Adolescent resistance to therapy is one of the most common concerns parents raise when reaching out to Dr. Steinbok's Boca Raton practice. A teenager who does not want to come to therapy, who has agreed to come only because they had no realistic alternative, or who arrives in the initial session uncommunicative and skeptical is not an unusual starting point. Adolescent resistance to psychological treatment is developmentally expectable: the teenage years are characterized by a push toward autonomy and a heightened sensitivity to being analyzed, evaluated, or managed by adults. A clinical approach that treats this resistance as meaningful information rather than as an obstacle to be overcome tends to produce more productive engagement.
Dr. Steinbok's approach with reluctant adolescent patients at his Boca Raton practice begins with the working relationship rather than with the content the parents have identified as the problem. Giving the teenager the experience of being listened to without judgment, of having their own perspective taken seriously, and of feeling like the therapy is about something they actually care about rather than something being done to them, is often the most important work of the first several sessions. Parents are sometimes surprised to learn that their teenager is engaging productively with Dr. Steinbok before any of the specific concerns they were most worried about have been directly addressed. That sequence is often the right one.
