The Art of Working with Anxious, Antagonistic Adolescents

Book excerpt: This is a series of surprising and candid conversations held between veteran counsellor Nick Luxmoore and professionals working with young people. Based entirely on stories from the author's experience of supervising frontline professionals, it looks at how to approach young people, the stumbling blocks faced on both sides, and offers invaluable guidance to anyone working with teenagers. Luxmoore posits ways forward for practitioners which are adaptive and allow them to respond personally, practically and theoretically. From suicide to disordered eating, watching pornography to love in therapeutic relationships, Nick Luxmoore covers a range of problems and phenomena encountered by counsellors, teachers, school social workers and youth workers. One chapter sees a counsellor struggling for questions to ask a boy whose father abandoned his family only to return two years later, another a teacher finding it impossible to know how to speak to a fourteen-year-old with an inoperable brain tumour. Recounted in a style that motivates, engages and inspires, The Art of Working with Anxious, Antagonistic Adolescents allows professionals to gain a better understanding of their capacity, particularly developmentally and pastorally, and not reach for easy answers or a quick fix. These are lessons in the art of working with today's teenagers.