Open Way: Teen Therapy & Parent Coaching

Open Way: Teen Therapy & Parent Coaching Supporting young people & parents navigating anxiety, EBSA & emotional overwhelm
✨ Teen & Young Adult Counselling
✨ Parent Coaching
✨ Wellbeing Workshops

11/06/2026

1️⃣ Increasing anxiety
Anxiety is a protective mechanism. As teens begin taking more risks and stepping further into the world, anxiety often acts as a brake pedal.
(If anxiety is significantly affecting daily life, it’s worth seeking support.)

2️⃣ Not wanting to get out of bed at weekends
Teen body clocks naturally shift later, and they need more sleep than most people realise.
Sleeping in at weekends is often their way of catching up on much-needed rest.

3️⃣ Their room is a complete state
It’s usually not defiance or laziness.
Your teen’s brain is still developing the executive functioning skills needed for planning, organising and maintaining routines.
They may need more support than you’d expect, or you may need to lower the standards temporarily 🤫

4️⃣ Meltdowns seem to be making a comeback
Occasional emotional explosions are normal during adolescence.
Rapid brain development, hormonal changes and increasing life pressures can mean emotions sometimes outpace a teen’s ability to manage them.

5️⃣ Pulling away from the family
Teens naturally seek more privacy, independence and connection with peers.
It can feel personal, but it’s often a sign of healthy development.
Don’t be fooled though, they still need you. Just in a different way.

I was the anxious teen who avoided school.It wasn’t that I wouldn’t go. It was that my body wouldn’t let me.I’d been liv...
08/06/2026

I was the anxious teen who avoided school.

It wasn’t that I wouldn’t go. It was that my body wouldn’t let me.

I’d been living in survival mode for so long that eventually I shut down.

I wanted to go to school. I wanted to do my A Levels. But I felt like I was drowning, and I had no one who truly understood what was happening or knew how to help.

I needed someone who could:

- Explain what was happening in my brain and body

- Help me understand myself with compassion instead of self-criticism

- Teach me how to manage the deafening thoughts in my head

- Give me tools for the emotions that hit like a tidal wave

- Show me that there was a way through

So I became the person my teenage self needed.

Hi, I’m Sophie, a teen therapist.

I’ve walked the EBSA journey myself, and now I support teenagers and parents navigating school avoidance with compassion, understanding, and practical support.

When a young person starts avoiding school, their world often begins to shrink.

My job isn’t simply to get a teen back into school.

My job is to help them build a bigger life again—one with more confidence, connection, flexibility, and hope.

If your family is struggling with school avoidance and you’re not sure where to turn next, comment “SUPPORT” below or send me a message.

This isn’t the end of your teen’s story. ❤️

07/06/2026

I’m not going to lie to you: there’s no magic phrase, quick fix or perfect technique that will get your teen back into school tomorrow.

We can’t control their choices, but we can control how we respond. And our response can help create the conditions for change.

Before you respond think about these 3 Cs 👇

Co-regulation
Your teen’s nervous system is probably in overwhelm. Before problem-solving, focus on regulation.

• Slow things down
• Validate their experience
• Use fewer words
• Let them know you won’t force them
• Offer your calm presence

Curiosity
Instead of asking, “How do I get them back into school?” ask:

“What is school feeling like for them right now?”

Try to understand before you solve.

What feels hard? What are they worried about? What are they trying to avoid, protect themselves from, or communicate?

Collaboration
School avoidance isn’t something we fix for a young person. It’s something we work through with them.

Ask:

• What feels manageable?
• What would make tomorrow 1% easier?
• Who feels safe at school?
• What’s the smallest next step?

Small steps are often the path to lasting change.

The goal isn’t to eliminate anxiety before they return to school. It’s to help them build confidence that they can carry anxiety and still move towards what matters.

I used to be the school-avoidant teen. Now I’m a teen therapist building something to help parents and professionals navigate school avoidance.

💫 Comment BUILD to be the first to hear more.

05/06/2026

It can be flipping heartbreaking to hear some of the things that I do in this job… but there is nothing like celebrating the moments of healing with my teen clients. Need support for your teen? Check the link in my bio.

05/06/2026

Struggling with panic can be debilitating for so many of us.

Dropping the struggle can often be a huge piece of the puzzle towards a new way of relating to anxiety and panic.

Have you tried this before?

Follow for more compassionate, simple advice for supporting your teen.

04/06/2026

1. You only have as much influence as you have connection- sure, you can use fear, punishment, control. But if your teen is starting to pull away, ignore you, get defiant etc, the place I always get parents to start with is rebuilding connection.

2. Boundaries aren’t the same as requests- if your teen is not respecting your ‘boundaries’ you might actually be making requests. A request is something they need to do, a boundary is something you do that requires nothing from them. Instead of “it’s 10pm- it’s time to put your phone away and go to bed.” Try “at 10pm the WiFi goes off and phones charge downstairs for the night.”

3. Let the boundary do the heavy lifting- once you’ve set a boundary, resistance is likely to follow. Your job isn’t to convince them to agree with or like the boundary you’ve set. Your job is to allow the boundary to do the hard work and then you’re free to validate the emotions it evokes and focus on keeping connection.

4. Your teen experiencing more anxiety doesn’t necessarily mean there is anything wrong- unfortunately it’s incredibly normal for anxiety to increase in adolescence. It’s actually a protective mechanism as they move towards more independence and begin to test riskier behaviour. If it’s affecting their daily functioning- eating, sleeping, school, friendships etc then seek support.

Follow for more compassionate, straightforward advice on supporting your teen.

01/06/2026

“I don’t have any friends.”

“School makes me feel stupid.”

“It’s too noisy.”

“I asked for help, but no one’s listening.”

If these things were true about your workplace, chances are you’d be updating your CV.

Most teens don’t have that choice.

Of course education is important. But when there are very real barriers at school, such as:

• bullying or social exclusion
• unmet SEN needs
• sensory overwhelm
• a lack of support or safe relationships

…all the therapy, coping skills, reward charts, and gradual return plans in the world won’t address the root cause of the problem.

Sometimes the conversation around school avoidance puts almost all the responsibility on the young person to change.

But thriving isn’t just about what happens inside a teen.

It is also about the environment around them.

Because if a young person feels unsafe, unheard, overwhelmed, or unsupported, school avoidance may not be the problem.

It may be a signal.

Trying to support a struggling teen without addressing what’s happening in their environment is a bit like trying to grow a sunflower in concrete.

As parents and professionals our job is first to understand what’s beneath the behaviour.

Follow for more compassionate advice on school avoidance, and anxiety in teens from someone who’s lived it.

29/05/2026

For years I didn’t cry properly.
I rarely felt true joy either.

Mostly, I just felt anxious.

Now, one of the questions I ask teens in my initial assessment is:
“Are you able to feel emotions appropriate to the moment?”

Because when we feel chronically unsafe, the brain shifts into survival mode. And in survival mode, recognising, processing, and allowing emotions to move through us can start to feel either unsafe… or simply unimportant.

The nervous system prioritises survival over emotional connection.

One of the things we do in anxiety therapy is slow down long enough to notice, name, feel, and allow emotions to pass through instead of immediately shutting them down.

Over time, the brain and body begin to learn:
“We’ve got time. We’re safe enough. We can survive this feeling.”

It sounds counterintuitive, but often the more we fight anxiety or suppress what’s underneath it, the louder it becomes.

When emotions feel seen, heard, and processed… they often stop needing to shout.

➡️If you’re parenting an anxious teen and feeling lost on how to support them, I’ve got a free parent workshop:
“Supporting Your Teen Through Anxiety” linked in my bio

28/05/2026

🚨EXPOSURE THWRAPY SHOULD NOT BE TRAUMATISING, if it is it’s being done wrong.
Have you or you teen experienced this with school avoidance? 👇

27/05/2026

I’ve been there too… not even recognising that my completely valid stress had slowly morphed into chronic anxiety.

We don’t notice our grip slowly getting tighter and tighter. We don’t notice the constant tension in our body. The internal narrative quietly running underneath it all:

“What if I can’t cope?”
“I can’t do this forever.”
“I don’t know how much more I can take.”

When we label anxiety as “just stress,” we often stay in survival mode far longer than we realise.

We keep pushing through. We normalise living in a constant state of tension. But there’s a difference between stressful seasons of parenting… and living in chronic hypervigilance because your family system has been under strain for so long.

A lot of parents supporting anxious teens or school avoidance don’t realise how much their own nervous system has adapted to crisis mode too.

And change often starts with acknowledging:
“I’m not actually OK.”

Because you matter too and learning to model a different relationship with anxiety is huge for your teen to see.

And even in the messy middle, there are still ways to support your own wellbeing alongside supporting your teen and it doesn’t look like just having a bath. Click the link on my bio to see how I could support you to support your teen.

Address

Thornbury Baptist Church
Thornbury

Telephone

+447792971119

Website

,

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Open Way: Teen Therapy & Parent Coaching posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Place Of Worship

Send a message to Open Way: Teen Therapy & Parent Coaching:

Shortcuts

Share

Category