I became a psychologist because I remember what fourteen felt like
I trained as a psychologist because I wanted to work with teenagers, and I have spent most of my career since sitting across from them — in clinic rooms, in school offices, in kitchens with the TV still on because the quiet felt like too much. Most of what I see isn’t crisis. It’s ordinary worry that has been building quietly for a long time, in kids who are otherwise doing fine.
The work now sits in three places. I write — books for parents and teenagers, in plain language, without the jargon. I speak, mostly in schools, to rooms of parents and staff who are already trying hard and just want something that actually helps. And I still see families, a few each week, because I don’t want to lose the thing that makes the writing and the speaking honest.
I’m not interested in telling anyone their teenager is broken, because I don’t think that’s true. What I offer is more modest: language for what’s happening, and some ordinary, doable things that make it smaller.
I’m not a motivational speaker, and I don’t promise a fix by Friday. What I offer is a way to understand what’s going on, and a handful of practices that hold up on an ordinary Tuesday.
Outside clinic hours, most of my reading pile is whatever’s currently big with actual teenagers — it’s usually better than the reviews suggest.
Background
- Registered psychologist (fictional, for illustration only)
- Author of four books for parents and teenagers
- Speaks in schools on teen anxiety and communication
- Sees families in private practice
Illustrative only — not a real credential or registration
Trained as a psychologist because adolescence had never stopped being interesting to me — the way small things can tip into big feelings, and back again.
Home Base written for the families I was already seeing, because they kept asking if any of it was written down anywhere.
First full parent evening at a local school. Nobody left early, and more schools asked for a date before the year was out.
Talking Sideways and The Worry Map, both built from the same question: what do you actually say, in the actual moment?
The Anxious Years, and a slowly growing list of schools asking for an evening of their own.