Therapeutic Conversations with Adolescents: Helping Teens in Therapy Thrive in an Ultra-Competitive, Screen-Saturated World

Therapeutic Conversations with Adolescents takes readers into the office of a seasoned therapist, where they can be a fly on the wall of live therapy sessions. Full of actual dialogue and the processing behind the choice of responses and interventions, this book stands in contrast to the dozens of books about adolescent therapy that discuss only theory, conjecture, and generic strategies.

Teenagers today need therapists who can offer robust and unpretentious therapeutic relationships, as well as conversations that matter enough to hold their clients’ attention and make them want to come back for more.

Readers will come away from this book understanding how to tread the delicate balance between the support and confrontation, the forthrightness and discretion, and the humour and tenacity that therapists need to make a real and lasting impact with teenagers.

Table of Contents

1. Growing Up in a Culture of Social Media, Disconnection, and Unrelenting Pressure: Adolescent Mental Health in the 2020s
2. A Crisis in Confidence and Credibility Among American Parents
3. Playing the Long Game: Leading Teens Out of the Rabbit Hole
4. Therapy’s Blemished Reputation Among Teenagers
5. What Teenagers Need From Our Therapeutic Relationships
6. Better Engagement with Teens Through Credibility, Respect, and Accountability
7. Mistakes in Therapy with Teens That Stop the Conversation, and What to Do Instead
8. Helping Teenagers to Emerge: Strategies for Bringing Forward Conversations That Matter
9. Counter-Intuitive Strategies to Keep Teenagers in Therapy Talking
10. Diagnosis and Treatment in Adolescent Therapy: Figuring Out What To Actually Do in Session
11. Revisiting Process and Content in Assessing Teenagers and Their Families
12. The Macro: The Therapy is in the Conversation—Moving Therapy Forward One Step at a Time
13. The Micro: Timing
14. Avoiding Power Battles with Teens in Therapy
15. Three Contrarian Girls. Three Different Therapies
16. Being On Everyone’s Side at Once: Working with Teenagers and Their Families Together and/or Separately
17. Bolstering the Resolve of Parents Who Struggle to Hold Their Teenagers Accountable
18. Enhancing Self-Awareness in Critical, Reactive, Defensive, and Controlling Parents
19. Failing With Grace: The Power and Limits of Helping Encounters

"In her newest book, Janet Edgette encourages us to be brave enough to violate some of the most hoary and archaic rules of psychotherapy. She reminds us that therapy is rooted in our capacity to think deeply and compassionately and that it’s not just about what to do with our adolescent patients—it’s about how to be with them."
- Brad E. Sachs, PhD, psychologist and author of The Good Enough Teen, The Good Enough Therapist, and When No One Understands

"Janet Sasson Edgette has yet again proved to us that she has her fingers on the pulse of what it’s like to be an adolescent today. This book illustrates the range of issues that kids face from the inside out and the range of responses that therapists can utilize to engage this population. I couldn’t put this book down! Janet’s insight, perception and authenticity are so refreshing!"
- Amy Fantalis, MS, MSW, LCSW, psychotherapist

"Therapeutic Conversations with Adolescents is an unprecedented and extraordinary guide for therapists treating teens and families. It’s an elite handbook that demonstrating what to DO in session. Therapists will learn how to respond in real time and sequence interventions, to name a few of the tools taught throughout the book. This is an invaluable resource."
- Joseph Dowling, MS, LPC, author of ZONEfulness: The Ultimate Guide for Student-Athletes　

"Edgette’s honesty and her professional experiences will keep you reading more and then more. She’s not lecturing. She’s sharing. She’s reminding us that we can engage with teens without the pings, rings, dings and all things tech and instead choose face-to-face conversations with truths and vulnerabilities."
- Kat Rowan, MA, NCC, CEO and creative director of TiffinTalk and owner of Rowan Therapy