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For teens ages 11 to 17, and the parents who can tell something is off and can't get a straight answer about what.
Schedule a Free 15-Minute Consultation
The door's been closed for a while now.
You get one-word answers. "Fine." "Nothing." "I dunno." The AirPods are in before they're even out of the car.
You text. It sits on read. The kid who used to tell you everything from the back seat now tells everyone except you.
Maybe it really is just the room and the screen and the "leave me alone." Or it's the grades sliding, the friend group gone in a weekend, the team quit out of nowhere.
Maybe they said something, half a joke, that you can't stop hearing. And you've been up at 1am replaying the last real conversation you had, trying to work out how worried you're allowed to be.
You've tried asking. You've tried not asking. You did the "you seem off lately" version and the "okay, I won't push" version. The door stayed shut either way.
And the feelings underneath it, the ones you'd only admit at 1am: the sting of being shut out by the person you know best. The rewind through the last year, looking for the moment you missed. The envy, small and human, when a friend mentions their kid still talks to them.
People make it sound simple. It's a phase. Take the phone away. He'll come around. Maybe. But you know your kid, and your gut says this is different.
You're not overreacting. A teenager who has gone quiet, angry, or flat is telling you something, even when "telling you" looks like silence. If it's keeping you up at night, it's worth doing something about.
Your teen isn't shutting you out to hurt you.
Pulling away is part of how teenagers become themselves. They're working out where they end and you begin, and some distance is the healthy version of that.
Here's where it stops being the normal version: when the withdrawal comes with a mood that has dropped and stayed down, a loss of interest in the things they used to love, isolation from their friends and not just from you, or anything they've said about not wanting to be here.
On the surface, all of it can look like the same closed door. Underneath, one of those is a kid growing up, and the other is a kid carrying something they can't put down.
Therapy is for the second one. Not to make them talk. To give them one place where they don't have to perform okay, explain themselves, or protect anyone's feelings.
I'm Hannah Ly, LMFT, founder and clinical director at Your Therapy Nook. I work with teens without a clipboard or a list of questions, because no teenager opens up to an adult sitting across a desk waiting for them to share their feelings. We draw, play a game, talk about what they're actually into. Teens say more with their hands busy and the pressure off.
When there's anxiety, trauma, or a heaviness talking can't reach, I use Brainspotting. And I'm there to understand your teen, not correct them. Most teens can tell the difference in the first session.
It's not just me anymore. Every child and teen therapist here trained under me and I review every case weekly, so whoever your family is matched with, you're getting someone I'd trust with my own kids. I run every consultation myself, and you can request a specific therapist on the call.
You tell us what's going on. We tell you honestly whether this is a fit, how we'd work with your teen, and which therapist is the better match: Hannah, or one of our associate therapists. Some teens click faster with one therapist than another, and we'll say so. No pressure.
We start with you. You know your teen better than anyone, and I need the history, the worries, and what you're hoping changes, before your teen ever walks in.
Parents often come in briefly at the start to set goals together. After that, the room is your teen's. We get to know each other first. The hard stuff comes when they're ready, not on a schedule.
Your teen comes weekly. Every four weeks I meet with you, without your teen, and with their input on what's shared, so you know what's happening and what to do with it at home. It's on the calendar every four weeks, hard month or easy month, because the easy months are where we get at what's underneath.
Not a switch that flips. Over time: the fights end differently. They come out of their room. They tell you something small, unprompted, and it feels like a window cracking open.
I won't tell you it's a straight line, because it isn't. There are good weeks, hard weeks, and weeks where nothing seems to move. But over time, parents tell us things like this:
The fights don't escalate the way they used to.
Their teen talked at dinner last night. Not about anything important. Just talked.
The door is open more than it's closed.
They stop bracing for the next argument.
The kid they remember starts showing back up. In pieces at first, then more.
Your teen doesn't need to be fixed. They need somewhere to set down what they've been carrying, with someone whose only job is to understand it. When they have that, they stop having to dump it everywhere else, including at home.
The worry that won't switch off. The kid grinding every assignment to death because anything less than perfect feels like failing. The stomachache before school, the panic before a test, the meltdown over something that "shouldn't" be a big deal. We work with what's driving it, not just the surface.
The teen who quit the team, dropped the friends, stopped caring about a future they used to have opinions about. Sometimes it looks like sadness. More often it looks like flatness, irritability, or a kid going through the motions on empty.
The blowups that don't match what set them off. The constant friction. Anger is usually the part of the iceberg you can see. There's almost always something underneath it that hasn't had anywhere to go.
Adolescence is when the "who am I" question gets loud. For some teens that includes questions about gender or sexuality. This is an affirming space. Your teen doesn't have to explain or defend who they are here.
Something happened, and your teen has been different since. We work at their pace. When the weight sits somewhere words can't reach, Brainspotting helps.
A lot of the teens I see in San Jose and Redwood City aren't visibly falling apart. They're still showing up, still turning things in, still saying "I'm fine." But there's an exhaustion underneath it. The sense that nothing they do is ever quite enough, in a place where the college talk started before they could read.
That's a real kind of suffering, even when the grades are still there. Seeing it, and getting your teen support before it gets heavier, is the right call.
Talking isn't required, and teen therapy is built around that. I work with teens while they're drawing, playing a game, or doing something they're into, because side-by-side activity opens kids up far more than sitting across from an adult waiting for them to share. Teens who swear they won't talk usually do, once the pressure is off.
This is one of the most common things parents of teens tell me. The parent intake session, before your teen's first appointment, lets us plan the approach together. Most resistant teens find the room is nothing like what they were dreading, because I'm not there to lecture them, report back to you, or hand out homework. That tends to surprise them.
Before every parent session, I ask your teen what's okay to share, and they get real input over it. Confidentiality has legal limits, and if your teen is in danger, safety comes first. Within those limits, what your teen brings into session stays there. A teen who doesn't feel surveilled will open up. A teen who does, won't. Protecting that trust is what makes the therapy work.
Some pulling away is a normal part of growing up. It's worth a closer look when the withdrawal comes with a lasting drop in mood, loss of interest in things they used to care about, isolation from friends and not just family, a clear change from their baseline, or anything they've said about self-harm. You don't have to diagnose it yourself. A 15-minute call will tell you whether this is the normal stuff or worth addressing now.
Teen therapy at Your Therapy Nook is for ages 11 to 17. Younger children, ages 3 to 10, are served through our play-based child therapy program.
A teen session is relaxed and activity-based: drawing, a game, or just talking through what's going on, with no clipboard and no scripted questions. When anxiety or trauma sits somewhere talking can't reach, I use Brainspotting, which works through the nervous system rather than requiring your teen to narrate it. Every teen's care also includes parent coaching every four weeks for you.
No. Your Therapy Nook is private pay only. Sessions run $200 to $270, depending on the therapist, and a parent session every four weeks is billed at the same rate. We don't bill insurance, but we provide superbills you can submit for out-of-network reimbursement.
Child and teen therapy is in-person only, at our San Jose and Redwood City offices. So much of teen therapy depends on being in the same room: what they do with their hands, what their body says when words don't. Parent coaching sessions can be done by video.
It depends on your teen and what's underneath what brought you in. Some families notice real shifts within a few months. Others work with us longer. I'll be honest with you throughout about what I'm seeing and where things are going.
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Schedule a free 15-minute consultation. You tell me what's going on, and I'll tell you honestly whether we're the right fit for your teen.
Schedule a Free 15-Minute Consultation