Working with adolescents is incredibly fulfilling and has been a primary focus of my career as a therapist. Adolescence is a time of profound growth and discovery. Along the way, teens can become overwhelmed, anxious, and depressed for many different reasons. It is common for teens to feel uncertain about their future, ambivalent about growing up and facing more responsibility, and unsure how to navigate the complexities of their social environment. Our society has a tendency to evaluate its members based on performance, reputation, and affiliation. This creates a lot of anxiety for teens as they are in a stage of self discovery and development and they often feel they fail to measure up. Detours and missteps will inevitably be made in our life journey and mistakes can be our best teachers, as long as we are on our own side. It’s when we start to ridicule and berate ourselves that we get into trouble. Much of my focus with teens is helping them to manage the challenges they face in this stage of life through building new ways of interpreting and responding to challenges, insecurities, and “problems.” By helping them to remain firmly grounded in their sense of intrinsic an unconditional worth as human beings, the bumps along the way become much more manageable.