Teen, young adult, and family therapy in Sacramento and online across California
Something feels off, and you’re tired of explaining it to people who don’t understand
Therapy for anxious teens and young adults, and for the parents worried about them.
For some people, it’s not that easy to explain, and that’s okay.
Many of my clients tell me they are anxious most of the time and feel exhausted trying to explain that. So, when someone asks them what’s wrong, the honest answer would take an hour and the short answer comes out as “nothing” or “I’m fine.”
For a lot of teenagers and young adults, anxiety starts quietly shaping what they say yes to. Plans get canceled. Mornings get harder. Assignments sit unopened because starting feels impossible. Quietly, their world gets a little smaller each month without anyone deciding it should.
Others describe the opposite, where feelings run so high for so long that eventually everything goes flat, and the flatness can be hard to sit with. Other patterns begin to emerge as a way of coping, because sitting with the emptiness feels almost impossible.
Underneath all of this, my clients often have a belief that something is fundamentally wrong with them, especially when it appears that everyone else is handling things with ease. And that belief is worth exploring.
People often think they need to name exactly what is bothering them when they come to therapy
About Kelly
I spent more than ten years as a school social worker and clinician in schools. Before that I worked in community mental health with children, teenagers, and families, including families in unstable housing, youth in foster care, and teenagers involved in the juvenile justice system.
My work has ranged from crisis intervention, individual and group therapy, and intensive family support. My training includes Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Trauma Focused CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools, and certification as a mindfulness educator. Additionally, I have extensive training and experience in crisis intervention and suicide prevention.
While my education and early training emphasized traditional therapeutic methods, my actual practice is significantly influenced by my years of both clinical and personal experience. My work with clients is collaborative and engaging. Clients will get to know me as a person, because that is how I believe trust is built. I get to know things about my clients and my clients get to know things about me. I am also a parent of young adults, which informs how I build relationships with families without making assumptions about anyone’s individual experience.
My goal is simple: I want people to feel safe, seen, and supported with me, and to leave with a clearer sense of what matters to them and how to handle the hard parts of life.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
- Maya Angelou
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“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelou |
Who I love to work with:
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Teenagers
Teens who are feeling overwhelmed and anxious, experiencing school stress, and feeling like something is off without having words for it yet. Teens need to know that they can talk openly in therapy, and parents want to know how they can help. Together we establish clear expectations around what is shared and what stays private before anyone decides what they want to talk about.
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Young Adults
Young adults struggling with anxiety, feeling disconnected or numb, difficulty in relationships, and the pressure to have a direction figured out. I provide support during a time filled with first jobs, college, intimate relationships, and navigating the years that were supposed to be simpler than they actually are.
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Parents and Families
Parents who are exhausted, want to work on communication that has broken down, and need a place to think clearly when their teenager or young adult is struggling. I offer a space to rebuild connection when things feel tense at home.
The years between fifteen and twenty-five feel more complicated than they used to
Many of the people I work with are somewhere in the long stretch between being a teenager and feeling like an adult. That stretch has become more complicated the past few decades, and the expectations attached to it have not adjusted.
Some teens experience intense anxiety or start to withdraw from the world during a stage of life that already comes with a lot of change. They’re trying to figure out who they are, where they fit in, and what comes next. It can feel really hard!
Some young adults feel frozen, not because they lack ambition, but because they believe whichever direction they choose will lock them in permanently. That belief makes every option feel enormous and every decision feels unsurvivable. It’s important to remember that most people have several careers, change their minds more than once, and are still finding their way well past the age when they assumed they would have it all figured out.
Not knowing what you want is far more common than having clarity in this phase of life. In therapy, we embrace “not knowing” as a starting point instead of a problem that needs to be corrected.
When a parent is the one carrying the heaviness
Many parents come to therapy having spent months feeling like things are falling apart and believing they don’t know how to help without making things worse. Conversations at home turn into arguments or a closed door, and it is difficult to say which of those is harder to live with. Some parents have said things out of fear that came out as anger, and then spent the night replaying the conversation with regret.
It is also common for parents to stop talking about any of this to family and friends, because the advice stopped being useful and the comparisons stopped feeling survivable. That isolation tends to arrive quietly, and gradually, it takes a real toll.
Parents are usually the ones who start looking for a therapist, and they often have the impression that the focus will be on their child. That makes sense! In practice, the work frequently includes the parent(s) as well, not because parents are to blame for the problem, but because usually the adults in the family have the most capacity to create meaningful change. I meet with parents on their own regularly, and sometimes that is the best place to begin.
How it works
What sessions with Kelly are actually like:
“01. We start where you are.”
“02. I am a real person in the room.”
“03. We work on what is underneath, not just the symptom.”
“04. I will not tell you what to do.”
Start with a call
Twenty minutes on the phone, just to talk. You tell me what is going on and I will tell you honestly whether I think I can help. If I’m not the right fit, I will help you find someone who is.