🚨ICYMI…we finally said thank you to our parents
🌈 Before we dive in….
HUGE THANK YOU to Casie, Liz, and the rest of the Other Parents Like Me team for giving Not Therapy a platform to run our first-ever online workshop on how parents can help their children successfully transition into young adulthood. And thanks to everyone who attended! Welcome to our honest, yet oftentimes unhinged, blog 😎
Members of the OPLM community can access the recorded video of our workshop + parent Q&A session in the resource section on their website.
Get a free two-month trial when you join the OPLM community using our Not Therapy link 🔗 below.
📣 ICYMI…OUR PARENTS ARE PROUD OF US.
And it only took us 12 years to properly thank them!!
We love a ✨full-circle moment✨
Last Thursday, Colin and I ran our first-ever online workshop for parents of teens and young adults.
In a shocking deviation from what we normally talk about, the topic was on the four pillars upon which a successful transition into young adulthood is built, specifically for young people struggling with their mental health or who have been in treatment.
And in alignment with when we stopped pretending to be humble weeks ago - our workshop had one of the highest attendance rates OPLM has ever seen for their talks!
But our favorite part? Both mine and Colin’s parents joined 😍 Stories were corroborated and wisdom was shared.
So to all the parents who ask us how long it took for us to show our parents gratitude for sending us to treatment, saving our lives, and setting us up for success? About 12 years, give or take 😅
Good news is that we’ve been getting our clients there with their parents in a few months 😎 They don’t even have to build a whole business around it.
💚 Our Fave Takeaways
💡 Structuring our thoughts
For the past few months, we’ve been running parent support groups for many therapeutic programs and educational consultants. This gave us the opportunity to structure our thoughts around what we normally cover in these groups and use our insights to create an engaging workshop.
And it was a hit.
📣 Giving our parents the shoutouts they deserve
It was so special having our parents join! I don’t think our parents had seen us speak this openly about our experiences before, during, and after treatment to an audience of more than them. Or on my TikTok lol.
So much of what we’ve learned about a successful transition into adulthood came from what our parents did right, intentionally or not. Even the things we may have resented at the time.
They trusted us to take care of ourselves after all that time in treatment. At the same time, they held us accountable for taking responsibility for the consequences of our mistakes or self-sabotage. Read more about how they gave us a baseline of trust in the last post in our “transition starter pack” series.
This is a text with my mom after the workshop 😊
Getting real-time feedback 📝
“Colin just came to our area for a home visit with our son (and us) and it was so great. I highly recommend their coaching services and I think it’s the perfect next step for my son to have the daily support of a coach. It will allow us to focus more on our relationship with our son versus feeling like we have to be the ones holding him accountable.”
👏 SUCH A SLAY FOR COLIN. Thanks for the shoutout, Sue!
“Hayley and Colin, thank you both so much for your hard-earned wisdom, your compassion, and your humor. Big shout out both of you for what you’ve accomplished, and an equally big shout out to your awesome parents.❤️”
“Thank you Hayley & Colin! This is super helpful and so needed. Peer mentorship. I will be reaching out to get more information.”
“I’m very impressed with both of you and appreciate the insights and experiences you shared tonight.”
“Thank you so much — you are both inspirations! Do you ever speak at RTC’s or TBS’s to 1. Give those kids some hope when they’re feeling lonely and hopeless and 2. Encourage /motivate them to lean into their programs and stay the course?”
☝️ We’d love to do more of this!! We have one on the schedule so far, happening in two weeks. If any parents think this would be valuable, we’d appreciate you advocating for us to their child’s program 💚
“I love the newsletter, it is so helpful!”
Alright, bragging over. Thanks again to everyone who attended, and we’re so glad you found it helpful!!
To sum it up. Here’s our troubled teen transition starter pack 💖
We’ve been going through these “pillars of a successful transition into young adulthood” over the past 4 weeks. Here’s the summary, along with some receipts showing that we actually did what we tell our clients to do 😎
How do you get from this…
To this…
To ✨THIS✨
We gotchu 👇
MENTORSHIP & ACCOUNTABILITY 👑
COMMUNITY OF SUPPORTIVE PEERS 👽
PATH TO PERSONAL AGENCY 🚀
PARENT SUPPORT WITH A BASELINE OF TRUST 🌈
Alright…ENOUGH WITH THE TRANSITION STUFF HAYLEY WE GET IT HOLY SH.
FINE OKAY but last thing - if you’re interested in learning more or potentially having us customize this workshop for your teen and young adult clients or their parents, hit us up and schedule a call here. Looking at you, friends in the therapeutic industry who are looking to improve that PR image 👀
Next week, we’ll be moving on to our cheat code series 👾
We’ll start by answering parent questions we got in the OPLM and Hopestream talks.
Colin and I have spent the last 12 years developing, testing, and refining these processes. Get ready, it’s gonna be spicy 🥵
Til then 😘
And now……our vibes this week🔮
📚 What we’re reading
Coachella marketing is over, but only for millennials, vogue business
A memoir of three years in a mental hospital, the cut
Death of the ‘pick-me’ girl and rise of the ‘girl’s girl’, glamour (a TikTok trend I’m 1000% on board with)
🎶 What we’re listening to
Leak 04-13, jai paul (an oldie but a fave)
💡 One last thought
THANKS FOR READING!
If you found this valuable, this is your sign✌️ to send this to parents or young people who can relate to the feelings we’re having this week so we can make sure they know they’re not alone. Sharing is caring 😎
We’re in this to collaborate and support. Please feel free to reach out to us:
If you’re a parent who has a child in treatment, we’re happy to answer any of your burning questions and share our experience in treatment and with transitioning out!
If you’re passionate about changing the narrative in the therapeutic program industry.