Therapist Unplugged
Therapist Unplugged
Girl Talk: Discovering Identity in a Safe Space for Teenage Girls
Adolescence is a time of transition, where peer influence begins to shape identity and self-worth. In this episode, therapist Heather Caballero explores the power of group therapy in providing teenage girls with a safe space to express themselves, navigate societal pressures, and build confidence. Listen to Heather discuss the pressing issues faced by teenagers, including body image, academic pressures, and family dynamics and the importance of open dialogue and support.
Join us as we introduce the 10-week Group Therapy Program, "Girl Talk" for girls aged 13-15 and 16-18. Be sure to catch all the details about when it starts and how to get involved in this wonderful opportunity for teenage girls to connect, learn, and thrive.
Therapist Unplugged is brought to you by The Montfort Group. Each episode will feature the unplugged views of guests and fellow therapists as we navigate hot topics, therapy trends and the world around us.
*The Montfort Group provides a serene, calming setting where you can feel challenged, supported, and motivated. Our skilled therapists bridge specialized backgrounds and varied philosophies together to create one unified strategy. Rather than steer you away from your own natural abilities, we help you maximize your unique strengths. We do not view a broken history as the end of a story, we see it as an opportunity for a new beginning.
Welcome everybody to Therapist Unplugged. I'm here in this episode to talk about teenage girls and a new group that we are offering called Girl Talk, and with me today as my guest is colleague Heather Caballaro. Heather is actually going to be running these groups here at the Montfort Group and I thought it would be a great opportunity for us to talk about. You know what are some of the things that? Well, the landmarks of going through adolescence, and I think any parent that's got a teenage girl in the house knows that there's a lot of stuff that comes up when you have teenage girls in the house and that's maybe a different experience than teenage boys. But, Heather, why don't we talk a little bit about you know why this, why these two groups were put together, and what are some of the challenges that parents and others experience with this particular group of youngsters?
Heather Caballero:Yeah, I think one of the really interesting things is that it's particularly a period of time - adolescence - where we're kind of turning away from being quite as influenced by our immediate family as we may have been in the past and become a lot more influenced by our peers. Now, you know, people could argue this is good, this is bad, this is neutral, but regardless, it is a thing that happens and I think that it is really an important time to try and do our best to guide that as responsibly as possible. And honestly, I really think one of the great things about a group is that it can provide that guidance from the perspective of peers. And you know, something else that I feel like is so powerful about group therapy as opposed to say like individual therapy is that when you're in a group, suddenly I feel like you have the power as a person in that group to say things that are helpful to the people around you.
Laurie Poole:That's right. It's a way of normalizing, too, when you have shared experiences in a group like that that participants don't feel like. "Well, I'm the only one that's feeling this way, or I'm the only one that has these arguments with my parents. You said something earlier that I just wanted to add on to, Heather, and I think, if parents are listening to this, it's helpful to know that adolescence is a period of discovering identity. "How am I different than my family of origin? The opinion of peers weighs very, very heavily, because the desire to belong somewhere becomes even more important, it seems to me, in adolescence, and so it's in that discovery of identity and trying to figure these things out as well as having all the hormonal stuff, growth spurts, the hormones, the emotional stuff, the social aspect, and I think it is also a period of time where parents will actually seek family therapy because having an adolescent in the house is so disruptive. And it's very hard not to take things personally. So to have something like Girl Talk, which is the name of this group, gives those teenagers also a safe place to express and to share and to validate and normalize and not feel like they're alone
Laurie Poole:alone
Heather Caballero:yeah, and I think oftentimes girls in particular, you know, there can be a societal discounting of the things that girls have to say and that may carry over into their peer group as well, and particularly if the relationship is strained at home, they may feel that way at home as well. And so I think something really powerful about being able to connect with a group like this is that there is this feeling of "oh, I can say valuable things, and I mean we kind of know this as helping professionals ourselves that there is just something really powerful about the feeling of helping someone else, and I think groups give people the opportunity to have that feeling by being the person who says something.
Laurie Poole:Heather, can I ask you a question about something you said about invalidating or being told I can't remember the exact phrase you used but about the girls have things to say that get discounted. What did you mean by that, and can you provide an example?
Heather Caballero:I mean, let's zoom in for a second on school, for instance. At least one of the experiences that I remember really having is dress code violations, this idea that like, "ooh, your shoulders are out, or like some people feeling like their tops are too low cut, but like the girl next to me has the exact same cut, but like you're dress coding me and not her because our bodies look different, kind of thing. And there can be this response of like "hey, that's not fair to put on me and that's very discounted by the authorities of the school. Is this answering your question?
Laurie Poole:Yeah, I mean I wasn't sure what you meant by that, so that's why I asked. Valuable things that that girls have to say and one of those things can be around physical presentation and clothing, dress code, depending on the school, all of these kinds of things and body image around sports around , sure Around, sports around you know, body image, who has a boyfriend, who doesn't? There's all of these evoke sort of metrics or self judgment, feeling less than and experiences that teenagers can evoke, like there's a self-evaluation, particularly in the period of trying to discover like, who am I?
Heather Caballero:I think there's something really interesting about trying on other values or things and seeing "does this feel authentic?" and taking the chance for those things, to a. It's a little bit the blind leading the blind, you know, and it can be really difficult for a parent to sit back and to let them kind of feel that out for themselves maybe make mistakes, maybe get hurt and to give them those experiences without trying to go in and say like no, learn from my mistakes, don't be hurt in the same way. That's really hard from the perspective of a parent to give them that space. But something I see, at least in the teens that I have worked with, is this feeling of like I need that space to figure things out on my own and to be able to have that time and experimentation with peers to kind of figure out their own values.
Laurie Poole:I think the other piece of it, if I just to chime in for parents is it's very hard not to take things personally. Yeah, yeah, as you witness the power struggles between things like curfew, homework, applying to college or not, what comes next? Who are you hanging around with. A lot of what I would call protest, pushing boundaries, thrill-seeking, stepping outside the box. These are all parts of what I'm going to call developmental tasks of adolescence. Yeah, and some teenagers will go through it earlier in their adolescence. Some of it will feel at 18, 19, 20. And we have to remember that the human being doesn't have an adult brain until 25.
Laurie Poole:So you know, the continuation of adolescence goes on well past high school. But, like toddlers, some kids walk faster than others. Right, some get diaper trained sooner than others, or potty trained rather not diaper trained. That's probably when we get old and yonderly. But you know, like this is really a developmental phase, this isn't something that a teenager just wakes up one day and says I want to disrupt the whole household and I want to do this and I want to do that, I'm going to smoke dope, I'm going to have sex. You know, these are all normal patterns of adolescence and it seems to me that what this girl talk, what these Girl Talk groups will do, is to provide teenage girls a safe haven to talk about the things that they're experiencing, without feeling judged or parentified in that discussion.
Heather Caballero:Yeah, I think that word "parentified is really important here and I think I'd be curious to hear, like what? What is your definition of that term?
Laurie Poole:My definition would be being very directive. Well, you should do this, you should do that. The deadline's coming. What have you done? Why haven't you done it? And maybe even let me get that application process going. Are you sure you want to wear that? I don't know. It looks a little. It looks a little, you know, risky. I don't know. It looks a little. It looks a little, you know, risky, I don't know. Is that appropriate? Like challenging, judging expectations, spoken and unspoken expectations,
Heather Caballero:And so the idea I think, what I'm hearing and what stands out to me in that concept is the idea of I am sharing a thought or an emotion and the response that I'm being met with is some sort of fix it, rather than I'm going to sit with you with that emotion, or you're allowed to feel that emotion, or understanding how to deal with those emotions in the first place.
Laurie Poole:Yeah.
Heather Caballero:And I think that idea of not having those thoughts and feelings met with this, "all right, what are you going to do about it? What am I going to do about it? What from here, kind of thing. I think that's really valuable.
Laurie Poole:Yeah, it's very, very valuable.
Laurie Poole:I think sometimes what happens is that and I can speak as a parent it's so hard to watch your children be distressed that you want to offer up solutions as opposed to empowering in some way. First of all, sitting with that with your child and being curious and also asking them well, what would you do if a friend came to you with this? What advice would you offer them and what is it you're experiencing right now? But also to have some boundaries around stuff. It's not okay to be slamming doors all the time or swearing at parents I mean that sounds very judgy, but whatever it is that is acceptable in a household. But to really get to the bottom of things and also not to diminish what a teenager is feeling and experiencing in their world because they star in their own movie. They honestly believe that everybody's watching them, Everybody knows and this sense of immediacy. I need to know this right now. I need to have an answer right now. All of that. I mean it is a pretty egocentric period of time for a lot of teenagers.
Heather Caballero:Yeah, I think the spotlight effect is particularly strong in teen years, but also I think something that's so important and honestly, I see this as a phenomenon come up in a lot of instances, but there is something about us, I think, as human beings, having experienced something and being past it and coming from it with a certain amount of you know, wisdom or experience of well, this is that experience, now in perspective, that I have today and wanting to impart that perspective to people.
Heather Caballero:In the aftermath of grief, the feeling better perspective and being able to look back and say like this is a period of time that you will get through, kind of thing. Or looking back at those, those trying to figure out who you are, and kind of feeling like well, there are phases as you try on different things and so I'm just going to wait out this phase. It's meaningless. Well, maybe not meaningless, but not long lasting kind of perspectives.
Laurie Poole:This too shall pass.
Heather Caballero:Right. Right, and don't get me wrong, there's so much value in that and I think that's really important. But I also think that that comes from us having a luxury that they do not have, which is now in my time of life. That is a pretty small percentage of my life experience and the things that matter to me, but as a teenager, that percentage is huge. Right, it's giant, and feeling like there is this response sometimes of no, don't worry, it's not a big percentage, ends up feeling kind of invalidating to how important those things feel in the moment.
Laurie Poole:That's right, absolutely. So Heather, can you tell me a little bit about Girl Talk and how long the program is, who would be a good candidate for the group and sort of what, some of the goals and stuff.
Heather Caballero:Yeah, so it is a 10-week program and we are doing two groups.
Heather Caballero:One is from 13 to 15 and the other is from 16 to 18.
Heather Caballero:And they have ever so slightly different focuses based on the different, you know, points of life that one is at, particularly with 16 to 18, being a little bit more inclusive of planning for your future and next steps, as you're kind of on the cusp of living on your own and going out, kind of thing, of the house.
Heather Caballero:But I think one of the things that is really important to me in the time of the group is to kind of have some exploration of what are the things that are important to you, what are your values and how can those things be carried into walking authentically as yourself in a peer group, making friends, figuring out the things that you want to do in the world, the way that you want to interact with either peers or family, the ways that you want to treat yourself amidst all of that. And one of the things that I really love as exercises of connecting with our values is really honing in on like, hey, what, what is important to you? What are your favorite movies? What are your favorite books? What kind of ways do you like to create? And let's start using those avenues to ask the questions of what matters to you.
Laurie Poole:That's interesting. So there will be - It won't just be talking in the groups, there will - It sounds as though there will be activities like writing, art, media, comparing interests, that kind of thing.
Heather Caballero:Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's a great creative way to invite in the things that we're doing in our lives as a way of connecting with both ourselves and the people that are going to be with us in the group.
Laurie Poole:I think it's interesting too, when you do activities with teenagers, it almost gives them permission to explore, in the process of asking a question, that whether it's a collage about something or pulling images from magazines or talking about characters that really moved them in a movie or whatever it was that those conduits for conversation really help to facilitate the exchange.
Heather Caballero:I think so.
Heather Caballero:Something else I think is perhaps a behind the scenes thing that feels important to me is sometimes making it an activity kind of gives us permission to approach it in a way that feels too vulnerable in other avenues, Right? So you know, if I were to sit down and look someone in the eye and be like, all right, tell me what your biggest fear is. That feels completely different than if I'm just like, "Alright, everyone write one small, silly fear, and one big fear onto a piece of paper. We're going to put it in a hat, everyone draw the sheets of paper, and explain to me why you think that fear is important."
Heather Caballero:And you might even hear someone else by that proxy empathizing with and understanding that fear that maybe in another context you wouldn't have felt comfortable sharing
Laurie Poole:Right, exactly, it's also that pulling a fear, for example, that isn't necessarily one that you wrote, but that comes from someone else, allows that other person who recognizes it to hear feedback from someone else, which can be very validating, normalizing.
Laurie Poole:Oh, I'm not alone in this, because I think there's lots of experiences in the teenage years that can leave us feeling pretty isolated and alone. It's also a period of time where there can be divorce in a family and that's very tough. Sex, maybe experience for the first time in teenage years, body image, academic performance, and particularly, I'm thinking in the later age group, the 16 to 18 year old age group. As they're making applications for college, many will feel like this is the very first biggest decision they've ever had to make, and that comes with an awful lot of pressure or can, especially if someone has a lot of choice. So it sounds as though this is going to be a wonderful opportunity for the participants of both groups to really talk about stuff in a way that maybe they want somewhere else, you know, or with someone else. And when do these groups start?
Heather Caballero:They start gosh. I feel like I'm so sure that it's the 12th and 13th, but part of my brain is like is that Valentine's Day?
Heather Caballero:I'm just making things up.
Laurie Poole:What we can say the 12th and 13th of February is when they start, and for details people can go to our website at themontfortgroup. com and get information there. They can also call our office at 214-810-2615 and speak with Peggy, who can give information about the groups. We know when they start but in terms of time and I think there's going to be six to eight participants in each group, so the groups will be kept quite intimate and really facilitate an open exchange and participation with the girls who join.
Heather Caballero:Yeah, it'll be from 5 pm and it's a 90 minute session, so until like 630.
Laurie Poole:Okay. So and that will go on for how many weeks? Is it 10 weeks, 10 weeks, okay. So for more information about registering for the groups, visit our website at themontfortgroup. com or call area code 214-810-2615. Thanks so much, Heather. I've really enjoyed this. I've learned something too. So thank you very much.
Heather Caballero:Yeah, thank you for having me.
Laurie Poole:All right, okay, take care. Bye-bye.
