sat in an achingly long silence, and I began to think more about how Johnny might be feeling right now. I also started paying more attention to what it felt like to sit there and how I might have felt when I was his age. I thought about what I knew about Johnny and how I might have handled those feelings if remaining defiantly impassive silence wasn’t his main reason for being. This is boring! I released. Johnny grunted and walked away. I made an exaggerated movement to stay in sight. He turned more and I came out of my flesh, saying that he couldn’t take the boredom anymore and he leaned against the wall to gain sight of him. Johnny turned around, head down, chin tucked into his jacket. I fell to the ground in front of him.
I moved back and forth a couple of times, looked at my watch, and went back to my chair across from him. Look, I don’t know about you, but sitting here feels like detention. Johnny’s head snapped up, curious and suspicious. Getting out of my chair and onto the floor makes it a little better, but it also makes me feel stupid and probably makes you think I’m pretty weird. There has to be a better way to spend our time together. If he doesn’t want to come back next week, I’ll tell my supervisor this isn’t going to be productive and he won’t have to come back. Johnny straightened up. But here is his situation.
The school has told your parents that you have to go to counseling, and your parents have made it clear that they will follow the school’s instructions. You don’t have to come here again, but that means your parents will take you to another service that has been recommended, and you’ll have to keep playing this until the school is satisfied that you’ve gone for advice. That may be here or nowhere else. If it’s over here with me, that’s fine, but I’d rather not spend another hour like this. If you don’t want to talk about home or school, and then bring something, we can talk about… music, books, comics, magazines, letters, if you want. So how about next week? Do you want me to tell my supervisor to recommend other services to your parents, or do you want to plan to come back here and bring something we can talk about or do next week? Johnny shrugged. No matter. Is it true that you like to ride BMX? Don’t they have magazines or catalogs in them? Yes, I have a lot of them. You mean I could bring them here to read? Sure, but if you don’t want to talk about them, bring me some. I don’t want to do charts with you sitting here.
The following week, Johnny showed up with about five magazines. I started learning things like gear ratios and the various alloys used in BMX bike manufacturing. I also discovered what excited and disappointed this incredibly bright young man. Three weeks later, we were walking to my office to begin our session. Johnny was moving fast and ahead of me. We need to talk! My mom is really starting to bug me! Over the next few months, I continued to learn more about BMX bikes and we did a lot of productive work, the positive effects of which were reported at school and at home.
Drawing on our own creativity: Throughout my professional career I have (hopefully) matured as a counselor through ongoing training and experience. I have learned to incorporate and refine bridging, reframing, and paradoxical techniques to negotiate the types of challenges adolescents present. However, the reason I chose to share this case from my first month in the field is to help us remember the intuitive and creative use of ourselves to help others that was there when we were first drawn to the field. Before we had theory and training, we had ourselves, our sensitivity to others, and our openness to the spirits they led.
I strongly believe that counselors should be informed by theory and prepared by training, but they should enhance and not replace the natural gifts that previously existed. When working with clients, especially those like Johnny, it is very important not to be rigidly limited by one’s therapeutic model. Ultimately, counselors must be directed and constrained by the therapeutic relationship, their knowledge of themselves and their clients, and not by rigid allegiance or reliance on a given model or theory.
It’s also helpful to rethink ourselves and our customers. When we make the shift from viewing these situations as ones in which we must overcome resistance to ones in which we must increase client preparedness, we make an important attitudinal shift that will reinforce our roles as facilitators and help protect us from seeing our customers. as opponents. Find a counselor for suggestions.
It is also important to find something in our clients that is pleasant and interesting and to delve into their interests. Most importantly, we must be willing to join our clients on their own turf, to enter their territory. This may involve taking a lower position from time to time, but isn’t it implicit at some level in all of our therapy? That is, how can we hope to help our customers if we don’t learn from them first?
