Child and Youth Therapy
Understanding yourself
Child and Youth Therapy is a short-term and effective way of psychotherapy for children and adolescents in the age range from 4 years to 21 years.
Child therapy (also called child counseling) offers children and adolescents a safe space and an empathetic ear while providing tools to bring about change in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Children receive emotional and goal support in their sessions. They may focus on resolving conflict, understanding their own thoughts and feelings, or on coming up with new solutions to problems. Over time this understanding can be internalised by the child so that he or she can begin to understand their own feelings and behaviour. The child learns to make her or his own choices and to trust those choices. From there self-confidence can grow and life becomes more pleasant again.
Finding out what you need
During therapy, the child gets all the space and time to work in a fun and relaxed way. The child is leading and works on what is important for him or her.
Through this way of working, the child can look at his inner world and learns to deal with a life issue.
The child knows, consciously or unconsciously, exactly what it needs and can also come up with a solution. This solution is often present at an unconscious level, but through various game and intervention techniques I work with the child towards this solution. The child has already many qualities and those qualities are being used to strengthen the child and thereby build up experiences of success.
Working together
I always work with the complaint the child wants to work on, although it is often in line with the parents’ request. Working together  with the parents is of great importance.
The diagnosis focuses mainly on the question; what is the inner world of the child, what is the underlying pain and how does a child protect himself against it? I also look at the relationships in the family and the relationships with the outside world such as school, friends etc.
Child and Youth Therapy Wereldkind uses knowledge, insights and interventions from different psychological models.
My way of looking at the child
I look at the child from six different perspectives:
- The unprocessed past; an old, unpleasant experience can be processed
- The search for identity; who are you, what do you want, what are your strengths?
- The relationship with the family and environment; what kind of behavior does the child use to tell his or her environment of what is going on?
- The body; psychological complaints can be felt in the body. Through therapy body and mind are integrated again.
- Finding the balance between workload and your own capacities, better said dealing with stress. In the therapy, work can be done to increase capacities and reduce workload.
- Learning new behaviour and unlearn old behaviour
The integrated approach ensures that the focus remains on the child and does not have to comply with the vision or a methodology of the therapist.