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

11/05/2026

Myth 1- Regulation tools are meant to make me feel calm in the moment.

They totally can do - but regulation tools are more about buying you time so your logical brain can come back online and your emotions don’t run the show. Tools can shift our physiology enough to give us the opportunity to have a new thought and an opportunity to respond different.

Myth 2- If it works I should feel different by now.

Using any regulation tool is like doing a workout. You don’t always feel the benefit in your nervous system straight away. In fact it will probably feel like hard work at first. It takes time to train your body. But after a whole ypur baseline begins to shift and you notice you feel different.

Myth 3- I still feel angry or anxious afterwards so it didnt work.

Regulation isn’t about getting rid of your feelings. It’s about learning to hold them differently and not be pushed around by them. If you paused before snapping- that’s regulation. If you didn’t say that thing… that’s regulation. We’ve been sold the idea that success = calm. But in real like it often looks more like “I still feel it… but it’s not running the show.”

10/05/2026

Don’t get me wrong, when my teen clients tell me they’ve started going back into school, I internally do a little dance 💃

BUT…

School attendance alone isn’t always the best marker of recovery.

Your teen could be in school every day… but only just surviving it. Holding it together until they get home and completely fall apart. Too overwhelmed to enjoy anything else, connect socially, or function outside of school.

And equally…

A teen’s attendance might still be low while their capacity is actually growing. Their world is getting bigger again. They’re reconnecting socially.
Trying new things.
Laughing more.
Showing curiosity.
Starting to care about their future again.

What I’m most interested in is not just: “Are they attending school?”

But: “Is their life getting bigger or smaller?”

Because we’re not only trying to reduce avoidance. We’re trying to help teens build a life that feels meaningful, connected and worth showing up for.

A life motivated by what matters to them… not one driven by fear.

09/05/2026

Does your teen struggle with panic attacks?

ANXIETY + STRUGGLE = PANIC

We can’t eliminate the anxiety but we can drop the struggle by…

1. Normalising the anxiety- It’s your bodies normal response to threat or perceived threat. The bodily sensations you’re experiencing are your body doing its job.
2. Riding the wave- don’t try and fight it, have some helpful phrases prepared before the panic hits. “Anxiety is like a wave- it rises and it falls.”

Save this for next time your teen is panicking ❤️

07/05/2026

What did I miss? Let me know below 👇

06/05/2026

Save this for those days it feels like your hope tank is running low. This isn’t the end of your teens story.

I know navigating the EBSA journey with your teen can feel incredibly hopeless, confusing and stressful. This bit in the...
05/05/2026

I know navigating the EBSA journey with your teen can feel incredibly hopeless, confusing and stressful. This bit in the middle sucks- but it’s not the end of your teens story.

04/05/2026

Things I wish I could go back in time and tell my teen self from a 34yr old mum of 3 and teen therapist…

1. You thought you were stupid…but actually you were thinking about things in a way that didn’t fit into the ‘school box’. When you let your creativity loose amazing things can happen.

2. You won’t always wake up with a pit in your stomach… you will meet people along the way who will show you life is good and you can feel safe in your own skin again.

3. You thought you were lazy…but you were overwhelmed and hanging on by a thread. Of course there was no room for anything else. You live with so much more compassion for yourself now.

4. You thought you weren’t capable… becoming a mother with increase your belief in yourself to do hard things 100 fold. When you’re in your flow you have a huge capacity to make stuff happen.

Now I’m a teen therapist on a mission to help anxious teens feel safe, capable, and understood — earlier.

Follow for practical support for teens & their parents.

Comment below- what does your teen self need to hear? ❤️

01/05/2026

1. Thinking everything had to link back to school
I used to feel like every session needed to be “productive” in a school-related way. But when a young person’s world has shrunk, school is often the last place we start now.

2. Focusing too much on behaviour
I looked at what they were doing (or not doing)… instead of understanding what was driving it. Avoidance isn’t the problem, it’s the solution to something that feels unbearable.

3. Expecting progress too quick.
I thought if I got it “right,” things would shift fast. But safety, trust, and nervous system regulation are essential and that is slow steady work.

4. Thinking attendance = success
I used to see getting back into school as the goal. But a child can be in school and still be struggling deeply or out of school and their world is getting bigger not smaller.

I’ve got something in the pipeline for parents and therapists navigating EBSA with teens. Follow along to find out more.

29/04/2026

When we focus on assessing if a negative thought is true or untrue we can end up arguing with it and then it actually often digs its heels in more.

A better question and one I ask my teen clients all the time is…

‘how helpful is the advice your brain is giving you? And what would happen if you followed it?’

Because the goal isn’t to win an argument with your thoughts.

It’s to change your relationship with them.

This treats the content of the thought as almost unimportant, as just a thought. But what is important is knowing we have agency in whether we choose to obey the thought.

Save this for the next time you feel the urge to try and convince your anxious teen there’s nothing to worry about.

27/04/2026

THE BRAVE JAR 🫙

For teens, confidence isn’t something we talk into them, it’s something they build.

Confidence grows through small, supported steps that develop COURAGE + COMPETENCE.

Not over-accommodating…but also not throwing them in at the deep end.

Because if the steps they’re being pushed to take
don’t actually help them feel braver or more capable that’s not progress it’s pressure.

And pressure doesn’t build confidence.

The Brave Jar is a simple way to help teens build real evidence that:
“I’m someone who can do hard things.”

THE BRAVE JAR RULES:

– Plan a small brave step with them
– Make it manageable… but still a stretch
– Focus on effort, not outcome
– when they’ve done it write it down and add it to the jar
– After a set time, review together
– Celebrate the courage (not just the result)

You’re helping them become someone who knows:
“I can show up, even when it’s hard.”

26/04/2026

Anyone else? 👀

Address

Thornbury Baptist Church
Thornbury

Telephone

+447792971119

Website

https://openwayuk.simplybook.it/v2/

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