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Teen anxiety ยท Ages 13 to 17

Teen anxiety treatment in Colorado, for when it looks like refusing to go.

Outpatient care for ages 13 to 17 in Boulder and Thornton, for generalized anxiety, social anxiety, panic, and phobias. The first call is an assessment, not a commitment.

Get help for your teen Call (303) 219-0973
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Understanding Teen Anxiety

The clearest sign is not the worry. It is the list of things they have stopped doing.

Every parent who calls us about anxiety tells a version of the same story. The worrying was never the alarming part, because teenagers are supposed to worry about school, friendships, college, and what happens next. What got their attention was the shrinking. A party skipped, then a team quit, then a class avoided, then a Saturday that used to be full.

That is the mechanism, and it is worth understanding before you decide what to do about it. Avoidance works. Skipping the thing ends the dread immediately, and that relief is a very effective teacher: it proves the skip was the right call. Do it enough times and the week gets smaller without anyone deciding that it should. This is also why anxiety can be quiet in a house. It often does not look like distress. It looks like a teenager with fewer plans.

It is common, and it is real. The National Institute of Mental Health puts lifetime prevalence at 31.9% of adolescents aged 13 to 18, with 8.3% experiencing severe impairment. Anxiety at this age takes several forms, including generalized anxiety, social anxiety, panic disorder, and specific phobias, with obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder sitting close by. It runs in families, it follows trauma and long stretches of pressure, and academic load, comparison on social media, conflict at home, and the physical changes of adolescence all feed it. What it is not is drama, or something your teen will simply outgrow on their own.

The line between ordinary teenage stress and a disorder is not about how upset your teen looks. Quoted in NIH MedlinePlus Magazine, NIMH clinical psychologist Dr. Krystal Lewis puts the test in terms of duration and cost: when those feelings last a long time or occur frequently, that's cause for concern, and anxiety that gets in the way of a teen enjoying life or causes prolonged physical symptoms has become a clinical problem.

  • Ages 13 to 17
  • Teen programs in Boulder and Thornton
  • Family therapy built in

Signs and symptoms

What it actually looks like at home.

Any one of these can be nothing. Several of them, holding for weeks and costing your teen things they used to do, is worth a call. Physical complaints are often what a parent notices first, because a stomachache is easier to say out loud than a fear is. If your teen is talking about hurting themselves, or is unsafe right now, call or text 988 before anything else on this page.

Worry about everyday things that will not switch off

Constant concerns and fears that do not match the actual risk

Trouble concentrating, with thoughts racing underneath it

Dread in the days before a specific class, practice, or social plan

Frequent stomachaches and headaches with no cause a doctor can find

A racing heart and fast breathing, sometimes arriving in waves from nowhere

Sweating, trembling, or feeling faint

Exhaustion, and sleep that is either far too much or far too little

Withdrawing from friends: skipping parties, dropping activities, eating lunch alone

Irritability and anger that lands at home, on the people they feel safest with

Clinical forms

Not every anxious teen is anxious in the same way.

NIMH groups anxiety disorders into generalized anxiety, social anxiety, panic disorder, and the phobia-related disorders. Which one your teen has changes what treatment emphasizes, and sorting that out is part of what the assessment is for.

Generalized anxiety

Worry that moves from subject to subject, so settling one thing settles nothing. Often the teen who was called a worrier long before anyone called it a disorder.

Social anxiety

Fear of being watched, judged, or getting it wrong in front of people. It usually begins in adolescence, which is why by sixteen it reads as personality rather than diagnosis.

Panic disorder

Sudden waves of fear with a pounding heart and breathlessness, then the second problem: a life quietly rearranged to prevent the next one.

Specific phobias

Intense fear of one particular thing, arranged around so carefully that the cost only shows when you add up what your teen no longer does.

OCD and PTSD

NIMH lists these as conditions of their own, though families looking for anxiety help are often looking for one of them. We treat both.

Learn more
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How we treat it

The work is practice, not persuasion.

Anxiety is highly treatable, and that is the part worth saying before any of the detail. It is not a fixed trait your teen has to build a life around, and the goal is not simply fewer symptoms. It is a teenager back in charge of their own week, rather than one whose week is arranged around what they are afraid of.

Treatment is less about talking a teenager out of a fear and more about giving them a way to test it. Cognitive behavioral therapy is the spine of that, and NIMH describes CBT as the current gold standard for treating anxiety disorders in children, working by changing dysfunctional thoughts and behaviors through gradual exposure to anxiety-provoking stimuli.

Exposure is the word that worries parents most, so here is what it means in practice. Nobody is thrown into anything. Your teen and their therapist build a ladder together, from the least frightening version of the fear up to the hardest, and climb it at a pace your teen agrees to in advance. Asking one question in one class before speaking in an assembly. Ordering their own food. Staying at the party for twenty minutes. Each step is planned beforehand and reviewed afterwards, which is what turns a hard afternoon into evidence instead of another bad memory.

Alongside that, teens learn dialectical behavior therapy skills for the moments anxiety spikes, plus the physical regulation work anxiety genuinely responds to: paced breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, and mindfulness. Skills are named, practiced in group, and taken home rather than described and left behind. Teens also work on the ordinary mechanics anxiety wrecks, which means spotting their own triggers, talking back to their own predictions, breaking a large assignment into parts, and asking for what they need out loud.

Care here is medically informed and led by a board-certified psychiatrist, so if medication belongs in your teen's plan it can be evaluated and managed alongside therapy by a clinician who sees the whole picture. It is never a condition of starting. Our teen programs serve ages 13 to 17; for 18 and over, our adult programs run out of the same offices.

  • Individual therapy
  • Group therapy with peers the same age
  • Graded exposure, planned with your teen
  • Family sessions on the calendar
  • Medication support when it fits
Verify your coverage Start with an assessment

Two levels of care

How much of the week this needs.

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Full day

Teen PHP

A full clinical day on weekdays, for anxiety that has already taken the school day. Your teen still comes home at night.

See the program
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Three afternoons

Teen IOP

Three afternoons a week, 4 to 7pm, after the last bell, so the school day stays untouched. Most families start here.

See the program

School

The place it shows up first, and the place it costs most.

Anxiety rarely announces itself. It announces itself as a slipping grade and a Tuesday morning stomachache.

School is where teen anxiety does its most visible damage, and it is usually the first hard evidence a parent gets. Your teen may struggle to pay attention in class because the worry is louder than the lesson. Assignments get missed through procrastination rooted in a fear of doing them badly. Some days get skipped altogether and described as illness, when what is actually happening is that walking in feels impossible.

The pressure points come up again and again:

  • Test anxiety that has nothing to do with how well the material is known
  • Perfectionism that turns into procrastination, because not starting is safer than starting badly
  • Concentration that fails in class while thoughts race somewhere else
  • Presentations and group work avoided, dropped, or absorbed as a bad grade

Our program works on this directly rather than treating it as something school should sort out on its own. Teens learn time management and study skills to cut the overwhelm that feeds the avoidance, and they practice regulation skills specifically for test conditions rather than only in a quiet room. With your permission we also work with your teen's school, so the plan we build and the expectations they meet on Monday are not two different things.

Timing matters here more than families are usually told. NIMH is direct about it: for a young person with symptoms of a mental disorder, the earlier treatment is started, the more effective it can be, and early treatment can help prevent more severe and lasting problems later. A year of avoided classes is not only a year of grades. It is a year of practice at avoiding.

Family and group

What changes outside the therapy room.

Family sessions, scheduled

Family work is on the calendar rather than offered as an optional evening. Your teen goes home to the same house every night of treatment, so the house is part of the plan.

What parents learn to do differently

We teach families what an anxiety episode actually is and how to respond to one: what helps, what accidentally makes it bigger, and how to hold a boundary without it turning into a fight.

Support without taking over

The hardest skill in parenting an anxious teen is backing them toward the thing rather than around it. We work on that with you, because letting them skip is the most natural response and the most expensive one.

A room of people the same age

Anxious teens tend to believe they are the only one like this. In group they hear peers describe the same fears out loud, which does more to normalize it than any adult can.

Practice, with witnesses

Group is where skills get rehearsed and fears get faced in company. Members trade what actually works and back each other into things they have been avoiding.

Skills that leave with them

Naming triggers, questioning their own predictions, breaking big tasks down, and asking for what they need directly. The goal is a teen who can run this without us.

Before you call

What parents ask about teen anxiety.

Is this anxiety, or is my teen just stressed about school?
The test is duration and cost, not how upset your teen looks in the moment. Quoted in NIH MedlinePlus Magazine, NIMH clinical psychologist Dr. Krystal Lewis says that when those feelings last a long time or occur frequently, that's cause for concern, and that anxiety getting in the way of a teen enjoying life, or causing prolonged physical symptoms, has become a clinical problem. The practical version for a parent is simpler: look at what your teen has stopped doing over the last six months. Stress about a hard stretch ends when the stretch does. Anxiety keeps taking things and does not give them back.

My teen has started refusing to go to school. Is that anxiety?
It is one of the most common ways adolescent anxiety finally becomes visible, and it is worth treating as anxiety rather than defiance until you know otherwise. What looks like refusal is usually avoidance that has compounded: a stomachache on test days becomes a missed morning, a missed morning makes the next one easier to take, and every absence raises the cost of walking back in. Do not wait for a school break to fix it, because the gap tends to be widest after one. We work on the school piece directly, including coordinating with your teen's school where you give us permission.

Should I let my teen skip the things that make them anxious?
Usually not, and this is the hardest thing we ask of parents. Letting your teen out of the party, the presentation, or the practice ends their distress in seconds, which is exactly what makes it so hard to refuse and exactly what makes it expensive. Every skip teaches the same lesson, which is that the thing really was unsurvivable and escaping was the answer. That is not an argument for pushing a frightened kid into the deep end. It is an argument for the middle path treatment is built on: a planned, graded return at a pace your teen has agreed to, with you backing them toward it rather than around it. We work on this with parents directly, because what happens between sessions matters more than what happens in them.

Is exposure therapy going to force my child into something they are terrified of?
No. Graded exposure is planned with your teen rather than sprung on them, and they agree to each step before it happens. NIMH describes cognitive behavioral therapy as working through gradual exposure to anxiety-provoking stimuli, and gradual is the operative word. In practice your teen and their therapist build a ladder from the least frightening version of the fear up to the hardest and start at the bottom, then review each step afterward so a difficult afternoon becomes evidence. A teen who feels coerced learns that adults cannot be trusted, which costs more than any single exposure gains.

My teen says group therapy sounds unbearable. Does that rule them out?
No, and for social anxiety the group is closer to the treatment than to the obstacle. It is also the thing teens most often dread beforehand and most often credit afterwards. Everyone in the room arrived with a version of the same worry, nobody is made to perform, and the value is precisely that it is not another adult offering reassurance: it is peers the same age naming the same fears out loud. Tell us at the assessment that this is your teen's hardest part and it gets built into the plan deliberately rather than sprung on them in week one.

My teen gets panic attacks. Is that the same thing?
Panic is a form of anxiety, and it behaves differently enough to be worth naming separately. A panic attack arrives whole rather than building: a sudden wave of fear with a pounding heart, breathlessness, and chest tightness that can genuinely feel like a medical emergency. A first one is worth having checked medically so a physical cause is ruled out. After that, the treatable problem is usually the second one, which is the dread of the next attack and the life quietly rearranged to prevent it. Panic responds well to treatment, and the same cognitive behavioral therapy NIMH calls the current gold standard for treating anxiety disorders in children is the core of how we treat it.

Does my teen need medication for anxiety?
No, medication is a conversation rather than a requirement, and plenty of teens are treated with therapy alone. Care at The Redpoint Center is medically informed and led by a board-certified psychiatrist, so if medication is worth considering it gets evaluated by a clinician who can see your teen's whole picture rather than decided from a website. Whatever is decided, it sits alongside therapy rather than in place of it, because the skills are the part your teen keeps.

What if my teen refuses to come?
Call anyway. It is a normal starting position rather than a dead end, and it is a conversation we have with parents most weeks. Anxious teenagers refuse the assessment for the same reason they refuse most unfamiliar things, which is that the imagined version is worse than the real one. A good part of that first call is working out how to make the first appointment small enough to say yes to. Nothing about an assessment commits your family to a program, and if a program is not what your teen needs, we would rather tell you that at this stage than after enrollment.

What if this is a crisis right now?
Call or text 988 before anything else on this page. It reaches 988 Colorado, the state mental health line, free and confidential, 24 hours a day. If your teen is in immediate physical danger, call 911. The Redpoint Center is an outpatient center rather than a crisis line, and once the immediate danger has passed we can take care from there.
Still not sure whether this is bad enough to call about? Call (303) 219-0973

Start by telling us what your teen has stopped doing.

No diagnosis needed, and no right words. Describe the last few months and we will tell you whether this is the right place, including when it is not.

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