Girls Can Count On Lea
I've definitely hit my stride. And I think the most important thing that has helped me hit my
stride is having people that are constantly reminding me that the most important thing about
being a therapist and being in therapy is being genuine and being yourself and giving a space
for somebody else to feel safe and be themselves as well. So right now, what I really love the
most is asking lots of questions. So making sure that I am getting to know my client as much as
I can and making them feel like their life and whatever it is that they're telling me about their
life matters a lot to me. I had an idea when I first came in that I was going to work with little children,
very like five years old kind of thing.
But a lot of the clients that I've gotten are teenage girls,
and right now, definitely my niche. And I think also being closer to them in age, I feel like I
just got it out of that stage of being a teenager growing up, coming to that place where you're
reflecting a lot about your life, about your family. And I feel really close to that stage, and I'm glad that I have passed it and
I have found a way out of it, and I want to help people that are going through it. I think the first
thing that had surprised me is how reflective and mature and observive they are at this current
stage. I feel like I was like that, and I had a lot of adults always come up to me saying that they
were really impressed of how reflective mature I am. And I think at times it made me feel like
I was the only teenage girl in the world who was like that. And now that I'm a therapist working
with a lot of teenage girls, I see that a lot of us are like that. Therapy is very much of a group
work, and as no one is ever going through an issue or difficult time alone, as you see someone
suffering, other people are also in that process with them. So I think letting parents know
that the more you are open to working alongside that therapist and your child through the process,
the better it will be for that child.
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Lea Estién Garcia is a Marriage and Family Therapist Trainee at Child & Teen Counseling, but it wasn’t that long ago that she was a teenager herself. Maybe that’s why she’s so good at relating to teenage girls! Lea has a deep understanding of the challenges and struggles that young girls face. Get to know her and hear some insight into her perspective on teens in this short video.
