How to Do Online Counseling for Teenage and Young Adult Clients

Many teens and young adults can benefit from onlinetherapy. But how do you do it? Well, there are a few things that you canutilize to help a teen or young adult, and it’s good to consider these beforeyou begin to offer teen and young adult online counseling.

Considerthe Developmental Issues

A young adult and teen is changing immensely, not just ona physical, but cognitive, emotional, even sexual. It also is the point wherethey end up maturing and becoming more of an adult than they were when they firsthit puberty.

Young adults are trying to get into the groove of being anadult in this world, with a lot of potential choices in life to make.

Whether they want to go to school, start in the workforce,start a family, or move away from home, it’s a time where you’re offered a lotof freedom, and lots of adults start to make decisions for themselves.

It is also a point where they develop an identity, andbegin to develop more intimate relationships.

While a young adult’s brain isn’t fully matured until 25years of age, there are plenty of emotions, motivations, and changes whichhappen as they begin to mature.

As a counselor, plenty of younger adults tend to strugglewith goals, how to make a dent in this world, and sometimes, where to go. Withonline counseling, you can talk to them, and offer a therapeutic resource forthem to benefit from.

Considerthe Goals

Young adults are goal-oriented, and goals will help themreally feel good about themselves when they achieve them.

During this point, they’re in a transition period, wherethey may struggle with achieving their goals, or even just feel stuck andconfused.

Part of a great way to start with this is to establishgoals, what they want to accomplish in therapy, and from there, they canwork towards these with each session.

Perhaps they’re not sure of how to tell their family theywant to go to college out of state. Or maybe they have someone they’ve fallenin love with and want to get marriage. Or maybe they’re struggling to talk togirls or even handle college and everything in between. With counseling, youcan offer a variety of different goals for them to look at, and work toachieve.

These goals will keep them focused, and help them inpersonal development too.

Talk toThem Like a Mentor

Young adults and teens sometimes fee4l like they can doeverything on their own, but it isn’t easy out there being young.

Between the standards that their parents set up, and ofcourse societal standards, it’s no wonder our teens these days struggle withfiguring out what to do.

With online therapy, you want to help them like you’retheir mentor.

That means, if they struggle with figuring out what to do,offer insight.

You shouldn’t necessarily act like their best friend.You’re their therapist. But you want to offer solutions to them in order tobenefit their lives.

Being a mentor to them during all of this time is great,because it will help them make a decision, and decide where they stand ondifferent issues in life today.

You as a therapist want to make it easy for them to talklike this, but again, still hold the air of professionalism that you must abideas a therapist.

Know theirChallenges

When working with teens and young adults, sometimes thechallenge isn’t just external concerns, but also internal issues.  Plenty of young adults and teens suffer fromanxiety, bipolar, depr3ession, schizophrenia, and many other concerns.  

Many young adults and teens exhibit psychological distressduring this point in their life, and problems such as depressive episodes andwreak havoc on a young adult or teen. It can be a big problem for many youngadults since they may struggle with seeking out help.

Mental health is something that is beginning to be  talked about more, but as young adults startto travel into new places or environments, or even new cities, their beliefsand thought processes may be changing. Plenty of young adults have decidedtheir core values when they became an adult, and that is an essential part ofthis. A young adult may struggle with identity conflicts.

As a therapist, you should know of these challenges, andwhen the two of you are working towards fixing a problem, you should also takeinto consideration the mental challenges that come along with this. Plenty ofyoung adults are scared to admit the challenges, but learning to harness andaccept this is a big part of making therapy work.

ConsiderTackling relationships with Family and Others

Plenty of young adults want therapy to help with theexternal challenges they go through with their family and friends. Perhaps theywant to move out, but they’re not sure if their family will like it or areready for it.

Maybe they’ve discovered they have different religiousbeliefs than their parents, and they may feel that their goals and valuesdiffer from their parents and peers and are afraid to admit this.

Maybe this journey of discovering themselves means thatthey lost contact with old friends and aren’t sure how to pursue it again.

A lot of teens and young adults struggle with trying toget by, to understand the relationships in their lives, and for thosecounselors doing online therapy, asking them about this, and getting insight towhat happens in the home may be a wonderful thing to do, and may help withdiscovering what exactly is happening with them so you can properly help them.

Teen counseling is available for many, and theworld of online teen and young adult counseling is great because you can helpthese young people iron out some of the major issues in their lives and get agood grasp on how to approach major life milestones.