When to Get Your Own Therapist as the Parent of a Struggling Teen

Parents should consider getting their own therapist when the strain of a teen's struggles has started to change how they sleep, eat, work, or treat the people around them, and that has gone on for more than a few weeks. You don't need to be in crisis to qualify, and you don't need to wait until your teen is doing better, since the months when an adolescent is struggling are usually the months a parent needs support the most.

Many parents put themselves last on purpose, because every hour and dollar seems like it should go to their teen. That instinct comes from love, but a parent running on empty has less patience to give, and getting help for yourself is one of the more practical things you can do for your teen.

What are the signs you need support of your own?

The clearest sign you need support of your own is that your teen's struggles have started to take over your inner life, so that you can't stop thinking about them, can't rest, and can't remember the last time you felt like yourself. Some stress is unavoidable when a teen is struggling, and the question is whether it's lifting between hard moments or settling in. Signs worth paying attention to include:

• Trouble sleeping most nights, or waking at 3 a.m. replaying the day.
• Feeling on edge, waiting for the next phone call from school or the next blowup.
• Snapping at your partner, other children, or coworkers more than you used to.
• Losing interest in things you once enjoyed, or no longer seeing friends.
• Drinking more, eating differently, or using other ways to numb out in the evenings.
• Guilt or self-blame that won't let up, such as constantly asking what you did wrong.
• Physical signs of stress, such as headaches, stomach problems, or getting sick more often.
• Feeling hopeless, or that nothing you do will make a difference.

Any one of these can happen during a hard week, while several that hold steady for a month or more tell you the load has become too heavy to carry alone. Guilt in particular tends to grow in silence, and our article on guilt, blame, and what parents need to hear speaks to it directly.

What's the difference between family therapy, parent coaching, and individual therapy?

Family therapy, parent coaching, and individual therapy each have a different focus, and many parents end up using more than one at different points. Family therapy, as the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) describes it, "focuses on helping the family function in more positive and constructive ways," and sessions can include the teen, parents, siblings, and sometimes grandparents (AACAP, 2019). AACAP also lists parent support among the kinds of group therapy available.

Parent coaching is a looser term. It usually means sessions focused on specific skills for responding to your teen, such as setting limits without escalating, handling school refusal, or talking about substance use, and it's sometimes offered as structured parent training by a therapist. The people who use the title "parent coach" range from licensed therapists to coaches without clinical training, so it's worth asking about credentials. Individual therapy is time that belongs only to you, with a licensed therapist, to work on your own stress, grief, anxiety, or depression, or on old patterns your teen's struggles have stirred up.

The table below compares the three.

Your teen's treatment program may include family sessions and parent groups, which are valuable, but they're built around your teen's care. If you need room to talk about your own fear, anger, or exhaustion without your teen's treatment team in the room, that's what individual therapy is for.

Does a parent getting therapy help the teen too?

A parent getting support tends to help the teen too, because children's and adolescents' mental health and their parents' mental health are closely connected. A 2021 analysis by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), using parent-reported data on 97,728 U.S. children from the 2016–2018 National Survey of Children's Health, found that 7.2% of children had at least one caregiver with poor mental health, and that children whose male caregiver had poor mental health were 1.9 times as likely to have a diagnosed mental, behavioral, or developmental disorder, with a similar 2.1 for female caregivers (Wolicki et al., 2021). The data are a few years old and show a link rather than a cause, and the connection likely runs both ways.

Treatment research points in a hopeful direction. In the STAR*D-Child study, published in 2011 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, researchers followed 80 mother-child pairs, with mothers being treated for depression and children ages 7 to 17, and found that mothers' remission "appears to be related to decreases in problem behaviors and symptoms in their children" over the following year (Wickramaratne et al., 2011). The study was small, focused on mothers with depression, and observational, so it can't prove that the mothers' treatment caused the change, but it fits what many families find.

A parent who is sleeping again and has somewhere to put their own fear is usually calmer in the hard moments, and a teen who sees a parent take their own mental health seriously may find asking for help feels less shameful.

How do you find a therapist for yourself?

The most practical places to start looking for a therapist for yourself are your own primary care doctor, your insurance company, and your teen's treatment team. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) notes that "a primary care provider can perform an initial mental health screening and refer you to a mental health professional," and that your insurance company can tell you which local providers are covered by your plan (NIMH, 2026). NIMH also points to FindTreatment.gov, the locator run by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

A few steps make the search easier:

1. Ask your teen's therapist or program for referrals to therapists who work with adults, since they often know clinicians who understand what parents in your position are living through.
2. Call your insurance company or check its online directory, and ask about telehealth options, which can make weekly sessions possible around work and appointments.
3. Look for a licensed therapist, such as a licensed clinical social worker, licensed professional counselor, marriage and family therapist, or psychologist.
4. In a first call, ask whether they've worked with parents of teens who are struggling, and how they usually structure sessions.
5. Give it a few sessions before deciding on fit.

Cost is a real barrier for many families already paying for a teen's care. Our guide on how insurance works for teen mental health treatment explains terms that also apply to your own coverage, and many employers offer an employee assistance program with a few free counseling sessions.

When should a parent get help right away?

A parent should get help right away when stress has turned into hopelessness, when they can't function at work or at home, or when they're having thoughts of harming themselves. This guide can help you notice patterns in yourself, but only a licensed professional or your own doctor can evaluate how you're doing.

Make an appointment in the next few weeks if you've noticed several of the signs above for a month or more, or if you keep thinking you should talk to someone.

Call your doctor or a therapist this week if you can't sleep most nights, are drinking more to cope, are having trouble getting through the workday, or feel hopeless much of the time.

Get help immediately if you are having thoughts of hurting yourself or not wanting to be alive. Call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), which is for parents as well as teens, or call 911 if you or your teen is in immediate danger. Our page on crisis options explains what happens when you call.

Your teen's care has its own path, and our guide to levels of care covers what's available for them. If behavior at home is what's wearing you down, behavioral issues versus mental health issues may help you see what's underneath it, and our Parents & Families hub gathers guides on supporting siblings and why you're not alone.

This article shares practical guidance for parents and is not medical advice. We're not clinicians or doctors. If your teen is struggling, contact a licensed mental health professional or your teen's doctor, and if you have a serious concern about their safety, call 911 or call or text 988. Editorial standards