Are you a teen needing help to navigate some of the following challenges?

• Are you overwhelmed managing your coursework, friends, extracurricular commitments, and family obligations and need help finding a more balanced life?
• Are you struggling to build or maintain trusting friendships with either sex?
• Does your sense of self-esteem and mood shift according to the events in your life in a way that makes you feel like you"re on a roller coaster?
• Is it sometimes difficult to make choices and sort through conflicting sources of advice to identify what makes you happy?

What: The Launch Pad is an on-going co-ed support group for teens who want a supportive, collaborative, and therapeutic environment to process the stressors in their lives and learn social skills and coping strategies to help them feel more confident in themselves.

Why: The pressures of being a young man or young woman in today"s fast paced world can be especially challenging for teens whose main developmental task is to discover how to meaningfully define themselves. Research shows healthy adolescent development is best facilitated by positive group experiences, thereby making group therapy an ideal way for teens to discover themselves. The group provides a safe place where teens can practice social skills, learn to negotiate differences, discover successful means of self expression, and lastly, demonstrate care and concern for self and other.

Where: Pacific Heights in San Francisco. Call for exact location.

When: Groups are offered on an ongoing basis. Please call for the next start date.

Who: Lisa Beritzhoff,MFT and Carin Chou, MFT are psychotherapists who work with both teens and adults in private practice. They have counseled students in schools in the San Francisco Bay Area for the last 10 years and have many years of experience helping teens navigate internal and interpersonal challenges.

Fee: $50 per session. The group is on-going and a minimum three month commitment required.