Why do children and teenagers benefit from therapy?
Children struggle with low self-esteem, emotional issues from divorce, anxiety about being perfect and fitting in, and sibling conflict. Your child may have trouble sleeping, appetite changes, have difficulty sleeping, nightmares, body image issues, or be more tearful frequently.
Child and teen therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut can help with a variety of mental health challenges.
Perhaps, your child is having emotional challenges that have started to negatively impact their school work and peer relationships. Just like we goto the pediatrician for a physical issue like a broken arm, therapist help with healing from emotional issues.
We help children and teenagers with ADHD, depression, perfectionism and OCD, anxiety, eating disorders, self-injury and self-harm, disruptive behavior in school, and trauma.
What are signs children, adolescents, and young adults can benefit from the team at Wisdom Within Counseling in Southeastern Connecticut?
A young child or teenager may not be able to vocalize what they need or how they feel, and just throw a temper tantrum.
Emotional meltdowns, panic attacks, and anxiety attacks are signs your child is overwhelmed with intense emotions. Emotional coping tools from child counseling can help your child feel capable to deal with any emotion they face.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for play therapy and child counseling in Old Lyme in Southeastern Connecticut.
What happens when children and teenagers lack positive coping strategies?
When children do not have positive coping tools, they turn to negative ones like anger, self-harm, social isolation, and even skin picking. Nail biting and shirt sucking are signs of anxiety in children. Some children and teenagers may get detentions in class or even suspended when struggling mentally.
Often, adolescents will not know how to relieve negative emotions like shame, guilt, loss, and fear about the future.
Emotional and mental struggles can be helped through meeting with a creative, holistic therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
When a teenager develops negative coping tools, these can lead them to hang out with the wrong crowd. Teenagers who don’t have coping tools may use drugs or alcohol to numb out. If you find your teenager drinking alcohol or using drugs, these are signs they need emotional help from therapy.
Children, adolescents, and teens may need guidance from a professional therapist outside the family to help with family stress.
Family stress, divorce, blending families, and loss of loved ones can contribute to emotional stress.
Child and adolescent counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut aims to help youth live in the present moment. A child may feel like they have to be on control, or protect their parent or younger siblings. Feeling the need to be a parent to younger siblings can lead to necessary stress and anxiety in children.
In counseling in Southeastern Connecticut, children and teenagers work through intense emotions.
Child counseling helps children develop into grounded adults that can calmly manage daily life independently and confidently.
Your child or teenager can learn to identify their emotions and find outlets for them. Children and teenagers may be experiencing sadness, anger, stress, anxiety, humiliation, worry, social emotional challenges, low self-esteem, and grief.
Mindfulness, meditation, and relaxation skills from child and young adult therapy in East Lyme, Connecticut
If your child or adolescent feels anxiety before school, they can utilize a guided meditation skill to foster relaxation. In counseling, your child’s therapist can guide them in a body scan and teach them how to have a gratitude attitude.
At Wisdom Within Counseling in Southeastern Connecticut, we help children use crafts and activities to learn about feelings and coping skills. Our team of therapists teach mindfulness tools and calm breathing skills as a way to lower stress and create inner peace.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for play therapy and child counseling in Old Lyme in Southeastern Connecticut.
Outdoor play therapy supports ADHD coping tools.
How can play therapy and child therapy in Old Lyme, Connecticut at Wisdom Within Counseling support after trauma?
Play therapy and child therapy in Old Lyme, Connecticut at Wisdom Within Counseling can help children heal from trauma. Whether loss and grief is occurring, or sexual abuse, play therapy can help.
For instance, a child has experienced sexual abuse, but may not feel comfortable speaking about. However, through play therapy, she may take clothes off a doll and touch the private parts. Children tell the story of their life through play therapy and holistic therapies. Also, children and adolescents often can’t talk about things directly, like an adult could. This child’s therapist can then assess that she may have experienced some type of sexual trauma due to this storytelling through play therapy.
Play therapy and child and young adult therapy for healing trauma experiences
From talking in child counseling, this child can have a trusted adult to speak to about the sexual trauma experience. At Wisdom Within Counseling in Old Lyme, Connecticut, we help children tell their story through play therapy. Children are not word-based when they are in therapy and counseling. Play therapy and child counseling may be the first time your child gets to play out their story, through their language of play.
LGBTQIA+, queer, non-binary, gay, and gender diverse adolescents and young adults
Your teenager may be coming out as bisexual or non-binary and their grandparent is not as accepting of them coming out.
This lack of acceptance and rejection of their sexual orientation can lead to anger and tension between a child and their grandparents.
As well, if you teenager is coming out as gay, they may suffer from depression due to feeling rejected by peers, family or friends. Counseling in Southeastern Connecticut at Wisdom Within can be a place to support healthy emotional coping tools.
Building self-confidence through the transition from childhood to teen years is part of counseling. Furthermore, therapy can help children, adolescents, and teenagers in gaining social connection.
At its core, child counseling at Wisdom Within in Southeastern Connecticut provides children with important emotional skills. Our team of therapists give children and teenagers necessary holistic tools to manage their emotions and navigate tense, stressful situations.
Wisdom Within Counseling supports children, adolescents, and teenagers in gaining self-esteem around a queer or transgender identity or bisexual, lesbian, or gay sexual orientation.
Low self-esteem from bullying
Getting ready for a new year school can provoke anxiety and feelings of low self-worth from memories of being bullied the prior year.
When children and adolescents feel bullied, this can lave such a lasting impact on low self-esteem. Cyber bulling can lead to social anxiety, social isolation, and fears of future negative peer interactions. After years of being bullied, young adults still may be reluctant to socialize with new peers. Counseling for children and teenagers in Southeastern
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for play therapy and child counseling in Old Lyme in Southeastern Connecticut.
Connecticut can help them vocalize social anxiety and depression. At Wisdom Within Counseling, the team of therapists offer children and adolescents a safe place to gain confidence and self-worth tools.
Can therapy for children help with anxiety?
Anxiety may present as fear, anger, aggression, or worry in children. Child therapy in Waterford, Connecticut can help children who express anxiety by being tense, irritable, and angry. Also, anxiety symptoms in children can also include trouble sleeping, fatigue, headaches, IBS, bowel problems, or stomachaches.
The team at Wisdom Within Counseling in Southeastern Connecticut help anxious children express their worries rather than keeping them to themselves and holding them in. Learning to express feelings can be a great lifelong skill children can use into adulthood and in future relationships.
Anxiety in young children can look different than anxiety in teenagers
For toddlers and children who are three years old, anxiety can be a major issue. Adolescents and teens may show anxiety differently than little ones. Young children may feel anxiety when a parent leaves the room. They may throw a temper tantrum, cry, or show fear without their parent present.
Attachment anxiety like this can be helped in child counseling in Southeastern Connecticut at Wisdom Within.
For children with separation anxiety disorder, creative art therapies and child centered play therapy can be supportive. At an older age, adolescents with anxiety make take longer than their peers to calm down. Hyperventilating, racing heat beat, panic and anxiety attacks are more visible in adolescents and teens with anxiety.
Your child doesn’t need to suffer with anxiety about anything in isolation. The team at Wisdom Within Counseling steps into your child’s world to engage, join, connect, and build trust. Art therapies, play therapies, yoga therapies, and holistic outlets help children with anxiety build confidence and self-esteem.
What about child therapy for ADHD?
ADHD symptoms can lead to problems in school, with peers, with siblings, and overall in life. Anxiety and ADHD may go hand in hand in children, adolescents, and teenagers.
Due to hyperactivity, children and teenagers may have trouble completing tests on time, knowing they are being timed. Being timed on a test or exam can lead to pressure to be perfect, and increases in anxiety. Wisdom Within Counseling can speak with school psychologists and guidance counselors, and support positive behavior plans.
Extended testing time can be something your child’s therapist can advocate for at school for them through the process of counseling.
Children, adolescents, and teenagers need therapy when they have emotional problems they can’t cope with alone.
Also, children and teens may not feel comfortable speaking with a parent or family member. Working with a therapist can help children and teens have outlets outside family members and friends. From play therapy and holistic counseling, children and young adults can better communicate, learn, and create boundaries.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for play therapy and child counseling in Old Lyme in Southeastern Connecticut.
Children with ADHD may seem to act irrationally at school when feeling test anxiety or bullied socially.
As well, children with ADHD and anxiety may be less attentive when it comes to rules and need more structure at home.
Parenting therapy sessions at Wisdom Within Counseling can support parents in creating structure at home. Structure at home can help a child with ADHD know what is coming next in the daily routine.
Working with a therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling can help your child or teen with ADHD and anxiety understand they can be successful. We help your child become emotionally prepared for all the world has to bring and offer them.
Can holistic child therapy help with selective mutism or sensory processing disorder?
With selective mutism or sensory processing disorder, a child or teen will stop speaking in many environments. As well, with selective mutism or sensory processing disorder, children lose the a desire to speak as a result of anxiousness, fear, or embarrassment.
A child with selective mutism or sensory processing disorder may fidget more out of anxiety.
Furthermore, children with selective mutism or sensory processing disorder avoid eye contact avoidance and have fears about a variety of situations. With selective mutism or sensory processing disorder, children lose the ability to speak in school and other specific social situations, such as with different family members.
Play therapies, music, art, and expressive arts offer a language beyond words.
When your child or teen is not talking, we don’t make them talk. Instead, we offer painting, walk and talk therapy outdoors, or a game to let them open up at their own pace.
Painting, expressive arts, walk and talk therapy, holistic therapies, and music therapy support healthy coping tools. Plus, painting can offer a language beyond words. Having options beyond just sitting and talking give children with anxiety outlets.
Depending on what your child needs emotionally, they can pick from various creative therapies that day.
If your child has a lot of energy, they can go for a walking therapy session by the shoreline in Niantic in Southeastern Connecticut. Or, if they need more relaxation, your child can use watercolors, acrylic paints, or musical instruments to release emotions.
What are the creative, holistic therapies Wisdom Within Counseling offers to support children build self-esteem?
Play therapy and holistic therapies at Wisdom Within Counseling helps children and young adults learn to communicate with others. Learning to express feelings, finding healthier behaviors, and developing problem-solving skills are all benefits of play therapy. Furthermore, your child or teenager can learn a variety of ways of relating to others through art, yoga, music, and holistic play therapies.
In person and video counseling is available
We help families in Bozrah, East Lyme, Old Lyme, Franklin, Griswold, Groton, Ledyard, Lisbon, Montville, New London, North Stonington Norwich, Preston, Salem, Sprague, Stonington and Waterford, Connecticut. Also, we help children, teenagers, and families in Middlesex County in Middletown, South Farms, Portland, Chester, Deep River, Cromwell, Rocky Hill, Glastonbury, Haddam, Moodus, Berlin, and Durham, Connecticut.
Depending on the age of your child, we personalize the child counseling session at Wisdom Within Counseling.
For instance, children and teenagers can use creative visualization, storytelling, role-playing, toy phones, puppets, stuffed animals, and dolls.
For instance, a young child may use action figures, and arts and crafts to act out different challenging emotional experiences in their lives.
Let’s talk about play therapy and how it can help with releasing stories.
If a child has a new baby sibling and is feeling jealous, pushed aside, and is struggling to adjust to this life transition, they will use dolls and action figures to demonstrate these feelings. A child may lift their shirt and use a doll to breastfeed to tell the story of watching a parent breast feed a new baby sibling. Storytelling, using musical instruments, and puppets can liberate a child and give them tools to tell their story.
The team at Wisdom Within Counseling supports children, teens, and families in Southeastern Connecticut.
Holistic counseling and play therapy in Waterford, Connecticut improves the cognitive, sensory, physical, social, psychological, and emotional well-being of children and young adults. The team at Wisdom Within Counseling would love to help your child and your family build meaningful relationships and anxiety coping tools.
Whether your child is struggling with anxiety, ADHD, anger, selective mutism, or sensory processing disorder, our team of child and family therapies would love to help with counseling.
