Talking to Teens about Violence and Tragedies

Written By: Ann Stillingfleet, ACS Clinical Intern, Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment and Community Counseling Programs Every week the news brings stories of seemingly senseless and random acts of violence — either globally or locally.  How do we talk to our children, especially our teens, about these events when the source of much of what they […]

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Rituals in Therapy

Written By: Ann Stillingfleet, ACS Clinical Intern, Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment and Community Counseling Programs What comes to mind when you think of rituals? Perhaps you visualize a religious ceremony, a celtic gathering in an oak grove,  a medicine man or sage woman conducting a healing or a centuries old tradition passed down through generations. […]

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Understanding and Coping with Anxiety

Written By:  Deborah Sloss, LCSW  |  ACS Site Supervisor, On-Campus Counseling Program  Most of us have experienced anxiety at some point in our lives. Some people even feel a moderate amount of anxiety spurs them to action.  However, for others, anxiety can start to interfere with their day-to-day functioning.  According to the National Institute of […]

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Dear Parents: Being a “Good” Parent is Not About Being Perfect!

Written By: Kelly Sumner, LMFT, ACS On-Campus Counseling Program Site Supervisor     I need to start here by acknowledging that I am not a parent and thus do not understand first hand the pressure parents face to raise their children into well-adjusted, successful, happy, moralistic, responsible members of society in today’s world. It’s a […]

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Revisiting the “Tiger Mother” Phenomenon

Written By:  German Cheung, Psy D.  |  ACS Site Supervisor, Terman Middle School    “Tiger Mother,” a term that was hugely popularized by Amy Chua’s article in the Wall Street Journal in 2011, titled, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” describes how parents hold suffocatingly high expectations for their child that often lead to conflicts in […]

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Stressed Out? Music is the Cure!

Image: Stephen McLeod Blythe – Muzak Stephanie Olano ACS Outpatient Counseling Program Clinical Intern Music has played a very important role in my life. From the time I was 10-years-old I could list the various bands that were heavily influenced by The Beatles. Adults found this impressive, but I found this knowledge strange and confusing because they […]

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Stress management for beginners – and the rest of us!

Image: Miguel Virkkunen Carvalho By Charlotte Villemoes, LMFT On-Campus Counseling Program Site Director, Woodside High School Every day, all of us experience some sort of stress. Most of the teens I meet in my private and professional life will at some point talk about how stressed they are; they talk about feeling overwhelmed by school demands, […]

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Do Not Expect a Stress Free Holiday Season

image: Adam Lederer  By: Ana Jimenez Adolescent Counseling Services’ Intern The holidays are here! The holidays are here! Lights everywhere, food and family!  For the young, the best part is school is out! Others are off work. It is December, the time when families celebrate holidays like Christmas, Hanukah, or Kwannza. When we think about the holidays, […]

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How do we teach our kids to cope with stress?

By Pamela Garfield, LCSW Site Director at Gunn High School Our kids just got through the end of the semester and finals.  Finals, holidays, college applications and the many other pressures of this time of year can be very challenging. Sometimes life just takes over and we have to go into “survival mode” to get […]

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ACS’ Program Directors Words of Advice for the Holidays

With the holidays quickly approaching, many parents wonder how to survive this time of year with their troubled teens.  Here are some words of advice from Adolescent Counseling Services’ experienced program directors: Roni Gillenson, LMFT On-Campus Counseling Program Director In my work with teens and families over almost 20 years, probably my favorite moments have […]

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