Teen Resources
Below are our top recommended books, websites and other tools for you to use. Check your local library for books if financial resources are limited.
Educational Courses
Choose Your Life
Spring 2023 Choose Your Life – an educational and experiential self-help course for adolescents, ages 13-24, is almost ready!
If you are an adolescent who experiences unwanted thoughts, emotions, or physical feelings, and who has run out of ways to try to get rid of them or quiet them down, there may be an alternative!
Choose Your Life (CYL) is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), an approach that will teach you how to take your thoughts and feelings with you, while you put your time and energy into who and what matters.
This approach has a lot of scientific support and has helped my patients to make the changes they want, so their life is more meaningful and purposeful.
As a Clinical Psychologist with expertise in ACT, I created this program to benefit young people who may not have access to a therapist who is skilled with ACT, who may not be able to afford individual therapy, or who prefer to move at their own pace in the privacy of their own home.
Choose Your Life provides you with educational information and practices to try out, so you can learn the skills from inside your own experience. Although CYL is structured as a ten-week course, and you can take your time and practice each step as much as you need to, before moving ahead. Within the course, you will find video and audio recordings, handouts, and everything you need to track your own progress. You also get to hear from Devlin, a teen who struggles with anxiety, who shares his experiences at each step of CYL.
Dr. Sheri Turrell’s Book
by Sheri L. Turrell PhD, Christopher McCurry PhD, Mary Bell MSW RSW
Move past anxiety and discover what really matters to you. Written by three experts in teen mental health, this powerful workbook offers evidence-based activities grounded in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to help you cope with anxiety, build resilience, stop avoiding the things you fear and lead a fuller, happier life.
In The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Teen Anxiety, you’ll find helpful alternatives to the ineffective strategies and habits you’re currently using to deal with anxiety, such as avoidance. You’ll find basic information about anxiety to help you recognize what it looks and feels like, mindfulness tips to help you stay in the moment when you feel worried about the future, and tips to help you connect with your own values so you can start putting the important things in life first.